Spark Mobile - poor performance in Whakatane CBD

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Spark Mobile - poor performance in Whakatane CBD

blair003

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#293842 16-Feb-2022 17:31

Hello,

Is anyone else here in Whakatane and having poor performance with Spark Mobile nowadays?

I'm in the middle of testing a mobile-data solution for a client. I'm was doing speedtests in CBD around 2pm and seeing an unstable 2-4Mbit down and 6-8 Mbit up. Not sure why the upstream speed wasbetter than download. I haven't done speedtests in a long time, use WiFi/fibre mostly these days. As of right now I am getting 9/9Mbit.

I went over the hill to Ohope at around 4.30pm today and get several hundred megabit down(!)

Unrelated but anecdotally there is a lot more poor reception/dropped calls in fairly built up surrounding towns (such as Awakeri) that wasn't a problem a couple of years ago.

Do Spark just generally lack the mobile capacity here now or is something else going on? (or is it just me?)

wratterus

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#2869813 16-Feb-2022 17:41

Were you definitely on 4G when testing?

blair003

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#2869826 16-Feb-2022 17:57

Yeah, 4G LTE Band 28

It is improving now somewhat, just got 16/11Mbit.. but very peaky download -- it is much more consistent uploading (still, I wouldn't have posted if I got a number like that earlier). I wonder if it will continue to improve as more people leave the 'CBD'?

DjShadow

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#2869830 16-Feb-2022 18:01

Vodafone has 5G coverage there if that is an option

blair003

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#2869832 16-Feb-2022 18:05

Yep, I will be forced to get a Vodafone SIM as well. I am testing on a dual-SIM device so did plan to have both for where one had better coverage than the other, I just didn't expect that downtown Whakatane would be a place spark was weak (if indeed the problem is Spark).

nztim

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#2869836 16-Feb-2022 18:18

Dont get your hopes up with Vodafone 5G, very limited backhaul from a lot of sites

Any views expressed on these forums are my own and don't necessarily reflect those of my employer.

Linux

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#2869850 16-Feb-2022 18:45

SparkNZ is hard out selling FWA to not pay wholesale tax so sounds like network overload

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DjShadow

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#2869851 16-Feb-2022 18:47

Is there any reason why your client can't use Fibre or are you working on a backup solution?

gajan

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#2869871 16-Feb-2022 19:51

OP - DM me some locations and perhaps time(s) - I will get it checked out. Thanks.

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blair003

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#2886061 14-Mar-2022 16:21

It was a temporary/backup solution.

I would say Spark just has insufficient capacity in this area for whatever reason these days. I guess it's not TERRIBLE, but 5-10x slower than vodafone in terms of throughput, and double the latency and jitter. These are my unscientific observations from random testing mostly in the 2-6pm range since my original post.

KiwiSurfer

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#2886174 14-Mar-2022 19:17

nztim:

Dont get your hopes up with Vodafone 5G, very limited backhaul from a lot of sites

Surely they're using fibre for backhaul from most sites now? I hardly ever see any microwave links these days.