MWEB’s 1Gbps FTTH connection tested

MWEB is showing off the benefits of fibre broadband, following the announcement that it is focusing its resources on home fibre services.

It has rented a house in Greenside, Johannesburg that is served by Vumatel’s fibre network, and kitted it out with Wi-Fi and an Internet-connected TV.

According to Vumatel’s website, MWEB is currently the only Internet service provider that offers a 1Gbps account on its network.

For R2,499 per month you will get 1Gbps download and 100Mbps upload speeds, and 500GB of data.

MWEB does not have a machine hooked up to the fibre via Gigabit Ethernet, though – opting to let visitors connect over Wi-Fi for a sense of “real world” performance.

Multiple devices are able to connect and use the network to the capacity their Wi-Fi radios will allow, without impacting significantly on the performance of other devices on the network.

MWEB-Vumatel-1Gbps-FTTH-Johannesburg-speed-test

MWEB Vumatel 1Gbps FTTH speed test to Johannesburg server.

MWEB-Vumatel-1Gbps-FTTH-Cape-Town-speed-test

MWEB Vumatel 1Gbps FTTH speed test to Cape Town server.

Using our 802.11ac-capable device, we conducted some speed and download tests – and found throughput to vary between 50Mbps and 100Mbps.

To test how well the connection handled high-quality video content, we streamed 60 frames per second, UHD video from YouTube to a UHD TV. The TV was connected using Wi-Fi.

No buffering was evident on any of the 60fps 4K videos we tested, and the downloaded stream remained ahead of playback in all our tests.

MWEB Vumatel 60fps 4K video streaming test.

The super car of Internet accounts

Getting to play around on a Gigabit Internet connection was amazing.

As one of our readers who got to test a similar FTTH service from Vox Telecom said, having access to such an absurd amount of bandwidth is a life-changing experience.

At R2,499 per month, one can’t really expect anything less.

However, these tests have emphasised what we found before: unless there is enough demand on your home network, most of the speed at your disposal will be wasted.

When you have multiple users, each with a phone, tablet, PC, and game console, along with multiple smart TVs connected via Gigabit Ethernet or Wi-Fi, even then 1Gbps might be overkill. For now.

That said, it’s awesome that we’re starting to see these services in the hands of home users.