Speedtesting - beware. - Touch Pro, Fuze General

So if you're like me you flash the latest radio that hits the streets and go directly to http://www.dslreports.com/mspeed?jisok=1&more=1 to download a megabyte and see how much faster your phone goes.
Stop that.
For the past few months, consistently during American business hours, I have been getting < 500Kbs/s on the phone from dslreports.com/mspeed but would get >1Mbs after 6pm. I was wondering if it was AT&T or dslreports.com who had poorer service during peak hours or both companies so eventually I did the mobile speedtest on my office computer a have a 5Mbit connection. Guess what, I got on multiple occasions with no exception < 500Kb/s on the computer which got a 4Mbs speed test from Speakeasy.net an instant later. Dslreports's mspeed thing was good while it lasted but until they get a better connection or figure out a better mobile speedtest thing to redirect you to other servers you can't count on them.
If you want to do an accurate speed test, tether your computer or laptop to your phone either with USB or wmwifirouter (not bluetooth) and go to http://speakeasy.net/speedtest/ and fire up a few tests from different locations. You could go there on your phone if you have Flash but the test interface may possibly eat up too much processing power to handle all the incoming bandwidth to produce an accurate result. So tether to a proper speedtest site (I recommend Speakeasy's). Plus you get upstream. Also if you're comparing radios and take this seriously make sure your phone is positioned almost exactly the same between flashes and tests. And the fewer bars you have the less confident you should be in the accuracy of the tests relative to each other.
If one of you would like, I've got a no-bandwidth-cap shell account on a machine of a reliable ISP and would be willing to host a megabyte speedtest if you can code the thing to time the download and do the math -- contact me.
Doug

Related

[Q] Fuze 3G/HSDPA Speeds?

Hey guys,
What speeds do you get on your fuze?
I check on http://www.dslreports.com/mspeed
and it shows that i'm getting about 663 kbps
I did this test next to my coworker with an iPhone 3G and that darn thing returned double (1200 kbps) of what i got
are all of you getting about 600 or 1200(1.2mbps)?
is he doing the iphone test or the reg m test? i get a higher speed when i dl a bigger file. 1MB i got 928 with my fuze and i did the reg m test not the iphone test
I got 1660 on my fuze.
I'd just like to know who at at&t turned off the [H] speeds in the southwest Missouri area. Never had any problems with HSDPA (or whatever it is called).
On the fuze, every hack I've tried and it still refuses to pop up....just 3G.
Any ideas?
the iphone test was on testmyiphone.com
and i did the 1mb test on dslreports and got 663 ... is there anything on the fuze that would restrict the hsdpa speed?
... as for getting the H icon, just use schaps advanced config tool
First of all, the ROM on ATT's Fuze just has the 'H' icon disabled. There is a reg hack to enable it, try searching around.
That being said, I'm having major issues with the 3G speed on my Fuze.
I have a BlackJack II as well, and I can literally pop my SIM out, put it in that, and get normal decent 3G speeds. Go back to my Fuze, and it's so slow that pages often don't even load at all, and time out. I am testing with all the same websites. Even updating the weather in the TF3d panel often times out and when it does work it takes like 10 seconds per city.
Doesn't matter if I'm in Opera or IE, it's just slow as hell on the Fuze. Go back to the BlackJack, and again it's fine.
I am taking it back today, I'll try a replacement, but I am not willing to try a ROM flash because I'm afraid they won't take it back.
I'm getting 254 kbs... blazing.
814 kbps. Not bad, on HSDPA
speed issues
I am not sure if this has anything to do with it but I was looking at the connection settings that defaulted in my Fuze and the apn is ims.cingular
I am familiar with wap.cingular and I know isp.cingular ut I have never heard of ims.cingular. Would this even have any impact on this?
im getting 2600Kbps down 700Kbps up on full bars HSDPA
Im in NYC and when I dont have an active data connection it will show 2-3 bars 3G but as soon as I try and connect It'll revert to E. Is this happening to anyone else?
you know what... i'm not even using the default Fuze modem connection (the one called "MEdia Net" that has wap.cingular, username and password).
