Hello folks,

I have a question about 3G broadband speeds, and whether speed actually matters if we always have the bottleneck of latency or ping. Let me explain:

In Finland, we have truly unlimited data plans,so the biggest difference between operators is the promised theoretical maximum speed that can be achieved in the network. Some promise 3Mbps, some up to 15Mbps.

My question is this: does the promised maximum speed of the 3G network really matter, as 3G broadband always suffers from relatively high latency (if compared to ADSL for example)? Can we ever truly enjoy the promised speed of the 3G network in browsing web pages, if we always have the initial latency to deal with before the page begins to load?

Here's my speedtest.net pic on my N900:

This was taken at a particularly congested time and spot in the network, as at best I can get up to 6Mbps speeds with a ping of around 150ms.

Here's my cable connection speestest.net pic:

It's a bit optimistic on the speed, I really only have a 40Mbps line.

Even if the speeds in these two pictures were reversed, would I really feel it on my phone if I still had to deal with that horrendous ping of 500ms?

BTW: I would also be interested if people from different countries would post their speedtest.net (or similar) results and state what is the speed promised by their internet provider!

I live in Finland too and have Saunalahti's 1Mb/s mobile broadband and I got a ping of about 100-80 ms, sometimes even less.

The first ping usually takes much longer.

I live in a mostly uncongested area, I get 10Mbit/s on 3g and 25kbyte/s on edge. I usually can't tell the difference if I'm surfing on edge or on 3g. The browser's built-in latency coupled with network latency masks whatever network speed is most of the time.

My DSL Line's throughput:


TalkTalk quote up to 24Mbps, my sync speed is around 21Mbps (after using hacked netgear router to reduce SNR target to 1db)

I'm lucky to hit 1Mbps (300ms) on my mobile at work with HSDPA, get around 250Kbps (500ms) on 3G at home.

I do notice a difference between 3G and edge when I'm browsing even with the high latencies.

Mobile speed test update:

Ping is not really that important unless you are a gamer or your hosting some server stuff where every millisecond is critical. Which means if your just browsing the net, downloading, streaming even if you got 1000ms ping it wouldn't really matter as the connection capacity is the big deal. But when it comes specially to games. Even with just 100ms > would give you big impact. Specially on PVP

Latency does matter, as most websites today consist of dozens of tiny files (.css, .js, and images), and establishing a new connection takes 3*ping, sending a request over established connection takes a minimum of 2*ping (assuming infinite bandwidth). . This quickly adds up to several seconds when ping starts getting over 1000.

You sure its not a name server taking to long to resolve sites? I always get the feeling my N900 is slow at starting page downloads then goes to full speed because of it.

I have 13Mb/sec max 3G unlimited dataplan from saunalahti in Finland. I got pretty satisfying result from speedtest with my N900.