Fido LTE vs Rogers LTE

[raynoldt]

Can anyone tell me why Fido LTE speed is always slower than Rogers'?

I have a friend who is using Rogers for years. Fido LTE speed is always slower than Rogers'. 

I paid what he paid, but I really don't know why my LTE gets slower than his?  

Is there a priority list? Users with Rogers would get faster / better LTE service than users with Fido?

[SunnyGhat]

Although Fido is owned by Rogers, its is a seperate entity of the business.

For Rogers to keep its claim as having the fastest LTE speed, it has to keep Fido's at a lower speed than its own.

[raynoldt]

I don't care who owns who anyways. As a customer, I only care what I get from the price I pay for it.

If Rogers claims it has a fastest LTE and their customers paid more than I do, then I don't mind.

But the situation I brought out is both my friend and I paid the same amount of $ for LTE, and he got almost 2x faster than my Fido LTE, which I think it is nonsense.

But talking about who owns who.

If Rogers claims to have the fastest LTE network, does that mean all Fido customers who paid for their data plans would only get a "limited" and "squeezed" LTE network coz his big bro, Rogers, got a priority to access LTE bandwidth. 

[Cawtau]

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@raynoldt wrote:

I don't care who owns who anyways. As a customer, I only care what I get from the price I pay for it.

If Rogers claims it has a fastest LTE and their customers paid more than I do, then I don't mind.

But the situation I brought out is both my friend and I paid the same amount of $ for LTE, and he got almost 2x faster than my Fido LTE, which I think it is nonsense.

But talking about who owns who.

If Rogers claims to have the fastest LTE network, does that mean all Fido customers who paid for their data plans would only get a "limited" and "squeezed" LTE network coz his big bro, Rogers, got a priority to access LTE bandwidth. 

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Hello Raynoldt,

  I've been trying to sort out the whole Fido LTE frequency thing myself, to ensure my next unlocked phone will work on the network.

The only things I can come up with for your situation are:

1. Can your phone access the 2600 frequencies? From what I've learnt, that's the additional bandwidth frequency. It could be that your buddy can access these additional bands while you cannot, or maybe you need to configure your phone to use 2600 as well as AWS.

2. Antennae reception for different phones varies quite a lot for the different models of phones. Even the same models from different countries can vary significantly. I'm not talking about differing frequencies. Same model of phone, same (similar) frequencies, different hardware for different markets.

That's why I'm trying to do as much research about my next phone as I can before I make the purchase.

Hope that helps

[Wufai · Accepted solution]

Throwing a bit more infomation for those interested.

The 2 things required a fast LTE connection, frequency supported by your phone and physical location in relation to the cell towers.

Fido uses the following LTE frequency 700/2100/2600. Find a phone that supports all three frequencies will give you the fastest speeds, if your phone only supports 1 or 2 of these frequencies you will never get the fastest speeds. (the Samsung S5 from Fido supports these 3 frequencies)

Your location, preferiably overlapping a few cell towers that is configured to support these 3 frequencies. I only know Rogers recently set up a few location in downtown toronto to support the new 700Mhz frequency. If you live in Thunder Bay don't expect to get the fastest LTE speeds.

In conclusion we all pay the same price for LTE, but speeds will be dependent on your phone model and location.

[TwitchyPuppy]

I know it’s an old topic but I noticed that, where I live, I’m connected to Rogers’ (MNC: 720) band 4 AWS, which gives me their LTE-Advanced speeds. So I guess I’m getting my money’s worth, especially considering the fact Fido is less expensive than Rogers

[Cawtau]

Hello TwitchyPuppy,

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@TwitchyPuppy wrote:

I know it’s an old topic but I noticed that, where I live, I’m connected to Rogers’ (MNC: 720) band 4 AWS, which gives me their LTE-Advanced speeds...

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  I don't think merely connecting to Rogers' band 4 is responsible for your phone achieving LTE-A speeds. Fido uses the exact same cellular towers with the same bands/frequencies. I have a suspicion that your phone is actually aggregating bands (LTE-A or LTE+) even though it's not indicated on your phone's status icon (see here).

Hope this helps

Cheers

[SunnyGhat]

No, this does not mean that Fido customers only get a limited and squeezed LTE network.
Cell Towers are dumb units that are programmed to accepted signals that carry a set of ID's (network id), this is what allows the towers to reject none authorized sim cards from joining the tower, i,e a Telus sim cannot join a Rogers/Fido tower or Wind tower, unless they have an agreement with those networks.

All this means is that Rogers can control how much bandwidth as a whole Fideo have available

[afterthefact]

SunnyGhat, I don't know where you are getting the information to make these claims, but they are absolutely and totally false. There is absolutely no priority or preference given on the network between Fido and/or Rogers devices. To my knowledge the only network prioritization allowed by law is for 9-1-1 calls and/or law enforcement reasons (meaning those calls will get through on the network even if the tower is at full capacity). So please stop speading malicious misinformation.

[credmau5]

This is tinfoil hat stuff though. My Fido LTE consistently gets the exact same speeds (and a few times faster) than my gf's Rogers line.

Speeds can vary for so many reasons, even making a connection seconds apart from each other can be different. Different models of phones have huge differences too, both in signal strengths and in LTE max capabilities.

This reminds me of the reception arguments a long time ago on a different forum where someone claimed one brand had better signal than the other when sitting on the same couch in the same room, when in fact it was just that one person had an iPhone4 (horrible reception) and the other was using a Motorola (far better signal).

I seriously do not believe for one second that there is any backend throttling of any brand over the other brands.