My boss and I created a new GPRS/3G modem connection without any settings on our Fuzes.... and its working for us. So i don't think that has anything to do with it. I think all it does is let AT&T know that you're authenticating onto their servers the the default username and password.
Go ahead and give it a shot, create a new GPRS/3G modem connection and name it whatever you want. Go through the steps and leave everything blank. The 3G/HSPDA will work fine, at least for us....
On my Fuze, forced to do the 1MB test, with 3G, I got:
1345 kbit/sec
0.32s latency
6.363s d/l time.again.
My FUZE with Romeos ROM is reaching HSDPA at pretty damn low speeds on AT&T 3G...
Avg between 300-700 on dslreports.com/mspeed. Usually somewhere around 500kbps.
If I swap out my SIM and put it into my X1i, I get between 800-1300kbps in the same location a minute later!
Absurd. Really, really absurd. Something is wrong here. Either the radio, or some software setting, or, even perhaps a hardware limitation is causing the FUZE to get much slower speeds than other HTC made phones...
I also have an I-Mate 9502 which gets the same range of speeds my X1i gets. Tested my buddys Tilt, and he was getting between 750-1000kbps...
Any ideas? Anyone have similar issues in the U.S.?
Thanks for confirming my suspicions that the G3/H on this phone is the same.
As for the Fuze, like my other HTC phones, I have trouble getting bars while other peeps with other phones on ATT get full bars. I wonder if it's the antenna? I wonder if HTC does a bad job with them?
Yesterday I had to revert to a 2 year old SonyEricsson K800 just to keep myself from dropping calls.
I'm beginning to think that it's the antenna, and not just some funky AT&T control. I used to regedit tweaks to enable HSDPA and its icon and the best result I've ever returned was around 660kb/s down. Also of note is that it didn't matter how many bars I had; one test with 1 bar returned a down speed 200kb/s faster than a test I did with four bars.
I really want to like this phone but it's getting too wonky for me.
Well, I went and exchanged my Fuze today for another one. I must admit it seems to be working a lot better. At first it wasn't, but after using it a while it is now reasonable. For now anyway. It's still not as fast as my BlackJack II, but it is at least working, which is more than I can say for the one I returned.
Earlier, I was trying to get a speed report on dslreports.com/mspeed, and it kept saying that it was invalid test on the 1MB because it was too quick (1.4 seconds), ironically.
I'm still not sure I trust this phone. I might try RomeOS now that I know I can flash back to stock ROM if I need to return.
Maybe the Epix will be OK for now until the X1 is out.
I'm going to do some dslreports testing and compare to the BlackJack II from the same spot, will post up.
Test Results
Well, here's the results of the testing. Unbelievable. This is with a "3G" connection. Granted it's in my apt, but my other phones work in here. I did a bunch of tests with each phone, my Fuze and a Blackjack II. These were all done within a few minutes of each other from the exact same location (my couch, LOL) using the same SIM. I'll try more tests tomorrow from a better location, maybe I'll go to Fullerton as another member here posted he got awesome HSDPA speeds there.
I did these from http://www.dslreports.com/mspeed and most did not work on 100k, they gave the error "unstable or too fast results" so I'd go up to 200k or 1MB.
First the Fuze (in succession):
100k:
74 kbit/sec
0.647s latency
11.41s d/l time
100k:
too fast- 1.99s
200k:
188 kbit/sec
0.703s latency
9.188s d/l time
100k:
48 kbit/sec
4.23s latency
17.215s d/l time
100k:
57 kbit/sec
0.762s latency
14.777s d/l time
100k:
72 kbit/sec
0.707s latency
11.804s d/l time
Then the Blackjack II (in succession):
100k:
too fast - 0.41s
200k:
too fast - 0.567s
1MB:
761 kbit/sec
0.103s latency
10.681s d/l time
1MB:
too fast - 1.484s
1MB:
411 kbit/sec
0.161s latency
19.977s d/l time
1MB:
unstable / too fast result
1MB:
unstable / too fast result
100k:
unstable / too fast a result
1MB:
unstable / too fast a result
So you can see that the Fuze is abysmal. For some reason I kept getting that weird error result. On the BJ it just stopped working after a while, but I was still able to browse to pages just fine. In fact on the Fuze, I can't even load Gmail usually at all, so I went to it on the BJ after these tests and it came up and loaded instantly.
