• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

3G Tether = 256kbps

nickdalzell

nickdalzell

Extreme Android User
Is this normal for 3G? i have never tethered this phone before (using wifi tether for root users, no other app works probably because they don't use root priviledge) so i know i never hit any invisible cap, but my phone speeds while doing so according to speedtest.net and speakeasy's speed test site both report back a lousy .20-25mbps down and less than .10 up. this translates to 200-250kbps down and 100 or less kbps up. i thought 3G had the ability to go well upwards of 1mbps down at least? i have tried looking over every setting, changed the wifi channel, DNS, etc, and no improvement.

is this the app's way of masking the fact i'm tethering to fool the carrier? on another phone running Cyanogenmod it was worse, i barely got 10kbps down! currently i am perusing the idea of using a wireless cellular hotspot to replace my failing internet (the WISP i use has constant problems with disconnects in cold weather or random speed drops 6 months out of the year and i am sick of it, they refuse to fix the problem after numerous complaints) but if all i am going to get is a lousy 256bkps down i might as well go back to dial-up!
 
Well, what are your speed test results while not tethering?


3g can easily get up over 1mb per second. However, real life speeds may vary based on a huge number of factors.


What phone/carrier are you using so we can get this into the proper sub forum?
 
the sub-forum for my phone is pretty dead, but for all intensive purposes it's a Net10 ZTE Merit on their only available plan--the $50 unlimited monthly plan. it is rooted, uses Android 2.3.5, and using Wifi Tether for Root Users (the only working free tether app in the Play Store, and i don't want to pay for another like Foxfi or PDANet and risk the same result). when i am downloading apps on my phone, say a 11MB app, it is done in seconds to a minute at best. same file size on my laptop takes about 15 minutes, the download speed is 25Kbps, while phone's total tethered download rate is 256kbps. speedtest.net does not support Dolphin Browser so a proper speed test won't work from the phone itself (no Adobe Flash support)
 
I would suggest trying out the speed test app from the play store to let you know what your normal download and upload speeds are
 
as i hoped it would not be, it's the same on the phone itself. 235kbps down, 110 up. from what i read this is what the speeds should be if your data got capped, or if you're on EDGE. but i am on 3G, and it's been this way consistantly lately. does cold weather have the same impact on phone data speed as it seems to have on the WISP data speeds?
 
nickdalzell said:
as i hoped it would not be, it's the same on the phone itself. 235kbps down, 110 up. from what i read this is what the speeds should be if your data got capped, or if you're on EDGE. but i am on 3G, and it's been this way consistantly lately. does cold weather have the same impact on phone data speed as it seems to have on the WISP data speeds?
Click to expand...

Not that I'm aware of, its most likely tower congestion.

Im not familiar with most of the prepaid options. Was yours boost? Boost runs on sprint towers. If so, I'm not really surprised with your speeds. I'm hitting the same numbers here with sprint. They are completely redoing their network across the country and there's quite a bit of growing pains.
 
Net10 is apparently on AT&T on my phone, as that is what the Field Test tool tells me. current data network AT&T, current network type is HSPDA, signal is -91dBm asr 10

my old Cyanogenmod phone was a Virgin (Sprint) phone. its 3G was even worse, like using a 14.4 modem on AOL in today's age
 
With ATT I would think you should be getting speeds faster than that.

Do you know anyone in your area with ATT you could ask about data speeds? It could just be its not a good area for ATT.

If they run a speedtest on 3g and get similar speeds, its probably an over congested network.

If they get much higher speeds (on 3g), then you may be throttled.
 
i'll try again when i'm in town tomorrow. it may just be our tower. although i recall my iPhone 3GS on the same network being much faster as i used to use it as a computer.

if i am being throttled it is likely to have been that way out of box. i am highly doubting i have used up the AT&T standard 5GB yet. since i have never tethered before until tonight, and haven't gone over 200MB yet. normally i keep the phone in EDGE mode by forcing it (Via an app) to save battery
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom