How convincing is this for a proof of throttling?

[bearxor]

Have you tried a different phone?

 

[lopri]

I haven't tried a different phone but did use the epc.tmobile.com before flashing w/ LTE radio. Same 1.1~1.2 Mbps. Maybe I will try a different phone and see what happens.

 

[lopri]

I have just gotten home and swapped the AT&T SIM and T-Mobile SIM, and confirmed that the phone is fine. I also popped the T-Mobile SIM in the other N4 and observed the same behavior. So the fixed bandwidth issue that I experience from T-Mobile's HSPA+ network in my area doesn't look like a hardware problem.

 

[Trombe]

Not an uncommon report, lot of people in LTE areas have mentioned the same thing with HSPA+ being much slower than it used to be. Suspicion is that whatever they're doing is saving the bandwidth for LTE side of AWS. I don't understand enough about towers and signals to know whether this is actually what's happen, but I've experienced similar things too without an LTE phone (FWIW I'm postpaid).

 

[lothar]

Here's what HSPA on my unlimited plan gets me (using fast.t-mobile.com):

The screenshot shows 3G, but it was H when I ran the tests.

There's no LTE here yet. I did try LTE when I was in Chicago last month, but it only got 6782 down, 1386 up, and 75 ms at best. And that was at 3:37 AM.

If you don't have LTE, how the hell are you able to get such low latencies?

 

[bearxor]

If you don't have LTE, how the hell are you able to get such low latencies?

My average latency on TMo HSPA on 1900mhz was in the 60ms range. LTE brought it down to the 30ms range or so.

It's why I wished TMo had spent their money upgrading their entire network footprint to HSPA instead of upgrading select areas to 1900mhz HSPA and rolling out a limited LTE deployment. They still have just significant amounts of EDGE only coverage

 

[MrTransistorm]

If you don't have LTE, how the hell are you able to get such low latencies?

You know what? As soon as I posted that there is no LTE here, it suddenly appeared! I was on my way to class yesterday, and I noticed the LTE notification in the status bar.

I tested our new LTE a bunch of times while I was on campus yesterday and once just now at my house (1st result):

If you compare it to my previous results, you can see that the latency is lower and the up speed is higher. The down speed yesterday was lower than the HSPA results, but that may have been due to being in a crowded area during prime time. In spite of that, I could tell that web browsing was much more responsive than on HSPA.

 

[bearxor]

If you're just now noticing it, then they're likely still testing it. Also, I think they're only doing a 5x5 setup when they turn them on, though I think some cities where they have a lot of bandwidth available they're doing 10x10.

 

[lopri]

I just noticed the relatively low upload speeds compared to download as well on MrTransistom's screenshot. It's still the highest down speeds I've seen on HSPA+. Maybe there was a nearby T-Mobile tower?

Back to my story: I am still experiencing the same fixed bandwidth on T-Mobile's HSPA+. In the previous page, Bonkers325 stated he gets similar speeds as mine (Post #14 ) at home. If you're still reading this thread, Bonkers325, how far is your work from your home?

A couple more symptoms that make me suspicious of throttling:

1. When I am getting a really weak signal, the down speed does go below 1 Mbps occasionally. Like 0.7~0.8 Mbps. Up speed is usually rock solid at 1.17~1.18 Mbps.
2. I noticed in a few instances that the scale momentarily (like a fraction of a second) goes up much higher (15~20 Mbps) at the start of testings, only to settle back at 1.1 Mbps a moment later.

I mean, with LTE I can see the speed changing depending on where I travel or when it's measured, but with HSPA+ the speed is rock-solid.. at 1.1 Mbps.

(top 3 = HSPA+, Bottom 3 = LTE)

I guess I am wasting time and energy for nothing, but I was and still am curious.

 

[lopri]

Heh.. this is like a magic. Two more tests @1.1 Mbps!

I think I am ending my experiment with a tentative conclusion that I started with.

 

[Bateluer]

How are you getting LTE on a Nexus 4? I know it supported a Canadian band at release, but I thought they patched it out due to the lack of approvals from regulatory bodies.