I am not pleased. I think we should also post our ROM versions. Someone else thought maybe ATT imposed a limit of some kind (I can't see how they could limit it this bad, from a business point, but I wouldn't put it past them). Maybe the people with just fine connections have older ROMs, pre-limited. Just a thought.
Here's my info:
ROM: 1.95.502.5 WWE (10/20/2008)
Radio: 1.02.25.32
Protocol: 52.39c.25.22H
SPL: 1.95.00.00
I really really want to like this phone and make it work. But even though this replacement is better than the first one, it's still not usable as you can tell. It does happen to have all the same ROM versions as the prior one.
Please post up similar info guys, speed test results, and your phone ROM versions, etc. To find that info, you can look in the bottom right when you first boot up the phone, and also go into Start->Settings->Phone(?), somewhere in there you'll find it.
If anything, we will document this enough to force ATT to fix it.
I'm running NATF's rom and getting decent speeds here from my house, 1400, but I have noticed that I have less connection bars that my Tilt. I've always had 4 bars here at home on the tilt, but the Fuze will drop to 3 and 2 bars sometimes. I'm not getting anywhere near the reception with the Fuze as opposed to my Tilt, so I'm thinking it's got to be an antennae problem.
I'm getting approximately the same displayed bars from my house as I was getting on my 8525; however, the Fuze seems to be performing better with that displayed signal strength. That is, I frequently got drop-outs in certain parts of the house with the 8525; with the Fuze, I don't believe I have heard a drop-out in the five days I've had it.
I did a couple of speedtest runs this morning sitting in my car waiting for someone; one was 1260 kbps, the other 1450. I certainly can't complain about the speed.

3G data performance

Hi All
I changed from a SE p1i to a HTC Touch Pro. In terms of phone easiness and functionalities I lost a lot but in terms of HW I though I gained a lot. However I started to realise that although it has HSDPA and HSUPA the internet over 3G was very, very slow. I sent it to repair and come exactly the same. The best speed I can get is 61Kbps DL when 3G provides 384Kbps and HSDPA 7.2Mbps. Since the latency is very very high, I cannot get the complete rendering of a complex page if the http server gives time-out too early. Using the PC with the VPN is a nightmare.
A friend of mine that is a radio engineer in Nokia told me that this is a "well know problem of Windows Mobile that cannot cipher/decipher the 3G radio packets in real time". I searched on the internet and couldn't find nothing however I tried several HTC and Samsung phones with Windows Mobile, on several operators and countries and all are very very slow. And comparing them with the SE pi1 that worked like a clock... until it broke :-D
Henrique
I think you will find you are getting 61 kiloBYTES per second which equates to 488 Kbps, I use it with VPN and it's great, how are you connecting your PC to your phone, hopefully not via internet connection sharing or it will fail the VPN security check and boot you off quickly
Hi Everyone,
I too was noticing speed issues and they are for sure there. People on these boards have been seeing upto 2Mbit downloads speeds so it can be done. As my sig shows I got 1.7Mbit with 1-2 "H" bars.
I loaded a new radio on mine and that seemed to almost double my bandwidth, I was using the standard .32 radio and was getting around 600 to 700Kbit and then switched to the .28 radio and was getting 1100 to 1300Kbit. Only do your speed tests by tether unless you feel you have a good mobile website to do your testing. I was using www.dslreports.com/mspeed but the results are junk, theirs servers are not able to supply enough bandwidth for a good test.
Secondly I installed a new ROM, specifically I am using NATF's 2.3. This will make the phone way faster in terms of performance. It also allows me to tether via the USB and use my VPN without any problems.
I have an AT&T data card for my laptop (it's a work thing) and I get equal coverage/speed on the fuze as I do on this dedicated device, that is without the radio change that is.
