Is there enough mobile Internet for work and leisure: Lifehacker's experiment

We seem to underestimate the mobile internet. It is often used on the road or in nature, but in fact it is capable of more. How about forgetting about Wi-Fi and distributing the Internet from your smartphone at home, in the office and in general anywhere using tariffs from the line #NoOverpayments from MegaFon? For the experiment, we selected five Lifehacker employees from different cities of Russia and came up with a difficult challenge for each.

Challenge # 1: the office savior

To be left without communication at the height of the working day is br-rr, it's scary to even think about this. The task of HR-director of Lifehacker Maria Nikolaeva is to come to the aid of colleagues from the Ulyanovsk office and distribute the Internet to them. Will MegaFon cope with such a challenge? Let's see!

I've been at MegaFon for a very long time - I don't even remember how many years already, but definitely more than five. Usually I use mobile Internet everywhere where there is no Wi-Fi: on the street, at a party, in a cafe and in a gym. It happened that I distributed it to my laptop and worked, if for some reason there was no Internet at home or in the office. We decided to simulate approximately this situation during the experiment - before the pandemic, the Internet in our Ulyanovsk office sometimes disappeared.

Five Lifehacker employees took part in the challenge: accountant, SMM manager, distribution manager, HR manager and me. My requirements for Internet speed are modest - the main thing is that you can go to sites with vacancies, work with mail, Google Docs and instant messengers. But speed is important for our SMS users, because they constantly post and upload pictures. Everything was fast and without brakes, even taking into account the fact that I was distributing the Internet to five devices at once.

I tried to download an application for measuring the connection speed - although it did not work out instantly, it was done in half a minute. We worked in this mode for about an hour and a half - then I had to go to interviews, so I had to finish the tests. However, to assess the quality of the connection, there was enough time.

Challenge # 2: Giveaway Only, Hardcore Only!

We suggested to the chief editor of special projects Anna Krachek from Moscow to check whether the Internet from MegaFon will pull a video call - or several calls in a row at once. Her task is to work all day only using the mobile Internet.

Last March, Lifehacker's Moscow office went remote. And everything was fine until, in January, my neighbors decided to make repairs. I quickly realized that the sound of the drill, which had to be listened to for eight hours at a time, was not the main problem. When neighbors were drilling the walls, my home Internet periodically began to fall off. Sometimes he was gone for five minutes, and sometimes four hours. Calls to the provider's support service did not give anything: the cable is intact, the Internet is restored by itself - we can do nothing to help.

Working from the phone is so-so pleasure. Especially if you need to write your own texts or edit someone else's. I had to look for a solution on my own, so in February I switched to the "Vse" tariff from the #NoOverpayments line. It includes 600 minutes for calls and 50 GB, and if you wish, you can use the option of unlimited Internet - the service costs only 50 rubles per month. I do not always have time to use up minutes and gigabytes, so I put them in the "Piggy bank": it is convenient if in next month, a talkative mood sets in, or you want to download the entire season of Friends at once in road.

To participate in the challenge, I chose a day for which a lot of video calls were scheduled: a creative planning meeting, recording a podcast, discussing a project with a client. I distributed the Internet from a smartphone to a laptop. For five hours of calls to Zoom and Google Meet, there were no communication problems: no one walked in pixels and did not start talking in the voice of a broken robot. Several times during the day I checked the Internet speed - it did not go below 30 Mb / s.

In parallel, I still downloaded heavy presentations and videos, but this did not affect the calls. To summarize, the mobile Internet from MegaFon is an excellent solution when everything is difficult with home. Well, or if you need to work somewhere outside the range of Wi-Fi. For the tasks of the editor-in-chief, his capabilities are enough.

Test # 3: connecting with nature

The long-awaited spring - why not finally leave the house and relax in the fresh air? We entrusted this task with envy to the proofreader Elena Gritsun from Taganrog. She needs to check how the mobile Internet from MegaFon works in areas with unstable coverage - for example, in a park by the sea.

I am a MegaFon subscriber with experience: I have not changed my number and operator for more than 10 years. Therefore, I know where in the city I can at least watch a movie online, and where even a podcast can turn off - fortunately, there are very, very few of them. But I haven't left with a laptop yet. Well, the challenge is a challenge: I'm going to the park to the sea to watch seagulls and videos on YouTube in 4K.

The Taganrog Bay was unfriendly: gray waves, those very seagulls so impudent that they literally looked into the screen. But there were no complaints about the speed of the Internet.

