Red vs Blue: GO!
Recently we were contacted by readers Ahmad and Grant Smith who have completed some pretty exhaustive speed tests in their home regions of Dunedin and Hamilton / Cambridge respectively. Hopes were high for Vodafone customers that the iPhone 4′s 900Mhz capability (the first iPhone to work with that frequency, providing nationwide 3G coverage on Big Red) would close the gap between the iPhone experience for XT customers and their own which had been somewhat of a gulf on the iPhone 3G and 3GS.
On their own blogs, Ahmad and Grant Smith have found that in the majority of places they carried out tests, XT still blazes ahead of Vodafone. On buttonmasher Ahmad reports that in his tests XT had “a distinct and significant speed advantage over Vodafone 3G” while Grant Smith found that XT out-performed Vodafone at ten of the fifteen locations tested and found that speeds in some locations “were twice as fast or more than the Vodafone NZ Network, at the time of testing.”
Big thanks to Ahmad and Grant for contacting us with these results and for allowing us to link to them. Clearly a lot of time was taken to compile these results and it shows the passion and dedication of New Zealand’s iPhone community once again.
Top work guys!
– ‘iPhone 4 Dunedin Speed Test XT vs. Vodafone’ at buttonmasher
– ’3G Data Speed Tests – Telecom XT on iPad vs Vodafone NZ on iPhone 4′ at Grantisnz’s Blog
What do you make of these tests? Have you tried using an iPhone 4 on both networks? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
The performance of Vodafone 3G on my iPhone 4 in Tauranga is just as crap as it was on my iPhone 3G & 3GS, there has been NO improvement at all.
6 times out of 10 when I try to use 3G data the phone go’s nowhere, after about 2-5 minutes it will give a timeout, sever not found error depending on what app I’m using, this is all despite the phone showing 4-5 bars of 3G and being in the exact same location where only 30 minutes before it worked fine. This behaviour has been consistant in Tauranga with 4 different iPhones and 3 different sim cards over the course of 2 years on VF.
I am fed up to say the least.
(jaytaylor has made 52 comments)
Actually, its is on now streaming radio and just cut out…….4 bars 3G????? no data either.
I keep having to toggle airport mode and restarting hoping for the 3G to work…..
I took my 3GS to UK and it performed like a speed demon and never failed to connect over 3G.
(jaytaylor has made 52 comments)
alebar14 wrote:
AUCKLAND TESTS
I’ve been testing XT v.s VF on a 3GS for the past week in preparation for up coming iPhone 4 purchases and most places I’ve tried it, the XT network is faster on the download.
XT most of the time is faster by around 1000 kbps on the download.
VF most of the time is faster by around 50kbps on the upload.
CALL DROPPING
XT – No dropped calls
VF – Drops x 3 each day
(motorwayne has made 11 comments)
Hi everyone and thanks to the iphonewzealand guys for hosting the results of my test here. Just wanted to mention that if you don’t want to be reading through pages of “results” (I understand that the detail is not of interest to all of you) I made a YouTube video summary of my results comparing iPhone 4 speeds on XT/VF which gives you a visual concept of the testing methodology too and pits the two networks side by side.
You can see the “TLDR;” YouTube Video here: http://bit.ly/ip4speedtest
(ahmad has made 101 comments)
@ ahmad:
I can attest that the video Ahmad has compiled is superb, it’s very well edited & very informative. Furthermore – due to Ahmad’s more extensive testing (in terms of analysing Network Speeds) you get to see some different aspects of 3G Data throughput, that far exceed my testing.
As I mentioned in my blog, it was not possible at the time, to do more comprehensive testing, & swap microSIM’s, as much as I would have liked to.
Good job Ahmad – next time I do some Speed Testing, I will model it on your methodology.
(Grant1010 has made 39 comments)
Hi JimmyJ, if you have the time in the future I would very much appreciate your thoughts on the testing rationale for the Dunedin test. It is quite heavy in terms of content though. The main tests involved comparing downloading of a 31.1Mb Akamai hosted file using a MacBook tethered to the iPhone 4. I was advised by Steve Biddle (world famous in New Zealand) that this would be a better indication of “speed” than using “Speedtest.net” which many have questioned the accuracy of.
For what it was worth, I added in the Speedtest.net testing for sake of comparison with the results of the download test (for interest and “accuracy comparison”). The other test involved pings to New Zealand website to compare (because the Speetest.net estimation of ping times has almost universally been panned as terribly inaccurate).
Any advice on how future tests could be improved would be greatly appreciated. The YouTube video is a quick 3 minute watch – and IMO worth it
– but the detailed blog post goes through the methodology. Cheers.
(ahmad has made 101 comments)
@ ahmad,
Thank you for the polite response.
As I mentioned, an iPad MIGHT load a page instrinsically faster than an iPhone 4. A fairer test would have been to use either two iPads or two iPhone 4 of identical spec and condition.
