24 Hours with Telenor 3G

3G and 4G services have started to commercially roll out in Pakistan. This post is to share my experience with Telenor 3G on the very first day of commercial launch.

1st June, Telenor Pakistan announced commercial launch of 3G services, gives the tarrif out on the website and sends an SMS blast to all to sign up to a package, free trial is over. Pretty much excited, I was expecting speeds and reliability of the 3G connection to improve with the commercial launch, assuming the users will stop using the service the way they were during the free trial. So far, I’ve found myself to be wrong.

Here are the findings.

Speed

Telenor 3G speeds have been similar since the day they launched the trial services. The speed hardly ever goes beyond 1Mbps, hence download speeds of 100 kilobyte per second is the max you’ll attain. Usually the download speed is found to be 2.5 to 3 times higher than that of the upload speeds, so expect around 300kbps uploads when on 3G.

Maximum Download Speed:  1 Mbps (1000 kbps )
Maximum Upload Speed  0.4 Mbps ( 400 kbps )

While these speeds are pretty good as compared to the Edge or GPRS connections we were using earlier, the claims and hype of dozens of Mbps found across social media and forums boils down to this.

Price

Announced 3G packages by Telenor Pakistan are fairly cheaper than that of Ufone 3G , the only other packages announced so far for 3G tarrif. Whether you go with the bundle offers or you let the standard rates charge, Telenor is cheaper for sure.

Coverage

We can’t talk much about the coverage yet as it’s just the beginnging. All networks claiming to be going to a number of cities of Pakistan, tough, when you are in those cities, it’s usually a disappointment to find no 3G signals in most of the cities. You can find Telenor coverage map here for Lahore, Karachi and Rawalpindn/Islamabad here.

Battery Life

My experience has been different with Telenor 3G and Mobilink 3G. Mobilink takes way more battery on 3G as compared to Telenor. Is that because Telenor 3G runs on 5Mhz and Mobilink on 10Mhz? Can someone share there experience?

Please note that these tests were conducted on an iPhone 5 on a pre-paid Telenor sim in Rawalpindi and Islamabad. Tried traveling across the city to find locations where the speeds were better and then posted the best scores.

Please share your experience if that is different from mine.