Root [ALL] FIX your 3G Speed NOW! [PLEASE READ]

Seeing as how I'm the guy who started all this

First, thanks to g60 for even listening and looking into it, is is VERY awesome to have a responsive dev. On behalf of all triumph users everywhere, a heartfelt thank you.

As for the speed issue, I think it is a VM network thing. I've been getting 1-2 bars and pitiful dl speeds for a few weeks ago. I used to get 5 bars and screaming speeds from my house using TG's ROM.

I downloaded an app to check which tower I was connecting to, and it's the same tower I always have been, so a PRL swap wouldn't accomplish anything. I then saw this thread, picked up my phone, and saw I have 4 bars right now (without doing anything)! I ran a speed test and was getting much faster (although still not as fast as it used to be) speeds.

So I honestly think it's something on the network side and has nothing to do with our phones. I'm in the north east and we've been having a pretty bad heat wave and some sever storms coming though this part of the country lately, wreaking havoc on power lines and other utilities, so who knows what effect that could have on a cell network if a bunch of towers got taken down. The less towers you have means the slower everyone's traffic gets until they fix it.

namartlu said:

Could you please share the new PRL? thanks!

Click to expand...

PRL 60685

Apparently 60685 isn't the latest (March 2012) but it ain't far from the latest (PRL 60686). A lot newer than the stock 61007 PRL.

SyberTiger said:

PRL 60685

Apparently 60685 isn't the latest (March 2012) but it ain't far from the latest (PRL 60686). A lot newer than the stock 61007 PRL.

Click to expand...

Thanks, I got 60687, I assume that's even newer? Not showing any improvement at my current location, but I am gonna try it for a couple days at different locations...

Just wanted to share nice just refreshed my plan I am in the kck area

SyberTiger said:

I put my stock ROM back on so I could update the PRL. Just as a point of reference I'm posting my before and after 3G speeds with the stock ROM before and after the PRL update. I'll be trying out the OP's 3G fix soon on a custom ROM to see how the 3G speeds change.

I ran the SpeedTest 6 times before and after the PRL change then averaged. I really did not expect there would be a difference here at the house (Metro Orlando). As you can see my download speed near tripled. I have no explanation for this but the results are the results.

PRL = 61007 (old stock PRL)

Down = 540kbps Up = 495kbps Ping = 344ms TIme of Day: 11AM

PRL = 60685 (a more up-to-date PRL)

Down = 1537kbps Up = 666kbps Ping = 349ms Time of Day: 2PM

* NOTE: After the PRL update I turned the phone off and pulled the battery. Then waited 10 minutes before rebooting and running SpeedTest.

Click to expand...

I ran 60685 on my phone for a while. Since VM doesn't roam I decided to revert back to the stock PRL. I'm located fairly close to Disney and in fact work on Disney property. Disney is a very heavy Sprint user. All of their Blackberry's and iPhones are Sprint. You would think 3G speeds on Disney property would be awesome, but from my experience I get better throughput at home, no matter what PRL I have on the phone. PRL 60685 produced about the same result over time that the stock PRL produced. One caveat was that text messages (SMS) took quite a bit longer to send on 60685 than on the stock PRL. In another life I worked for Nextel as a Sr. Manager over a group that was responsible for cell site monitoring and planning. At the time, Nextel did not have a pay as you go service like VM, but I know for a fact cell carriers can and do prioritize certain types of accounts. In Nextel's case there was a difference between business users and consumers. Consumers were throttled where business users received priority on the towers. I believe the same concept applies here. The PRL's are lists of towers that, in our case Sprint has and includes Verizon towers that Sprint users can roam with. Obviously, if our phones can not roam the Verizon towers are useless to us. It would be interesting to compare the towers in the stock PRL to other PRL's being used (like 60685, 6 and 7) to see if additional Sprint towers are listed. If that is the case, the PRL swap increasing throughput could make sense. What might even be a better option is to create a hybrid PRL that only includes towers our phones can actually use. I've seen a few PRL's listed as hybrids but was afraid to load them. Any thoughts or suggestions??

