Location: Montagu, Western Cape
Date & Time of Issue: Every day during the day and early evenings (+/- 8H00 to 22H00)
Device Manufacturer & Model: Huawei E3131, Samsung S5, Samsung S3, iPhone, Galaxy Tab
Contract Type: PRE-PAID 200G
RAT (2G/3G/HSPA+): ALL
www.speedtest.net results: See screenshots at the end of this post
Cell ID (if possible): AD83 (44419)
RSSI: Mostly -75 to -80
CellC’s broadband must surely be the absolute worst of the worst on the whole planet. It sucks so bad it probably has no teeth left. Their broadband service in my town must be their single worst failure ever!
In Montagu, where I live (the town in the Western Cape) the mobile broadband speeds reach an average of 15KB/s for hours at a time – yes you read that right!
This is for most part of everyday and the early evenings. It only becomes relatively useful at around 22H00 in the evening. This is every single day and has been going on like this for months already!
When I literally disconnect and reconnect to the network by completely power cycling the devices, I have normal connection speeds of around 5-8 Mbps for about 60 seconds after which it plummets to levels well below 30KB/s indicating that the connection is fine and quite capable of working at fast speeds, but the tower decides it’s not going to let me have it.
In the late evenings and very early morning I easily get speeds averaging 9.8Mbps without any effort, once again indicating that there is no fault with my equipment or location in relation to the tower. I also keep a close eye on the RSSI and it fluctuates between -75 and -80 at any given time indicating that “cell breathing” is not the problem either. If however, by some miracle, it does prove to be the issue, then it honestly just highlights CellC’s passion to provide our very small town (only about 2000m at its widest) and with arguably not many CellC subscribers, with rubbish equipment/service incapable of covering a basic small area of approximately 4 square kilometers.
I’ve been in the IT industry for well over 25 years and have tested with different modems, different laptops, cell phones and tablets and know for a fact this problem is NOT related to my equipment. It is also NOT related to my physical address in town because I conducted tests from different areas in town, one of which I came as close as 400m from the tower with crystal clear line of sight and have full signal with almost no signal to noise readings yet almost no throughput!
I can however tell you that the small hill where all the towers are located at, is littered with privately owned WISP antennas which might be worth investing in terms of possible interference etc…I would not know, just mentioning it because I feel like wasting some more pixels.
ALL other mobile service provider’s broadband works flawlessly during these restricted periods including the Vodacom service from which CellC is probably piggybacking off of.
CellC knows exactly why this sort of throttling is implemented every single day at exactly the same time.
I got sucked into purchasing the 200Gb (annual) prepaid data bundle and can honestly say that I have never EVER felt so scammed out of my money and honestly do not appreciate this 3rd world service.
I, as others here have, also suspect that CellC might be targeting 100Gb and 200Gb prepaid customers and I am now in the process to test this theory by quite simply purchasing and installing a different CellC sim card and you better pray to whatever god you believe in that my findings prove my suspicions wrong!
A few people from our town have reported this problem many times and no one takes it seriously. I do not want to be contacted, emailed, sms’ed or otherwise contacted in private. I’m not interested in your canned responses. I’m interested in you fixing your rubbish broadband service in my town. CellC, knows exactly what they're up to.
If you need more information or need to relay messages to me, I will only accept communication right here, in public, on MyBroadband.
I also have evidence that CellC governs speed when I am using YouTube – I can easily prove this because when I view YouTube via my VPN, I have no problems! What’s that about?
If your equipment/service can’t handle video streaming, upgrade your crap!
I feel that I am receiving a defective product and was misled by all of CellC’s marketing and self-praise and was not made aware of CellC’s dubious tactics beforehand and I urge CellC to regard this as my final attempt to get them to attend to this matter before pursuing avenues to recover compensation for damages.
Trust me, I know all about tiny insignificant people hiding behind corporate shields feeling safe and protected and disconnected from the reality they create for their suffering customers. I can assure you, I can and will reach out and will find real people at CellC and will hold them accountable. Go ahead, test me!
