LTE in the palm of your hands
With all these LTE networks mushrooming in Uganda today, i could not resist to take the chance to test some of these new so called 4G LTE devices and networks. FYI the LTE network i used to test this Huawei mobile router is still under test nevertheless the results as you will find are impressive.
The Hardware
This device is designed to last for sure and you can really tell with its heavy form factor . It is black in color and weighs about 150g with dimensions of 106.4mm×66mm×15.5mm. Just like most dongles and modems it has a micro sd card for expansion.
Network support
As we expected the wifi emitting device was able to support the following bands
2G: GSM/GPRS/EDGE
3G: DC-HSPA+/HSPA+/HSUPA/HSDPA/UMTS
4G: LTE Cat4 FDD/TDD
This means you can basically use this router in any place and in most legacy networks in the country.
Network
The speeds obtained via the 4G LTE service have been not so far short of the quoted speeds. According to the network whose speeds i was testing, their LTE can support up to 60Mbps since they are using 800MHz of FDD spectrum on a 10MHz bandwidth. During my initial Speetest runs I only managed to get a blazing 36Mbps download speed with several iterations as shown below. Am sure speeds will get better as testing is finalized. Also on a positive note, the upload speed has been a consistent above 10 Mbit/sec which is a lot faster than the upload speed on traditional 3G networks. If you’re uploading large files regularly and less concerned about your broadband bill, this may be a useful alternative if you can’t get anything better. See test results below.
