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insane: If you're willing to pay $800 for an antenna, would you consider Starlink?
For what it's worth, I had 8 rural sites connected with Spark 4g and had all manner of connection drop out issues and terrible speeds at random times. At some sites they would progressively get slower until the modem was rebooted, at others they would drop off and never reconnect until new sims were provisioned or modems replaced. Only two of the 8 sites worked well. Was a total disaster.
Now all the sites are on Starlink...
It's $520 for the hardware right now until the 1st too so might be a good idea :)
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snnet:
I had this issue around the same time this post was started but I resolved it with Spark - I asked if it was congestion they said no, and they did something on their end and after that it was fixed - never had the issue before and didn't have it afterwards -- before it got to the stage of someone doing things at the infrastructure end I was told to try different Wifi channels as well (ethernet was more stable but still not perfect) and this did improve performance for me as well to a degree but the ultimate fix was something was done on their end
@snnet. Do you have know what was done at their end? Was that frontline tech support or was it elevated to a higher level before the problem was fixed?
Our experience is very similar to @nakedmolerat. DL can be as fast as 110 mbps+ (more commonly 60-95) but also as low as 0.02! UL is generally 50-60mbps. Despite excellent signal strength, the download connection is very unreliable. See first page of this thread. Our signal strength is excellent and we are in a lightly populated area with few if any children or teenagers so hard to imagine congestion is an issue.
The dropouts on our service have worsened over the last couple of weeks.
Disney+ and Neon are now basically unwatchable. Constant buffering from about 7 seconds to a minute or two apart, presumably due to dropouts (given that when it works, the DL rate is high). Interestingly Netflix not affected the same way but does seem at times to drop down to lower resolution for short periods.
I have spoken with frontline tech support at length on three days over the last week and all the usual tricks (powering off, full factory reset, etc) and two days ago, a replacement modem have failed to make any difference. On the Thur morning, the internet connection had basically seized - couldn't reach any websites and the tech support person was unable to see our modem until after power off and on, then only had limited contact but was able to reset the modem. After that we got internet service back but still with the usual drop out problems.
Problem is our previous (still live - but not hooked into our network) VDSL service had only ~1 Mb/s upload speed (and often less), which was proving problematic for large work file uploads and international work Webex sessions, etc. DL speed was OK (20 - 24 Mb/s). Being 1.5km from (an urban & hence non-upgraded) cabinet is the killer for VDSL here.
The 4G wireless connection "shows potential"(?) with upload speeds typically 50x our previous VDSL connection (& DL 2 - 3x). But currently, the 4G service is basically not fit for purpose, with an extremely low WAF. Not interested in Starlink at this point. 4G has the potential to be a much better and far cheaper service ... if only.
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The other major gripe! Contacting tech support has been with great difficulty. If anyone thought Vodafone used to be bad! A month or so ago I was on hold waiting to get tech help for 2 hr 52 min, then the call cut (on the dot at 8pm). Gave up at that stage. After the deterioration a week or two ago, I called again last Thur and did get through. But after over an hour going through the power off, factory reset exercises, then while waiting for the tech to check something at their end, again the call cut. She had earlier sent me a txt so I could reply and let her know if I still had issues. Tried on Mon, but got no reply so had to start the phone marathon again from scratch. Seven calls, a couple failing to get through, with two (or poss 3?) tech support staff totalling 2 hr 20 mins. Still no resolution but the last person did write out a ticket(?) for a replacement modem (picked up on Anzac Day pm, but made zero difference). Ironically, while still on that last call an automated email came through in response to the replacement ticket(?) being issued, giving the status of my issue as "all fixed up, so everything should be working as normal"! When queried about that, the tech support person said 'that is just confirming the ticket(?) for a replacement modem has been issued' (or words to that effect).
@ShaneKNZ, or any other Spark tech people here able to offer advice?
image below from four speed tests shows examples of the type of problem during downloads (light brown shaded plot). Note, these are all done on a desktop PC on a Gigabit ethernet connection, no Wifi involved (though get very similar results on my phone over a Wifi 6 connection).
L>R:
To be fair, sometimes perhaps 80% of DL tests are 'good' (say over 60 Mb/s), but other times it is a lot lower proportion. This morning out of 7 tests, three were good (108, 87, & 97 down), two failed after very poor DL results (failed attempting UL), one failed right at the start, and the other one is the left plot in the set below (net 21 Mb/s down).
UL speed in all four tests that completed this morning was good (57 - 63 Mb/s). And as below, the UL speed typically remains fairly steady throughout a test (though recently we have had some poorer results)
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Further selected results from testing this afternoon as below
But see plots below. In a good proportion of results between 30 & 55 Mb/s, there were dropouts. So while the test result may be above what they say should be expected, the connection is still not satisfactory for many streaming and other applications (incl Neon, Disney+, etc).
As per usual, UL speed is quite stable through the large majority of speed tests. UL speed test result above 50 Mb/s in 44/48 successful tests, with only 2 below 40 (min 30.5 Mb/s).
The usually very consistent UL speed results reflect the excellent signal.
As above probably 20% plus of tests failed after 'completing' the DL stage but no clear if this is due to no DL or no UL?
Plots below ex NetGraph (can control the scales!). Blue shading = UL, Red-Brown = DL. Trace moves L > R (opposite of Task Manager)
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