Give the above items a try, the information for making the changes can be found in the ROM development area
Thanks All
Thanks for the feedback guys.
I used GoToMyHelp.com to make the test and provide me the results in both Kbps and KBps... 7.6KBps they said... GPRS speed.
With 3G only the results vary from 17Kbps to 60Kbps, when I turn HSDPA on I always get 61Kbps... looks like the phone cannot handle more than one major WCDMA code with the most robust and slowest modulation code...
But if people reported higher speeds then it means I really have an HW problem and so I have to insist with the service centre... I guess...
Henrique
But...
Although from the comments received looks like the problem is more acute on my device I tried a Samsung with Windos Mobile 6.1 and it is as slow as mine... I think it is too much coincidence.
Does anyone has any information regarding the so called "well known limitation of the cipher/deciphering in real time of windows mobile?
Thanks for any feedback...
Henrique
i get from 800kpb - 1000
never tested upload.
is tehre another test?
I only trust speedtest.net through a hardline tether (not bt) for speed test results. This moves as much processing power as possible from the phone to a full fledged computer, reducing such variables as screen drawing speed, free memory, cpu utilization, etc.
I find the fuze to perform almost exactly in line with my 881u (best speed ive seen on that is just over 2400 down, 900 up) - the only discernable difference is latency, slightly better on 881u (which is to be expected as there isnt ICS running as a proxy in such a situation)
As to the fastest speed you'll see on the device itself, I have not been able to clock over 1700 on speedtest.net running in flash lite 3.1 in opera mobile on my wifi, where i score 5500+ on the computer, so i think testing via phone's browser is not a very good measurement.
I don't know, I just switched my Settings > Phone > Band to GSM to see if it saves substantial battery, opposed to the 3G and even further "H" icon HSxPA I was using before.
The "E" icon GSM-Edge doesn't seem to slow down my Google Maps updates very much.
Thanks
Thank you all for sharing your experience.
The tests I made were using the phone as a modem via USB, so the processing on the phone was at a minimum.
The site I indicated before, GoToMyHelp.com, is used by a Firefox extension I have. After trying several sites this was the one that always gave me the best perceptible match between the browsing experience and the measured figures...
Now comes the hard part to convince the customer services that the phone has problems...
Henrique
I think I have the same problem. I am getting crazy low speeds on G and H, 30Kbit/sec and 60 Kbit/sec respectively. I have tried various tweaks found on the forums, I've flashed a couple of cooked roms and various radios but can't get it any higher. I've tried the SIM in the wifes iphone so I am sure that it's not a problem with that.
Let us know how you get on, are you going to call HTC direct or go through the company you bought it from?
chrisrich said:
I think I have the same problem. I am getting crazy low speeds on G and H, 30Kbit/sec and 60 Kbit/sec respectively. I have tried various tweaks found on the forums, I've flashed a couple of cooked roms and various radios but can't get it any higher. I've tried the SIM in the wifes iphone so I am sure that it's not a problem with that.
Let us know how you get on, are you going to call HTC direct or go through the company you bought it from?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
im getting 820kb/s in a suburaban area. It works great. Did you enable HSPDA. AT&T turns HSPDA by default (probobly to save bandwidth). All you have to do is fix it...im not sure how search the forum. I am using DA_G Clean fuze rom and it has it built into the ROM
OMG i just tethered my PC and I got some crazy speeds
And that was the lowest one. It went all the way up to 1900..obviously it flutuates a lot but it is still leveling off around 15k....which is crazy because I only have TWO bars!
this is my home
Its crazy that my phone gets speeds half as fast as my DSL and it only has two bars and im in the suburbs!
i tried iphonespeedtest.com on 1.07 proven and got about 400 at highest
tried it when i used his 1.08 i got 1200 kbps
its sick
Northern VA area
Is it possible that while tethered the phone is capable of more data throughput that isn't possible while browsing on the phone? Similar to the problem of encrypted WiFi being slow due to the processor load of encrypting and decrypting data.