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Date & Time of Issue: Every day during the day and early evenings (+/- 8H00 to 22H00)
Device Manufacturer & Model: Huawei E3131, Samsung S5, Samsung S3, iPhone, Galaxy Tab
Contract Type: PRE-PAID 200G
RAT (2G/3G/HSPA+): ALL
www.speedtest.net results: See screenshots at the end of this post
Cell ID (if possible): AD83 (44419)
RSSI: Mostly -75 to -80
CellC’s broadband must surely be the absolute worst of the worst on the whole planet. It sucks so bad it probably has no teeth left. Their broadband service in my town must be their single worst failure ever!
In Montagu, where I live (the town in the Western Cape) the mobile broadband speeds reach an average of 15KB/s for hours at a time – yes you read that right!
This is for most part of everyday and the early evenings. It only becomes relatively useful at around 22H00 in the evening. This is every single day and has been going on like this for months already!
When I literally disconnect and reconnect to the network by completely power cycling the devices, I have normal connection speeds of around 5-8 Mbps for about 60 seconds after which it plummets to levels well below 30KB/s indicating that the connection is fine and quite capable of working at fast speeds, but the tower decides it’s not going to let me have it.
In the late evenings and very early morning I easily get speeds averaging 9.8Mbps without any effort, once again indicating that there is no fault with my equipment or location in relation to the tower. I also keep a close eye on the RSSI and it fluctuates between -75 and -80 at any given time indicating that “cell breathing” is not the problem either. If however, by some miracle, it does prove to be the issue, then it honestly just highlights CellC’s passion to provide our very small town (only about 2000m at its widest) and with arguably not many CellC subscribers, with rubbish equipment/service incapable of covering a basic small area of approximately 4 square kilometers.
I’ve been in the IT industry for well over 25 years and have tested with different modems, different laptops, cell phones and tablets and know for a fact this problem is NOT related to my equipment. It is also NOT related to my physical address in town because I conducted tests from different areas in town, one of which I came as close as 400m from the tower with crystal clear line of sight and have full signal with almost no signal to noise readings yet almost no throughput!
I can however tell you that the small hill where all the towers are located at, is littered with privately owned WISP antennas which might be worth investing in terms of possible interference etc…I would not know, just mentioning it because I feel like wasting some more pixels.
ALL other mobile service provider’s broadband works flawlessly during these restricted periods including the Vodacom service from which CellC is probably piggybacking off of.
CellC knows exactly why this sort of throttling is implemented every single day at exactly the same time.
I got sucked into purchasing the 200Gb (annual) prepaid data bundle and can honestly say that I have never EVER felt so scammed out of my money and honestly do not appreciate this 3rd world service.
I, as others here have, also suspect that CellC might be targeting 100Gb and 200Gb prepaid customers and I am now in the process to test this theory by quite simply purchasing and installing a different CellC sim card and you better pray to whatever god you believe in that my findings prove my suspicions wrong!
A few people from our town have reported this problem many times and no one takes it seriously. I do not want to be contacted, emailed, sms’ed or otherwise contacted in private. I’m not interested in your canned responses. I’m interested in you fixing your rubbish broadband service in my town. CellC, knows exactly what they're up to.
If you need more information or need to relay messages to me, I will only accept communication right here, in public, on MyBroadband.
I also have evidence that CellC governs speed when I am using YouTube – I can easily prove this because when I view YouTube via my VPN, I have no problems! What’s that about?
If your equipment/service can’t handle video streaming, upgrade your crap!
I feel that I am receiving a defective product and was misled by all of CellC’s marketing and self-praise and was not made aware of CellC’s dubious tactics beforehand and I urge CellC to regard this as my final attempt to get them to attend to this matter before pursuing avenues to recover compensation for damages.
Trust me, I know all about tiny insignificant people hiding behind corporate shields feeling safe and protected and disconnected from the reality they create for their suffering customers. I can assure you, I can and will reach out and will find real people at CellC and will hold them accountable. Go ahead, test me!