 

[lopri]

How are you getting LTE on a Nexus 4? I know it supported a Canadian band at release, but I thought they patched it out due to the lack of approvals from regulatory bodies.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2211618

I used this one.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2358931&page=103

Not an uncommon report, lot of people in LTE areas have mentioned the same thing with HSPA+ being much slower than it used to be. Suspicion is that whatever they're doing is saving the bandwidth for LTE side of AWS. I don't understand enough about towers and signals to know whether this is actually what's happen, but I've experienced similar things too without an LTE phone (FWIW I'm postpaid).

That was certainly within my imagination. If T-Mobile was getting more customers or reworking their towers to support LTE, I figured it's within a realm of possibility that its HSPA+ speed might receive a short stick.

What stoke my interest is, however, that the bandwidth that I'm getting via this plan (HSPA+, not LTE) is literally F-L-A-T. I mean, you see getting lower bandwidth during the daytime or rush hour, and getting higher speed at late night, or something like that is common and expected. But my HSPA+ speed under this $30 plan is 1.1 Mbps up/down 24/7. That's what got me interested. I honestly can't think of any other reason than throttling at this point.

Again, it's really much ado about nothing and I am happy that I got my N4 to work with LTE.

 

[magomago]

I get similar results to the other HSPA+ users. MY phone only ever shows "H" in SoCal, and I'm getting 13-15 Mbps down, and 2.5 Mbps up. When I'm at work I see about 10Mbps down/ 1.5 Mbps up. In both locations ping usually hovers around 90ms, but this morning its off into la la land with 400-600ms.


I'm surprised that LTE isn't significantly faster - I guess the real gain is reduced latency to hit idle faster, which is really more about longer battery life.

Of course as I say this I have a friend that lives next to a Verizon tower, and he gets 50 Mbps Down/20-25Mbps up on his galaxy nexus hahaha ;-)

 

[lopri]

What's funny that I've just discovered is that its EDGE network's latency is better than that of HSPA+. @200 ms-ish. For reading news feeds and forum hopping, it feels faster than HSPA. Haha.

 

[Thegonagle]

First off, not convincing. I've used throttled T-Mobile plenty of times, and ping is virtually unaffected. They merely slow your throughput (to almost exactly 128 kbps, IIRC). The half-second pings indicate a malfunction of some kind.

There's a big thread over at HowardForums about a similar (if not the same) issue.

It seems that there's a major bug on T-Mobile's side regarding handover between HSPA and EDGE or LTE. If you're on EDGE or LTE and get switched to HSPA, you get terrible speed. Toggling airplane mode fixes it temporarily, that is until the next time the network hands back over to HSPA from LTE or EDGE.

 

[lopri]

@Thegonagle: Wow, thank you. I did find the thread you probably referred to. (Correct me if I am wrong)

http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php/1809265-t-mobile-hspa-problem

I had no idea! Apparently this symptom is widespread and I am luckier than many others who are stuck at 0.4~0.5 Mbps on HSPA+. Whatever the cause is, I hope T-Mobile will resolve it quickly.

 

[lopri]

First off, not convincing. I've used throttled T-Mobile plenty of times, and ping is virtually unaffected. They merely slow your throughput (to almost exactly 128 kbps, IIRC). The half-second pings indicate a malfunction of some kind.

This explanation makes very much sense. Even if bandwidth is throttled, latency shouldn't be - especially when the signal is as strong as I see.

Edit: BTW, the airplane mode fix some have gotten to work does not work on my N4. I will try a few more times next week. In any case, it is always great to learn something so for that I thank you.

 

[Thegonagle]

@Thegonagle: Wow, thank you. I did find the thread you probably referred to. (Correct me if I am wrong)

http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php/1809265-t-mobile-hspa-problem

I had no idea! Apparently this symptom is widespread and I am luckier than many others who are stuck at 0.4~0.5 Mbps on HSPA+. Whatever the cause is, I hope T-Mobile will resolve it quickly.

That's the one. Some people are already reporting that it's getting fixed in some areas.

 

[Trombe]

Just went through that thread a bit too and it mostly makes sense in a way. I've forced my phone over to WCDMA only and it seems to deal with the random latency issues, but there are times where the downlink still stinks (sub-1Mbit). There's still something funny going on when it's real easy to pick out which one of those tests is on AWS HPSA+ with only two minutes separation...

(Not my phone BTW, I used a demo unit GS4 in the East LA TMobile store)