It is been a while since the annoucement of the SIMBA 2.5 Gbps broadband. The day has arrived and the technician came over to plug in the ONT to the the second fibre port.
The equipment used as a LINK-ALL brand ONT with a CAT 6a cable connected to their iPhone 15 Pro max with a D-Link ethernet to USB-C converter.
The CAT 6A cable was connected and it took less than 10 seconds to acquire an IP address. The speedtest was done using the speedtest.net app tested against the GSL Networks. The first test got a speed of 2.133 Gbps. In the second test, we ran it against a randomly selected server and got 1.5 Gbps. The third round we get 2.1 Gbps on GCL Networks again.
Everything was done within 15 minutes.
After the technican left, I plugged the ethernet cable direct to my PC which comes with a 2.5 GbE port. The speedtest shows a speed record of around 1.8 Gbps which is acceptable. When I test it with other networks, it seems that the test result is capped at 1 Gbps. I suppose, they only share the network for their own subscribers and not other telco users or their link is not a 10 Gbps link in the first place for public access. Perhaps they are trying to save bandwidth. No matter what, the ping time is around 1 to 2 ms.
It is also important to know the basics of speedtest in order to get more accurate results.
These are some of the better results :
Although the network runs on CGNAT which issues private IP sharing a public IP, so far everything works smoothly. In fact, after connecting to my old router, nothing has changed except I noticed faster loading of 4K videos on youtube (even on Youtube TV app).
Updated results 3 April 2024
Our latest speed tests using the Speedtest app against servers in Malaysia (specifically DIGI and U Mobile) showed improved results. This suggests that some local servers might be capped at speeds below 1 Gbps, with the exception of CTCSCI. Additionally, the CSL server is no longer available for selection.
Using the nperf app on our AMD system, we tested the wired speed through our TPlink wifi 6 router and we get 2.1 Gbps downlink and 1.08 Gbps uplink.
Something I do notice is that, the SIMBA fibre broadband don’t support VoWIFI. Previously, i can route force calls to go thru VoWIFI on M1. Even though the phone has VoWIFI enabled, calls made no longer show the VoWIFI logo.
My experience with the SIMBA Fibre Broadband is positive so far. All the existing devices work perfectly after acquiring the new internal IP address issued from the DHCP server.
If you are looking for better speedtest numbers over WiFi 6, you might have to do an overhaul including the network adaptors and routers to ensure it is capable of delivering beyond 1 Gbps over WiFi. If you are fine with the existing router that has a WAN port of 1 Gbps, I suggest you hang on and wait for prices of WIFI routers to drop before changing. In fact, even through wired + wireless devices all at home, it is not possible to saturate a 500 Mbps link, so the 2.5 Gbps is more than sufficient to cater for all home users.
If you are looking for some cheap routers that comes with a 2.5 Gbps WAN port, there are some available on Shopee.sg. I have provided the links below.
Xiaomi BE3600 S$82 Pricing Info
*Please check T&C on it’s respective shopee page.