Here's why you are getting buffered, slow internet speeds with "4G LTE Unlimited" data

From the old players like Airtel to the new ones like Smile and Spectranet, there has been rollouts of 4G Unlimited data plans which customers have taken as literally meaning 'Unlimited'.

Some customers have already begun to feel the shakiness in the services subscribed.

When it gets close to the exhaustion period of these plans, the internet speeds begin to buffer, slowing down user experience with streaming and downloading.

According to stakeholders that spoke to Nigeria Communications Week, “narro band delivered to subscribers in the pretense of broadband fall short of what broadband internet should be, this is because, some of them are not using the required spectrum for 4G LTE service but rather using what they have to deliver the service. More so, they are not investing in the network to be able to deliver 4G LTE service because they don’t see the prospect of return on their investment with the prevailing economic situation in the country”.

Engr. Sam Adeleke, chief executive officer, Steineng Ltd, said that 4G LTE should give subscribers faster speed and bigger bandwidth without limit to what the subscriber can do with it, ‘but what we see in the market place today is the claim of unlimited service while pegging the subscriber on 60GB, what happens is that at the beginning the service will be fast by the time you are exhausting the 60gigabyte you were pegged at, the service will no longer be fast and you find it difficult to download some files.”

“This is not broadband. If we have broadband it means unlimited capacity and volume which is provided today in the country by very few operators. LTE broadband does not limit you. What we see in the industry is operators using existing technology to offer new service.”

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He attributed the situation to lack of investment in the network to be able to deliver the required service and therefore urged Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to educate stakeholders on the required standard for broadband service.

Agreeing with Adeleke, David Venn, chief executive officer, Spectranet, said that some operators were in a hurry to launch 4G LTE since they can’t get dollar to buy equipment and cannot get foreign or local funding to invest in the new network, they decided to use existing technology to offer new service that does not deliver required broadband service.

“Optimizing a network for 4G LTE service is complex which requires five different bands, and the handset must work on the five different bands to be able to deliver effective service. What we see in the market is 4G in few bands not on the whole bands, that is why the service delivered is not broadband. Remember, those operators have not done it before, they will get it better as time goes by,” he said.

Airtel’s Unlimited Data Plans for example is divided into Airtel Unlimited 10, Airtel Unlimited 15 and Airtel Unlimited 20 which are offered at N10,000, N15,000 and N20,000 respectively and valid for 30 days.

Chief Commercial Officer, Airtel Nigeria, Mr. Ahmad Mohkles, however admitted during the launch of the ‘broadband’ plans in Lagos that the different plans are suited to match the lifestyle of consumers in Lagos, delivering fast speeds with a data cap up to 100GB with fair usage policy applying.

According to this policy, the threshold for Unlimited 10 is 40GB, Unlimited 15 is 65GB while Unlimited 20 is 100GB, after which the speeds come to 256 kbps.