From a technical standpoint when you're tethered all the phone does is pass data from the 3G connection to the USB port. The only processing needed is basic lower level networking to re-address the data packets to a new port, thus the processor has a low load and can dedicate more cycles to simply moving data. The phone can focus all of it's power on getting the fastest connection with the 3G tower.
But when you browse on the phone the processor needs to terminate the data packet and unload it into a program. On top of that even more processor power goes towards running the program itself that is using the data. Since the processor is busy multitasking by running a program, terminating data packets, and trying to maintain a connection with the 3G tower, it's more likely to drop packets or lose it's connection.
This would also explain why you lose that weak 3G connection and drop to EDGE when you open a program that has high processor demands.

Data speeds vs sprint

For $35 a month for technically sprint i will plunk down $300 for this beauty but how fast are the downloads?
Seems faster than my tmobile vibrant 3g was.
Sent from my MOTWX435KT using XDA App
it all depends on service and tower loads.. like at around 6pm i get 300kbps and at 6am i get 1400-1500 kbps... right now its 8:30am and im getting 850kbps... so it all depends sometimes i get 100kbps all the way down to 30kbps.. but the triumph was faster than my Buddy droid x and he had two bars i only had one.. at least 3 times faster ( both on 3g)
I was on SERO 500, and my Sprint phone died, so I want to upgrade to SEROP, but calling Sprint (5 times, they know what is SEROP but would not give it to me), email ecare (3 times, then no one reply anymore). So I am now on VM $25 plan w/ Triumph.
The phone itself is just like any other Android phone. At home, I get almost no Data. Phone and SMS go thru no problem. Google Map, Browser, Youtube 90% of the time would not load, and complaint no connection. When I walk out of the apartment building Data works.
The problem is, my old Sprint phone is Touch Pro, and it got perfect Data.
So does Sprint has any special rule for VM phone? Since I am new to VM and Android, I am reading now how to update PRL.
the main difference is that sprint plans allow roaming on verizon towers. otherwise, the data speeds are the same. any speed difference you're seeing is likely caused by device differences (e.g. antenna, radio, ...)
VM doesn't roam, so it will never have as good reception as a sprint (or AT&T or Verizon) phone. Part of that $80-$100 a month you are paying them is for roaming access fees between the carriers.
Long and short of it is if you want the bet reception and data speeds, you need to pay for it. You aren't going to get top notch network performance for $25 a month.
emkorial said:
VM doesn't roam, so it will never have as good reception as a sprint (or AT&T or Verizon) phone. Part of that $80-$100 a month you are paying them is for roaming access fees between the carriers.
Long and short of it is if you want the bet reception and data speeds, you need to pay for it. You aren't going to get top notch network performance for $25 a month.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Agreed, but you can get get top notch service for $35 a month. In some areas the best signal for a Sprint phone will be from Sprint towers; in that case, a Virgin phone (using only Sprint towers) will get the same service as a Sprint phone unless the actual phones are different.
I disagree. I have the phone and the web browsing speed was horrible as well as the download speed for apps. You guys may have towers closer to you. I stay in washington, dc. I did the prl swap, now i feel as though my data speeds are much faster, possible 300% more faster. I browse facebook, zoom! check out a youtube vid and no buffering on a 6minute video. If you have slow data speeds do the prl swap! You will appreciate the phone much more!
http://androidforums.com/triumph-all-things-root/395533-big-difference-data-speeds.html
Which PRL did you use, hitsndc? 01115? 01119? 01120? These are the 3 PRL's I've seen mentioned across the forums.
MarkMcCoskey said:
Which PRL did you use, hitsndc? 01115? 01119? 01120? These are the 3 PRL's I've seen mentioned across the forums.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I used 01115
I just swapped to 01115; will advise if it makes a difference. I also attempted to force the phone into EvDO-only mode in the build.prop file - that MAY make a significant difference in places where the radio "hunts", which mine DOES when mobile.
If it works I'll post a "how to" which is more-or-less like what's been posted, with one exception - there's an easy way to get the phone to ALWAYS have the diag enabled using "anycut".
