3G speed of up to 21Mbps. Really?

BANGALORE, INDIA: Does the tagline, '3G speed of up to 21Mbps', sound familiar? This is what 3G service providers in India claim themselves to be capable of. Now, whether their claim is true or not is a different topic of discussion altogether, instead, let us find out how much do they provide in real terms.

Most of us today know that speed taken to download or upload a file on a 3G network is several times faster, as much as five-ten times, than that of 2G. Almost all of the service providers claim that they can provide speeds up to 21.1 Mbps on their 3G networks.

                                            Source: Reliance

Airtel, the largest telecom company in terms of subscriber base, plays it safe and says that HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) is a new generation communication protocol that allows data connections up to 21 Mbps and WCDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access) is a 3G technology version that allows data connections up to 384 Kbps, leaving it to users to decide how much they can get depending on the type of handsets.

On the other hand, Aircel, Vodafone,  Reliance and Tata DoCoMo straight away claim that their 3G network is capable of speeds up to 21.1 Mbps. Vodafone on its website says: "The 3G broadband network can deliver speeds above 6 Mbps (on an HSDPA 7.2, 14.4 or 21.2 network) and uplinks of 384 kbps (some networks have enhanced uplink features ofering 0.5 to 1.0 Mbps). The downlink speed for receiving data over the 3G network is typically 200-500 kilo bits per second (kbps) with an average of 384 kbps. The average uplink speed for sending data is 128 kbps. The speeds for EDGE services are comparable to 3G, while GPRS offers speeds in the 40-60 kbps range."

Reliance puts it as: "Reliance 3G network is 2x faster for downloads (7Mbps vs. 3.6 Mbps) and 5x faster for uploads (2Mbps vs. 0.4Mbps)."

However, the question is do these service providers deliver what they claim? We doubt, because if so the Web world would not have been full of consumer-made 'forums' where consumers, irrespective of their telecom service providers like Airtel, Aircel, Tata Docomo, Reliance or Vodafone subscribers, voice their ire against service providers for not meeting their promise.

Apart from queries of being overcharged or being charged for services which are not subscribed for, questions such as, 'Am I being given 2G speed for 3G price?', 'Is my service provider fooling me in the name of 3G?', 'Why is 3G so slow?' are very common questions on such forums.

However, we can't entirely blame the service providers. If they had a hidden agenda, they would not have taken the 'pain' to clarify on their FAQ pages that actual speeds may vary and will depend on factors such as area, distance to network antenna, type of handset, network traffic, number of people using the service at the same time etc.

In reality, we are nowhere close to 21 mbps, the attainable 3G speed in ideal scenario, and are staggering well behind it and here is how you can test 3G speeds on mobile handsets for yourself. iOS and Android users can log on to Speedtest.net and Windows users can download free apps, such as Quick Bandwidth Test, Speedtest etc, from Marketplace to check 3G speed. Do let us know what was the outcome.

In the next column we will analyse why service providers claim 21mbps and what are the factors affecting 3G network speed.