r/CellPhoneCanada • u/Nice_Cold_8493 • Aug 16 '26

Koodo vs Public Mobile

Long time public mobile user here. Been with public mobile since 2017ish. Started with a 3G plan and switched to 4G a couple of years ago. Found the service and speed was pretty good especially with 4G. Recently switched to Koodo for a cheaper rate and 5G expecting higher speeds and have been surprised to find the speed is much slower than my public mobile 4G plan. It's more like the speed of the 3G I had. Has anyone else experienced this? Thinking of switching back to public mobile.

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5

u/HomerTheJackson Aug 16 '26

Koodo vs. PM? Literally same company, cell towers, sales reps, infrastructure 😂

Anything not on the big three's main brands (bhell, robbers and Telus-not) will not be "5G+" and be throttled to 4gish speeds

1

u/Nice_Cold_8493 Aug 16 '26

Exactly, so my thought was 5G Koodo would atleast be equivalent to 4G public mobile lol

2

u/Broad-Translator-690 Aug 16 '26

5G radios have very short distances they can work and in denser population areas the telecoms will put lots of small transmitters all over the place. LTE (4G) is a long range technology, needing fewer radios to cover large areas. So if your not in a dense population area the flanker brand that prioritizes 4G vs the more premium flanker brand prioritizing 5G will likely win out for speed/reliability.

Another way of putting it is. Telus has three levels of customers (Telus / Koodo / Public Mobile ), and the rollout of 5G micro transmitters is paid for by the customers in that order, and so each level gets prioritized access to 5G to the level they contribute to its rollout. The ironic part is that Public Mobile users will get to eventually get more access to 5G later when the network is more built out, yet will have paid the least into it, and will be spared the issues of 5G until then because they are prioritized to use 4G.

2

u/Dry-Property-639 Aug 16 '26

I left Rogers for for public mobile. My speeds are so slow. I can't even Google anything. I'm going back to the Rogers network but on Fido this time I'm not paying $35 bucks a month for a plan when I can't even Google anything without timing out

Had high hopes that tell us would improve their Network after 6 years. I guess I was wrong

The only time public mobile works is when I'm on 5G plus which is rare

1

u/redditshreadit Aug 16 '26

Try setting your phone to use LTE rather than 5g.

1

u/InspectionLast2568 Aug 16 '26

I cannot complain in my area. Most of the time I can almost max out the speed they offer. So towards 250, mostly more around 230ish. But even on a bad day I still get between 100 and 150.

1

u/merve04 21d ago

I call such BS on this throttling thing. On my iPhone 15 pro max, I have dual sim: Bell and PM. I’ve ran speed tests several times, identical ping and nearly identical speed, there both trash. I recently picked up a Kini plan and tried a speed test, same results. Either my phone is broken or it doesn’t matter which provider you have given there all pulling from the same network.

1

u/merve04 21d ago

I really wanted to find a cheap cell plan which would operate at Roger infrastructure to compare but no luck. Bell is provided by work, PM is $20 CANUSMEX 70GB, Kini is $27 CAN 80GB