PRL (Preferred Roaming List) doesn't list towers.
It lists roaming partners that have made agreements with sprint in a specific geographical location.

I tried these build.prop edits and my results were the same speeds as always.

Speeds vary wildly, between about 200 kbps to slightly over 600 kbps both before and after edits and reboot... same as I have always gotten on stock and every ROM since.

Tests were done within a 10 minute period.

Thanks for all of your work G60. I have not tested the fix yet but am about to. These are screenshots of the the results at my house where 3G sucks, without the fix. 11 tests all done within a half hour. I think it is just the network, but I'll post results if there is a difference, or edit this post if there is not.

EDIT: Had to make room for some attachments

Down was between 13 kbps and 263 kbps
Up was between 210 kbps and 411 kbps

Which PRL should I use and where should I download it?

namartlu said:

Thanks, I got 60687, I assume that's even newer? Not showing any improvement at my current location, but I am gonna try it for a couple days at different locations...

Click to expand...

Be careful changing to these Sprint PRL's.

If there's an open femtocell (Sprint Airave) nearby, your Virgin Mobile phone will try to route the call through it. Since it's not a sprint call, the Airave will not send the call through... however, it'll still connect with it. It sucks.

Can someone supply me with the chmod command for changing build.prop to rw
something like: chmod 0755 /system/build.prop ??

I'm getting "read-only" file system when I issue this command...

Ignore, I used ROM TOOLBOX to change the file permission successfully.

just out of curiosity i checked my build prop, and these settings were already there. Am I missing something? I haven't flashed a new ROM in quite while

FWIW don't see either of those lines in the build.prop for the U9000 ROM, so maybe not applicable to Froyo?

makosinski said:

Something to think about. Virgin Mobile's network is Sprint's network throttled so that Sprint users get priority on the towers. I've noticed in my area (Orlando) that when there are more people here (potentially more Sprint users) my throughput goes into the bucket. During periods when there are less people here my throughput increases. I believe that no matter what you do the network itself is going to control what you get. It would be interesting to note the time of day people are getting higher throughput. During low demand hours I would venture a guess that throughput would be higher, during high demand periods lower. I don't think there is anything that could be done legally to circumvent the carrier throttling...

Click to expand...

I've noticed that too. Every time I'm going to seaworld I have poor data service. Now that I have all of the new GPS fixes I hope that part will unload the antenna so I can get a better stream from pandora

g60madman said:

Right now it looks to only work on CM7 builds as these setting where pulled in with IssacJ's code.

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Makes sense. The Froyo ROMs I've tried seem to have good 3G speeds anyway....

g60madman said:

Which ROM are you running?

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your's, the one that was posted before you added these 3G fixes

For people on the Sharp Froyo rom, where exactly do you add the line?

I tried a couple times, but got an error while saving. Using ES file explorer...

Can someone enlighten me please?

whohasaquestio said:

For people on the Sharp Froyo rom, where exactly do you add the line?

I tried a couple times, but got an error while saving. Using ES file explorer...

Can someone enlighten me please?

Click to expand...

See g60 madman's response below- I don't think the fix is usable (or really needed) for Froyo ROMs.

g60madman said:

Right now it looks to only work on CM7 builds as these setting where pulled in with IssacJ's code.

Click to expand...

Well, a couple people on the Sharp Rom have reported better than before 3g speed. Just wondering where they added those lines.

THE FIX
You simply need to open up your build.prop and edit the following lines. This fix may apply to more ROM's than I know so take please take a look at it.


Code:
# ro.telephony.call_ring.multiple=false
# ro.telephony.ril.v3=icccardstatus,skipbrokendatacall,datacall,signalstrength,facilitylock

Also I edited this line from 1 to 0 in CM7 g60 style. I am not sure this will apply to other ROM's but I wanted make sure.

Code:
persist.sys.use_dithering=0

ok, so I found the above mentioned lines in the build.prop file which you said to edit, but reading and re-reading this post, I could not find how the edited lines should read. I am certainly a novice, but this seems to be missing some information? I'm sure this must be how I am looking at this, but a little assistance would be great.