Speedtest results from my upgrade to Telkom LTE-A running at 37 Mbps download speed
Only a few months back I checked and I was still just outside the green zone for the closest Telkom LTE tower. I used to get 4/5 bars signal strength using an external LTE antenna. Recently I noticed the signal has been showing 5/5 bars.
So when I got the "do you want to renew" call from Sell Direct Marketing (yes a 3rd party renewal company that does again get their technical info wrong but that is a whole nother story) I was intrigued to hear them say that I was now in fact covered by LTE-A. I checked and yes gone was the small green circle. So I took the chance to renew.
With uncapped the speed is just slower than with capped so I was getting between 5 to 25 Mbps and normally around 15 Mbps (capped used to show about 40 Mbps). So when I opened the new modem box (a Huawei B618) I was rather disappointed to see the external antennae plugs are the miniature ones which won't connect to my new modem. So I connected it and was surprised to see a speeedtest showing 37 Mbps without the external antennae. Signal bars are showing 5/5 too. Upload speeds had dramatically improved too from 3-4 Mbps up to 14 Mbps.
So the lesson here is to recheck every now and again to see if your LTE is now an LTE-A covered area. If so, all you need to do is otherwise buy an LTE-A modem and you should see the speed improvements. I'm just hoping it is not due to less congestion on the tower and over time it also drops down. LTE-A though is supposed to be faster so I'm hoping it at least stays above 20 Mbps.
This modem does also have an optional 7-day auto-reboot that you can set too which is a nice touch, and updates can be set to happen for idle time between 3am to 5am. An analogue phone can also be plugged in and configured to work with a SIP service. The Wifi has dual 2.4 and 5 GHz. The DDNS service now also includes No-IP.