Update: EVDO-only lock is NOT effective, however with 01115 the phone re-selects to 3G much more reliably and quickly than with the base PRL and is also connecting to towers it never did before (as shown in "Open Signal"), so at least here it appears to be an improvement.
I swapped to 01115 myself.
Speed test are about the same, which I understood would be the case. As long as my connection is more consistent, I'd be happy. I've had a couple dropped calls. Will have to wait and see with this PRL.
I should check Google maps to see if it detects me closer/more accurately. I've had times where it was miles off, when I know there are towers closer. So hopefully I have better access to the closer towers.
Would still like to know the difference between the PRL's (01115, 01119, 01120, or any others that would work with the Triumph).
Genesis3 said:
I just swapped to 01115; will advise if it makes a difference. I also attempted to force the phone into EvDO-only mode in the build.prop file - that MAY make a significant difference in places where the radio "hunts", which mine DOES when mobile.
If it works I'll post a "how to" which is more-or-less like what's been posted, with one exception - there's an easy way to get the phone to ALWAYS have the diag enabled using "anycut".
Update: EVDO-only lock is NOT effective, however with 01115 the phone re-selects to 3G much more reliably and quickly than with the base PRL and is also connecting to towers it never did before (as shown in "Open Signal"), so at least here it appears to be an improvement.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for sharing, with regards to locking into 3G more reliably, do the phone signal decibel levels improve as well? And how about voice quality?
Voice quality was never an issue here - this phone is capable of holding a voice call and being stable when it shows ZERO bars, which none of my other handsets have ever done.
The big difference I see is that there are other towers that now appear in the neighbor list and the handset does connect to them where it didn't before, so I am definitely "seeing" connection sources that I didn't know existed in the past.
It hasn't made a material difference in data rate performance that I can see from my house - the real test will be whether it makes a difference of materiality when I'm in the car and such, which is where I've seen a lot of "hunting" down to 1x and "sticking" there. We'll see if that is gone or not.
I'm keeping 1115 for now but have the original PRL in the event I need to go back to it.
Once I swapped my prl and added the EvDo line my Data more than doubled in speed. Like hitsndc said I am now able to stream a whole 4 min video with no buffer. Once I removed that line it would stop every few seconds. Added the line, back to no Buffer. I tried this a few times before I came to the conclusion that it did make a difference.
Once I updated the PRL I used opensignal from the market to see my towers and now I was locked on to a tower close to me that wasnt even showing up on the map before.
Im alot happier with my phone now. Once we get 2.3 on here Ill be good
Where did you put the EVDO line? In build.prop? That's where I stuck it - it made no difference for me; I still occasionally "hunt" to 1x service, but the PRL change DID make a difference as I now "see" towers (and connect to them) that I wasn't before.
Look guys I only had one bar.
Sent from my GT-P7510 using Tapatalk

Choosing/blacklisting cell towers

I’m not sure this is the place to ask or if someone who knows the board better can move this.
I’m using cell phones as rural internet because there’s nothing here other than signing a 2-year contract and using satellite internet, and there’s a fiber-optic project supposedly under a year away.
I recently got moved (Straight Talk) from AT&T towers to T-Mobile. Uptime is around 30%, and after observing and trying to use for a week or so I figured out: Some towers work, some don’t. I can see a signal strength in “about phone” around -115 dbm when there’s no internet, that’s more like -92 when it works. I can fairly reliably get on a working tower for a couple minutes by:
Go into Airplane Mode (Android 5.02) for a minute, turning the radio off, then back on. Turn the wifi hotspot back on. On the computer drop and reestablish the connections to the phone’s AP (ifdown, wait, ifup), ping something to test. Slightly cumbersome and it switches back fairly soon. Sometimes minutes, sometimes hours. How busy the phone system is may affect this.
This particular phone is rooted so I could edit some text files if I knew which. I don’t know if the weak signal tower doesn’t work just because of the weak signal or if it’s located someplace without internet. If I could choose a preferred tower, or blacklist the bad one, or set the minimum acceptable signal to like -100 dbm, those would all work. There are probably apps for this. Or maybe it’s control the phone companies don’t want you to have.
ab1jx said:
I’m not sure this is the place to ask or if someone who knows the board better can move this.
I’m using cell phones as rural internet because there’s nothing here other than signing a 2-year contract and using satellite internet, and there’s a fiber-optic project supposedly under a year away.
I recently got moved (Straight Talk) from AT&T towers to T-Mobile. Uptime is around 30%, and after observing and trying to use for a week or so I figured out: Some towers work, some don’t. I can see a signal strength in “about phone” around -115 dbm when there’s no internet, that’s more like -92 when it works. I can fairly reliably get on a working tower for a couple minutes by:
Go into Airplane Mode for a minute, turning the radio off, then back on. Turn the wifi hotspot back on. On the computer drop and reestablish the connections to the phone’s AP (ifdown, wait, ifup), ping something to test. Slightly cumbersome and it switches back fairly soon. Sometimes minutes, sometimes hours. How busy the phone system is may affect this.
This particular phone is rooted so I could edit some text files if I knew which. I don’t know if the weak signal tower doesn’t work just because of the weak signal or if it’s located someplace without internet. If I could choose a preferred tower, or blacklist the bad one, or set the minimum acceptable signal to like -100 dbm, those would all work. There are probably apps for this. Or maybe it’s control the phone companies don’t want you to have.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It may be possible to exclude certain towers, but for all intents and purposes, it is not possible to include/select/lock-in specific towers. Here is why, if the tools and methods to do so were readily available, then, inevitably more people would use those tools and methods. The more people were to use those tools/methods, the more unstable the whole network would become because the system would not be able to shift the load between towers to equalize/stabilize the network as a whole.
This is because the system works by balancing load, sometimes a signal can be weaker than another but, at the same time, also be faster than other. Stronger signal does not always equal faster speeds.
The concept would be similar to having more than one router/wifi signal at home, then, having everyone in the house and any/all neighbors that are in range, all connected to the same signal/router. The signal they are all connected to would be slow and unstable, the system must have the ability to "bounce" everyone around between all of the routers in order to keep performance at optimum levels "across the board". If everyone is "locked" to the one signal/router, the system can't manage itself, which leads to degradation.
Poor signal in rural areas can be expected, there isn't much you can do about it. The towers are positioned to provide coverage to as many customers as possible from their location. Also, some of the issue in rural areas is a "line of sight" thing. The lay of the land can be a hindrance to signal.
I also live in a rural area of a rural town. I get crappy signal when using cellular network, more down time than up time. I deal with having a decent(but still slow) signal for 1-2 minutes and then when the phone's system runs the next wifi/cellular data re-scan to search for better signal, everything stalls as if I'm getting no signal and it doesn't resume until it either keeps the connection it already has or it just drops out completely for 5-8 minutes until the next time the re-scan can find a signal to connect to. Then the cycle starts over with decent signal for 1-2 minutes or so, until the next re-scan, anyway. I have to turn of mobile data when at home because the virtually continuous re-scanning drains the battery and the device runs warmer than it should normally.
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OK, thanks. Line of sight - I'm at 1600 Feet elevation, people driving by stop to use the cell service before they go back into the next valley.
I've been with Straight Talk since 2015, originally using AT&T towers, I think we used 13 GB of data last month. AT&T worked very well, I'd say faster than satellite internet. Verizon is also an option.
A weak signal isn't the same weakness for everyone, some people will actually be closer to it. And the population density isn't very high around here. Lat 42.65, lon -72.83. I pay about $60/month for "unlimited data", some fraction of that must end up going to T-Mobile. If the county weren't going to be getting fiber optic networking soon I'd expect the money might go into building out cell systems to handle the load. There seems to be no scaling back and limiting everyone to some number of KB/sec, with that number decreasing as more people use it. My data's either in service or it isn't. -115 dbm is weak by everything I've seen.