I distributed the Internet to my laptop, talked to my friends on Skype, admired Costa Rica in high definition on YouTube, I read regional news on social networks - I found out that in a couple of weeks, half an hour's drive from Taganrog, another large the park. And froze. She left the beach and moved to the bench.

The series "Vampires of the Middle Band" on "MegaFon TV" in HD quality went perfectly with coffee: Stoyanov in the image of a grumbled grandfather is simply beautiful. After watching, I wanted to wander around the city a little and imagine that here, in this old house, a vampire lives, who personally communicated with Chekhov and complimented Ranevskaya. But the rain that began broke these plans, and I went home.

I decided that, as it gets warmer, I will nevertheless fulfill my old wish - I will work from a laptop in the park. For my tasks, it is important that the pages load quickly and without errors, and there are up to 15 tabs hanging in the browser at the same time - you never know what needs to be clarified. Recently, for example, I was looking for how to inflect the name "uruk-hai". I think that with the mobile Internet it will be possible to close all tasks without any problems, even while sitting on the beach.

Test # 4: movie weekend

Video calling and social networks are great, but there are more serious tasks. For example, movies - is it possible to watch movies using the mobile Internet? The leading editor of special projects Almaz Zagrutdinov from Kazan found out everything.

I watch a movie almost every evening, and all this is online, except for cases when the desired movie is only available on file hosting services. For an experimental weekend with the Internet from "MegaFon" I have chosen two films in advance: the Russian documentary "Boy" from the program "Artdokfest" (it was available on the festival website) and, for contrast, the sequel to "Frozen" - I decided to look at it at Megafon TV.

I distributed the Internet to my laptop and before starting the session I checked the speed of the mobile Internet: it showed 28.59 Mb / s on a smartphone, and 25.66 Mb / s on a laptop. All in all, a good start!

There were problems with "Boy" only at the beginning, but, perhaps, these are the features of the festival platform. After five minutes, the movie sped up and everything was fine. I decided to test the strength of the mobile Internet and at the same time turn on something on YouTube. While the video with the coolest tiktokas of 2020 was playing on the smartphone, the documentary story of the difficult childhood of the boy Styopa from the Russian provinces was unfolding on the laptop screen. The film became even a little more dramatic: Styopa began to freeze for a moment every three to four minutes. But it was not critical - it can happen even if you watch the video over Wi-Fi.

"Frozen 2" went harder: the film froze for several minutes at the most symbolic moment - Elsa was just finishing the hit about the limitlessness of possibilities "Beyond the Horizon!" Checked the speed: 10.8 Mb / s. On the phone even lower - 7 Mb / s. At the same time, videos on YouTube from a smartphone were played without delays. But then the speed stabilized at the level of 15-17 Mb / s, although it never returned to the starting 25 Mb / s. I did not notice any pattern in these races, and in the end I was able to watch Frozen II. I even liked the cartoon, although I had to listen to “Beyond the Horizon Again” again - this time without pauses.

Test number 5: visit with your Internet

What will happen if the mobile Internet is loaded to the maximum? For example, distribute it to friends and go all out with them: play online quiz and simultaneously stick to social networks. Checked by Elena Avdeeva, author of the commercial edition of Lifehacker from Kopeysk.

I use the mobile Internet for walks, at the dacha, while traveling - in general, always when not access to Wi-Fi. But there are also situations when there is wireless unlimited Internet, but I still spend traffic. This usually happens when I visit friends.

Their home internet is similar in quality to Wi-Fi in some crowded food court: seems to be, but it dulls so much that you have to make a choice of what to save - traffic or nervous cells. At the same time, we often play online quizzes with friends at home, and there fast Internet is most important. If the broadcast is laggy or works well only at 240p quality - no pleasure from the game.

I decided to test the Internet from MegaFon just at the quiz evening and distributed traffic:

• to a laptop - there was a broadcast;
• on a friend's smartphone - she filled out Google forms with answers;
• on a friend's smartphone - he stuck to Instagram (exclusively for the experiment).

I myself was also a little distracted from the game in order to sit in social networks - I wanted to load the Internet to the maximum.

To be honest, the result surprised me. I was sure that friends at home have a signal jammer, but no! Everything flew with the mobile Internet: during the evening we even recorded anomalous 125 Mbps, but that was only once.

The rest of the time, the speed ranged from 21 to 35 Mbps - quite enough for streaming and social networks. Conclusion: the quality of the Internet is excellent, and playing quiz without getting annoyed by a frozen picture is priceless!