(JimmyJ has made 31 comments)
Paul wrote:
1MB/s or 1Mb/s? There’s quite a difference…
(Subject22 has made 10 comments)
Congratulations to the people who went out and performed these tests, they were volunteers, and we’ve paid them exactly how much to see their results?….riiight.
I can agree that there really could/would be fundamental differences between an iPad and an iPhone, just as how we will notice the differences between different Android handsets with the same OS and CPU, but cmon, this was a test performed by a volunteer with nothing to gain from sharing their results…
I would personally like to hear from EVERYONE here how their OWN TESTS have turned out. I’m still waiting to get a darn Vodafone micro sim to use on prepaid….sadly might have to switch to the dreaded Telecom…but Vodafone seem just as awful, and with slower speeds… I still cant believe the hassle with getting a micro sim from Voda… having to pay a dollar for a support call, being on prepaid, to get no answers or help, “your iPhone will arrive with a vodafone sim…” no, it wont…I’m buying from Apple…. The Vodafone twitter squad claim “more stock coming soon”, whatever that means…
So the official carrier cant get me a micro sim…but Telecom are, and today I walked to my local Dick Smith and picked up a 2 Degrees micro sim…its sitting on my knee RIGHT NOW…way to go Vodafail.
(jaywontdart has made 29 comments)
900MHz support from iPhone4 is only beneficial when Vodafone provide 3G extended broadband support in that area. In many areas of Christchurch metro suburbs it still drops back to 2G and GPRS. after experiencing this too often, a quick review if their coverage maps shows how patchy it all is.
(MattD has made 61 comments)
@ MattD:
Hi Matt – I can’t comment about iPhone 4 coverage in ChCh – but I’m curious to know – have you tried another device in the same areas & if so, what was the result?
(Grant1010 has made 39 comments)
What about in Auckland area ? I'm still thinking between Telecom XT and 2 Degrees.
(alebar14 has made 22 comments)
I just couldn't imagine getting 1+mb/s regularly on my VF powered 3GS. I don't think I've come anywhere near that.
As an aside, Grant's report states Telecom don't have a 2G network. Does this mean if I can't get a 3G signal on XT, I won't get data at all?
(JimmyC has made 54 comments)
Great post and nice work by the speed Testers.
@Alebar14
I can't speak for 2Degrees but XT in Auckland is faultless for me.
@JimmyC
Yes that is correct, no dropping down to 2G with Telecom when 3G is not available ……BUT … I have yet to experience this in Auckland. XT For me in Auckland is blazing all the time. I have some pre paid Voda DATA on my iPad which I can not wait to use or for it to expire as it has nothing on XT. XT is minimum 1MBPS faster than Voda at most times.
(Paul has made 323 comments)
Thanks Grant, I'm not an expert in this field so the methodology is based simply on what I was able to garnish from others far more knowledgeable than me. Any critique is gladly received as it would help to make future testing as accurate as possible given obvious cost constraints (I'm happy to donate my time but the cost of the data is more prohibitive).
(ahmad has made 101 comments)
@ ahmad:
Hi Ahmad – for anyone who has actually read both blogs, it's clearly evident that the methodology of the testing was completely different. For reasons, as explained, I could not do extensive throughput tests for my testing.
Now – with regards to the actual SpeedTest.Net accuracy – I strongly disagree & this has been backed up by the technical team of Enternet Online, who host the Tauranga website – you can read their reply, in the comments section of my blog. The Speedtest.Net website is used by ISP's for testing & diagnosis as well, which gives further evidence of it's accuracy & validity for testing basic (note the word "basic") Network Speed analysis.
I do agree, that the ping is inaccurate – which is why you used something similar to Command Prompt on your MAC. IIRC, I was one of the people who suggested that you use this for the ping testing, during a phone conversation, prior to your second round of testing, that you done in 2009.
Cheers
(Grant1010 has made 39 comments)
@ jaywontdart:
Thanks heaps for the support man, I agree with what you say 100%.
RE: microSIM issue – what part of the country do you live?
(Grant1010 has made 39 comments)
So do we at least agree that the XT network runs the iphone and the ipad very well in terms of good download speeds? And that being the case, it seems like a good idea to get on that network if you can, if you want those kinda results aye?
And the answer isn't "define good".
Moo
(motorwayne has made 11 comments)
@ motorwayne:
I can quite happily say that XT is fantastic with the iPad & Vodafone on the iPhone 4 is ordinary.
From Ahmad's testing – XT is the best on iPhone 4 & Vodafone is ordinary.
These results have occurred – XT is the best for both iPad & iPhone 4 in the areas that it was tested on.
Funny – the same results happen here with a Data Card:
http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=49&a…
Steve Biddle proves XT is better with his testing here:
http://www.geekzone.co.nz/content.asp?contentid=8…
(Grant1010 has made 39 comments)
The Topic reads: Speed tests show that XT still leaves Vodafone in the dust on the iPhone 4 despite 900Mhz capability.
TRUE. End of
(motorwayne has made 11 comments)