I also have a Huawei E3372 modem I can put my SIM into. I bought a pair of small gain external antennas with 3 meter cords. I'd need to get those up high and run something like a Raspberry Pi as a router.
ab1jx said:
OK, thanks. Line of sight - I'm at 1600 Feet elevation, people driving by stop to use the cell service before they go back into the next valley.
I've been with Straight Talk since 2015, originally using AT&T towers, I think we used 13 GB of data last month. AT&T worked very well, I'd say faster than satellite internet. Verizon is also an option.
A weak signal isn't the same weakness for everyone, some people will actually be closer to it. And the population density isn't very high around here. Lat 42.65, lon -72.83. I pay about $60/month for "unlimited data", some fraction of that must end up going to T-Mobile. If the county weren't going to be getting fiber optic networking soon I'd expect the money might go into building out cell systems to handle the load. There seems to be no scaling back and limiting everyone to some number of KB/sec, with that number decreasing as more people use it. My data's either in service or it isn't. -115 dbm is weak by everything I've seen.
I also have a Huawei E3372 modem I can put my SIM into. I bought a pair of small gain external antennas with 3 meter cords. I'd need to get those up high and run something like a Raspberry Pi as a router.
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I am on Straight Talk also, but I'm on the Verizon side. In my opinion, the Verizon side is little better and has somewhat better coverage than the T-Mobile, Sprint or AT&T side. Other than when at home, I get perfect signal strength, the only reason I get crappy signal is I'm one of the ones dealing with line of sight. I'm several miles outside of town in a low-lying area between two hills.
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I should try Verizon. They're the default for landlines here but I got the impression they only did contract phones. I have 3 working Motorola XT1527s plus my modem, not interested in some contract phone. This T-mobile experience is my first other than AT&T. There's a website where you can download APK files to sideload, that runs through T-Mobile last I knew.
I think I've figured out how to talk to a human at Straight Talk. Call during east coast business hours, and in the 2nd menu mention data issues. The night/weekend people never seem to accomplish anything. They're eager to help bit they're most effective at the bulk of common issues like billing or changing a SIM. Took me over 10 phone calls last time to get anywhere.

Non-Rooted Tether App Being Throttled

Alright guys, I haven't done a lot of research on this but I'm hoping someone who's already familiar with what I'm dealing with might have an easy answer.
I have been using PDAnet for years, most recently with a Samsung Galaxy S9. When tethered to my PC, the results of Speedtests on my phone and on my PC were comparable, usually identical. If I got 50 down and 25 up on the Speedtest app on the phone, I'd get the same when tethered and testing the speed on a browser.
Well as batteries do, the battery in my Samsung turned into a balloon and it was time for a new phone.
I picked up the Moto One 5G Ace from MetroPCS and I'm stuck with it because the salesman decided not to disclose that it was a final sale and the phone is locked for six months. Literally could not return it the next day.
The issue? Now when I run a Speedtest on the phone, I'm still getting my standard 50 down and 25 up, actually a little better, possibly better tech as it's a newer phone, but when I tether in with PDAnet and then test the speed I get exactly half the download speed, but the same upload speed, so 25 down and 25 up. In order to test if it was possibly a cable issue, USB port issue or anything like that, I switched over to the built in tethering service and suddenly speeds went back to normal, 50 down and 25 up on both phone and PC Speedtests. My theory is that something in the phone is throttling the app itself, but I've got no clue where to start on that. I've gone through some options to make sure the app is not restricted on data and all that jazz, but I might be missing something, or maybe it's something built into the software, would love to hear what you guys think or if anyone has a solution. I live very rural as can be and this is my only access to internet, for me the difference between downloading things at 25 Mbps and 50 Mbps is huge, any help will be greatly appreciated.
As a side note I have switched from PDAnet to Klink and while Klink is a much better service in the way it emulates a traditional internet connection and has allowed me to do things I wasn't able to do on PDAnet, I still have the issue of only getting half the download speed the phone is recognizing.
Thanks for the info on Klink. You saved me $3 versus PDANet. PDANet's popularity seems to bog down their customer service. Looks like the Klink developer is actually reachable if I encounter any issues.

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