PTCL Evo EV-DO experiences slow-down, but performance still decent
PTCL needs to pay attention to the reduced QoS of its Evo service (Image credit: PTCL)
EV-DO has been a huge success in Pakistan. Since its debut in Pakistan early last year, multiple providers have entered the market and adoption has certainly gone through the roof. I first wrote about PTCL’s EV-DO services in Pakistan back in April 2009 and in the year that has gone by since then, the number of EV-DO users on PTCL’s service has exploded. Consequently, we’ve been receiving many blog comments complaining about poor performance, connection issues and other troubles. All this while, I’ve been using PTCL’s service and have experienced fairly decent service, albeit with some sporadic issues. I decided to revisit the PTCL EV-DO performance question and conduct a comparison with the data rates we were seeing back in April 2009. We can all sense there’s been a slow-down, but by how much exactly?
We used the trusty Speedtest.net tools, just as we had a year ago, to conduct our bandwidth and latency tests. Here is what our test looks for a Lahore-New York city connection:
PTCL EV-DO performance 3/26/2010. Lahore to New York.
To refresh your memory, we saw download speeds of 1.57Mbps and upload rates of .23 Mbps in April 2009. So in comparison, the most noticeable reduction has been in the download department. Upload is close enough, with a .01 Mbps difference, to be a wash. Downloads, however, are 14% slower. This is unfortunate, because it indicates that PTCL has not upgraded international bandwidth at the same rate it has grown users. Obviously, if there’s more demand for the international circuits there will be some degradation in performance.
To some extent, however, slowdowns are to be expected when user bases grow rapidly. So, putting things in context, my personal conclusion is that despite the 14-15% reduction in download speeds, PTCL’s EV-DO service continues to provide decent performance with good mobility. It’s still a good option for consumers that need mobile broadband. That said, I certainly hope PTCL will remedy the performance issues and restore download speeds to what they were at launch. But in the interim, I continue to be a relatively satisfied user. If things change, I will certainly let you know!
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