Vodafone launched it’s 4G network across capital cities and a few major regional hubs last week, and invited WhistleOut to trial the new network. As much as we appreciate the opportunity, running speed tests on a single device in the city we operate in isn’t the best way to see how well the network is performing. Luckily, plenty of Australians were ready to help.
Not that all of these impromptu network testers were given privileged access to the new network. Vodafone has been selling ’4G-ready’ devices for some time, and as soon as the network went live last Wednesday (June 12) the network welcomed its first customers — who promptly began running speed tests.
It is worth noting before going further that there are a number of factors that will change the performance over this network over the coming months and beyond. More customers on the network could mean more that the fastest peak speeds of the network come down as we all start to share what’s available. Vodafone will also expand its infrastructure, and the coverage footprint will grow. What you see below is merely a snapshot in time.
Our results
We’ve run a number of tests in a number of inner city suburbs in Sydney, and mostly, the network performs well in the areas where we know there is coverage. Our top download speed result was 56Mbps in the CBD, with the average for all of our tests sitting at about 28Mbps. Upload speeds seem to fluctuate more than download speeds. Sometimes they sit around the 20Mbps mark, other times they drop dramatically to under 5Mbps.
In terms of coverage, the experience of travelling about the city with a Vodafone 4G device is quite different to what it was like when Telstra first launched its service. Telstra’s early 4G coverage was more like a block in the middle of town, while Vodafone’s coverage is like a Jackson Pollock — splats of coverage over numerous suburbs across most of Sydney. If you are a commuter on a train or bus, chances are your 4G coverage with come and go during the journey.
Around the web
Lifehacker’s Angus Kidman managed to test the network in Sydney and Melbourne before publishing his results, and experienced a wide gamut of speeds. A blazingly fast 78Mbps was his top speed, though he also had several results under 5Mbps.
Reckoner contributor Anthony Agius has put together a comprehensive comparison of 4G services in Melbourne and surrounding inner-city suburbs. His results are a thumbs-up for Vodafone, mostly; with the new network recording the highest average downlink speed and a close second for average uploads.
What’s most interesting about the Reckoner results though, is how bad the Vodafone latency is. At an average of nearly 120-milliseconds, latency on the Vodafone networks in these tests is nearly three-times slower than Telstra, and twice as slow as Optus.
Contributors on Whirlpool had a better experience, latency-wise. There are numerous speed tests from a number of different Aussie cities in the Vodaonfe 4G service thread on the popular forum, and like Reckoner, the results are mostly quite positive — including an extraordinary 101Mbps downlink speed.
On Vodafone’s own community forums, a user posted a speed test result of 56Mbps download in Adelaide. The upload speed was less impressive at 10Mbps, but the latency of 34ms was decent.
Easily the most consistently amazing 4G speed test results come from blog Jack Cola. A spreadsheet of results linked to on the blog show results a majority of results in excess of 100Mbps. Cola doesn’t say in his post where the tests where conducted (he does cryptically allude to a beach) so it’s hard to say where the network is this strong.
Latency
While so much of the attention is on raw speed, it is the latency results that we find most interesting, and a bit concerning. Latency, or ping, is the speed at which your device communicates with the network. Simply put, the faster the ping, the better your connection. Fast download speeds won’t seem very fast if you have to wait extra time for a solid connection to be established.
Reckoner’s 120ms result is what we would typically see on a slow 3G connection. Our experience was a bit better, with most latency tests falling between 40 and 70ms, but this still seems off the mark to us.
On the flip side, many of the other tests we’ve seen published online show latency under 30ms, which is good. This sort of latency is typically matched with 100Mbps speeds.
If all of this data tell us anything, it’s that it is early days for the network, and over time consistency will be the key to its success. Vodafone will need to work on expanding its patchy coverage so that its customers have consistent access to the network, that is consistently fast with low network lag. It is exciting to see a network pulling 100Mbps, but we’d be happier for a wider spread of service concisely deliver one-third of those speeds.
