Thu 20 Nov 2008

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Edited by Paul Hales

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Orange throttles 3G speeds

Caps at 384Kbps

ORANGE HAS admitted limiting Iphone 3G network speeds to a sluggish 384Kbps.

Furious customers have circulated a petition claiming the limitations are in direct violation of the Orange service agreement which stipulates HSDPA speeds up to 7.2Mbps.

Although the French wireless giant instituted the cap to preserve network stability, it has agreed to implement an adjusted download rate of 1Mbs by September 15.

In the interim, Orange technicians are voluntarily altering the APN (Access Point Name) and other technical parameters for irate customers. The creative, yet effective ad hoc fix has reportedly increased speeds up to 3Mbps. µ

Comments

What about 3?

I've been a 3 customer for about a year now, and the fastest transfer speeds I've ever seen on the network were around 125kbytes/s (1MBps), about once or twice during this whole subscription period. Usually it hovers around 50-60kbytes/s (400-500kbps).

I wouldn't be surprised if 3 is doing the same. Would be nice to get some proof so I can kick them in the arse.
posted by : Pete, 28 August 2008

3 throttle upstream for sure

3 throttle the upstream to 56kbps and then give you a load of guff about how that's all HSPDA can do. Funny that as upstream was 300kbps until mid-July when both the backhaul changed (now H3G instead of Level3) and the upstream changed.

Your 1Mbps limit is (probably) due to the modem appearing on a com port and having bluetooth so 920kbps is all you'll get. Deleting all the Bluetooth settings from my Lenovo lappie fixed that for me and I'm pretty sure that it was some Sony Ericsson s/w that screwed it up in the first place.

Of course there's no point in bothering with this "fix" as your chances of seeing anything over 500kbps in the Midlands is vanishingly small.
posted by : John, 28 August 2008

What about 3?

I am experiencing exactly the same thing with 3 as Pete.
posted by : John, 28 August 2008

3uk

If your using a nokia phone as a 3G modem you will be limited to 1Mbps as thats all the pc suite supports, nokia are intending to fix this at some point.
posted by : ashley, 28 August 2008

In a loong line

Same as, tho my phone is technically capped at 384kbs. however, the problem with these connections is not the speed it would appear but the carrier.
Currently on vodafone it takes 10 hops, before i hit the net, routing through whatever proxies and loggers, they want you to first. 10 HOPS. TEN.
my latency reduces by over 100ms from the first hop on their side, till i get out.
isn't there some kind of law we can use to get off this.
you just know they have there own APN for staff.
So please, report how many hops on 3 - till your out on the net, and tmobile and whoever else.

And to the INq. Can you do a little diggin, is it entirely up to vodafone to reduce these hops, and computers loggin and caching everything i do. is there no hope?
posted by : omg, 28 August 2008
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