Global testing reveals Vodafone New Zealand has world’s fastest mobile download

Forums › One NZ (including Farmside) › Global testing reveals Vodafone New Zealand has world’s fastest mobile download

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NonprayingMantis

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#1068913 18-Jun-2014 22:08

sbiddle: I have to say I'm not the biggest believer in the Ookla stats.

Given Nzs small size, coupled with the 'cost' to the average person of doing 4G speed tests (100Mb or more is a lot of their cap just to do a speedtest) how easy would it be for a carrier to setup a few phones very near an uncontested cell site,, running speedtests all day in the knowledge they will skew the average up because there are relatively few genuine tests being done the rest of the time.

Do ookla publish the volumes of tests that have occurred to generate the results?

/tinfoilhat

eTA. It's interesting to note that the next two countries, Iceland and Uruguay are both relatively small. Iceland has no specific carriers listed because not enough tests were done, and Uruguay only has 1 carrier with enough tests.

sbiddle

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#1068970 19-Jun-2014 06:20

NonprayingMantis:
sbiddle: I have to say I'm not the biggest believer in the Ookla stats.

Given Nzs small size, coupled with the 'cost' to the average person of doing 4G speed tests (100Mb or more is a lot of their cap just to do a speedtest) how easy would it be for a carrier to setup a few phones very near an uncontested cell site,, running speedtests all day in the knowledge they will skew the average up because there are relatively few genuine tests being done the rest of the time.

Do ookla publish the volumes of tests that have occurred to generate the results?

/tinfoilhat

eTA. It's interesting to note that the next two countries, Iceland and Uruguay are both relatively small. Iceland has no specific carriers listed because not enough tests were done, and Uruguay only has 1 carrier with enough tests.

I'm not saying they're rigged, but the Ookla stats have always been dodgy for mobile. Before we even had LTE live NZ had average upload rates (off the top of my head) of around 4Mbps. That's a figure that's simply not possible as an average on 3G devices.

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#1069037 19-Jun-2014 09:25

Median, average, etc...

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#1069132 19-Jun-2014 11:21

freitasm: Median, average, etc...

It could be neither. With HSUPA only delivering 5.76 theoretical, just over 4Mbps is basically a best case scenario. It's going to be very rarely you'll get that close to that figure.

NonprayingMantis

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#1069138 19-Jun-2014 11:30

sbiddle:
NonprayingMantis:
sbiddle: I have to say I'm not the biggest believer in the Ookla stats.

Given Nzs small size, coupled with the 'cost' to the average person of doing 4G speed tests (100Mb or more is a lot of their cap just to do a speedtest) how easy would it be for a carrier to setup a few phones very near an uncontested cell site,, running speedtests all day in the knowledge they will skew the average up because there are relatively few genuine tests being done the rest of the time.

Do ookla publish the volumes of tests that have occurred to generate the results?

/tinfoilhat

eTA. It's interesting to note that the next two countries, Iceland and Uruguay are both relatively small. Iceland has no specific carriers listed because not enough tests were done, and Uruguay only has 1 carrier with enough tests.

I'm not saying they're rigged, but the Ookla stats have always been dodgy for mobile. Before we even had LTE live NZ had average upload rates (off the top of my head) of around 4Mbps. That's a figure that's simply not possible as an average on 3G devices.

how about unintentionally rigged?
As in, VF and Telecom employees will be happily running speedtests quite regularly showing off their shiny new 4G network - and they get very good coverage in their respective buildings, so the results will be consistently good.

The average joe might run one speedtest, or more likely none, especially when he realises each one eats up a 20% of his 500MB datacap.
With a very small NZ population, those telco employee speedtests could skew the results up considerably.

Is it a coincidence that the next two countries in the rankings are both very small, where the same thing could happen?
And Australia, whilst not being small, also has smaller datacaps on 4G which would reduce the frequency of non-telco employees runnign speedtests?

sbiddle

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#1069196 19-Jun-2014 13:18

NonprayingMantis:
how about unintentionally rigged?

It's always possible.

I don't for one minute dispute the results showing that VFNZ has one of the world's best networks. Being able to constantly get 100Mbps+ speedtests on a live network is an amazing result, especially when most countries only have cat3 LTE networks. I've seen many results around 140Mbps - compare that to the US where people get excited getting over 10Mbps on a mobile network.

The results do need to be put in context though - they're not results that every user is going to get across the entire network.

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ajobbins

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#1069222 19-Jun-2014 13:43

How easy is it for the carrier to 'rig' the results, by say, preferential prioritisation and optimised routing of Ookla/speedtest traffic on the network?

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coffeebaron

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#1069549 19-Jun-2014 20:35

sbiddle:
NonprayingMantis:
how about unintentionally rigged?

It's always possible.

I don't for one minute dispute the results showing that VFNZ has one of the world's best networks. Being able to constantly get 100Mbps+ speedtests on a live network is an amazing result, especially when most countries only have cat3 LTE networks. I've seen many results around 140Mbps - compare that to the US where people get excited getting over 10Mbps on a mobile network.

The results do need to be put in context though - they're not results that every user is going to get across the entire network.

Possible all the other overseas networks have their employees doing the same, and also prioritising data to speedtest sites. End of the day, what ever factors a thrown at this, the speedtest will still pick up the general trend. Even if the speeds are not accurate, the rankings probably are.

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1eStar

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#1069642 19-Jun-2014 23:51

This would seem to be a classic case of getting what you pay for.

paulspain

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#1072023 22-Jun-2014 12:29

A fantastic result for Vodafone. Not a bad one for Telecom either considering their LTE rollout started later than Vodafone's.

I'm curious to see how quickly the average speeds for 2degrees change once they make 4G LTE available publicly. I've been trialing their LTE network and the results have been not dramatically different to what I saw during pre-launch trials on Vodafone and Telecom.

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thegeekboy

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#1127223 12-Sep-2014 13:54

I took another look at this the other night.
Since that announcement a few months ago it looks like speeds have lifted again.
Voda is now up at 31.69

And a mysterious "NZ Communications" ;) has pipped Spark with 25.47 - no doubt due to launching their 4G

Pretty impressive numbers.
http://www.netindex.com/mdownload/2,5/New-Zealand/

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