Mobile Internet pre-5G: tested for yourself
Mobile Internet pre-5G: tested for yourself
As it was before?
I remember well the times when you had to use a dial-up modem to connect to the Internet from home. What a joy it was to hear a squeak mixed with hissing, which meant that the connection was hurray! — installed. And you can begin the long and persistent downloading of the new film.
If at that moment someone had said that in a few years my phone would be more powerful than my then computer, and the Internet would become truly mobile and very fast, I would have just laughed. But today you can watch movies on your smartphone even without any downloading – through streaming services, in real time. Both the power and speed of modern gadgets are enough for this. But sometimes you want it even faster.
What is pre -5 G ?
MegaFon coincided with the next update of its tariff line by launching a new pre-5G option, which promises to increase mobile Internet speeds by up to 30%. This increase was made possible due to a combination of several factors, where the main role is played by updating the traffic management service model – using system-based situational network load management and several modern technologies.
It so happened historically that I have been a MegaFon subscriber for more than twenty years – since the times when the company was called North-West GSM. I have never had any complaints about the mobile Internet of this operator. And not only me: for 5 years now, MegaFon’s mobile Internet has been recognized as the fastest in Russia. But since I got the pre-5G option along with the tariff, I decided to test its capabilities in practice. There is never too much Internet speed, just like the engine power of a car!
How the experiment went
To test pre-5G, I used two smartphones: the already middle-aged iPhone 8 Plus and the slightly more recent iPhone XS. It was interesting how fast the Internet would be both when watching streaming videos (that’s where I started) and when downloading content. For instrumental speed measurement on both gadgets, I installed the popular Speedtest application from the Ookla developer.
Observations were made on Sunday evening. With the G8, everything turned out to be not so obvious: the Internet accelerated, but the result varied from measurement to measurement, and the maximum download speed was 56.7 megabits per second. However, with MegaFon’s SIM card, but without pre-5G, the maximum was 45.7 Mbit/s. The difference is 24%.
But the “ten” accelerated more seriously: here the download speed increased from 58.6 to 78.9. Almost 35%!
There is a feeling that in a busy network, a more modern smartphone is able to work more efficiently with the new technology, maintaining a higher connection speed. And although MegaFon declares pre-5G to work on any devices with LTE, it’s easy to guess that customers focused on “fast” tariffs most likely have fairly recent smartphone models.
Closer to the night, when the load on the network became less, Speedtest recorded the most significant increase in speed – in one of the measurements I saw a result of 131 Mbit/s on the screen. In practical terms, this means streaming video will fly!
I decided to organize another “smartphone race” in the morning by downloading a three-hour video. And I discovered that the connection speed was significantly higher than the night before, although it was naturally inferior to the night one. And of my two smartphones (regardless of the model and year of manufacture), at any given time the one with the SIM card with pre-5G works faster.
Who else will need p re-5G and when?
Let’s say I don’t watch movies on my smartphone very often, except perhaps on business trips and during flights. But I actively use streaming services – for example, I turn on YouTube content in the background to listen on the road: I often have to drive from Moscow to St. Petersburg and back. High speed will definitely be useful here. It will be useful for esports players, for example, designers, and anyone who constantly downloads heavy content for work.
How to connect pre -5 G ?
This option is included by default in the “package” of three MegaFon tariffs – “Maximum”, VIP and “Premium”. For other subscribers it is available as a plug-in option: the issue price is 399 rubles per month .
You can connect separately, but in my opinion, if high-speed Internet, stable broadcasts are important to you, or if, for example, you regularly make video calls, it is much more profitable to immediately choose one of the tariff plans where pre-5G is already included in the list of services. After all, as a rule, such a tariff also implies a larger reserve for monthly traffic (which is quite logical).
What’s the result?
There really are practical benefits from the new technology. Jewelry redistribution of traffic in a busy network will allow owners of smartphones with a connected pre-5G option to fully appreciate the benefits that fast communication provides.
MegaFon, in fact, became the first Russian operator whose tariff plans differ not only in content, that is, in the volume of minutes, SMS and gigabytes included in them, but also in mobile Internet speed. At the same time, the new option will allow subscribers to approach spending more wisely: customers with any consumption will be able to use it if they need higher speed.
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