Research of the wireless Internet at stations of Moscow

As a logical continuation of our study of mobile Internet at airports , we prepared a study of nine stations in Moscow. All of them are located within the third transport ring and are almost evenly distributed around its circumference, which will give a much more interesting picture.
In spite of this optimistic slogan from Yota, surrounded by wires and cables (the area of ​​the Belorussky railway station), we decided to doubt all the same, and before the trip we reopened the coverage maps of operators to find out what they promise us. All but Beeline, which as we have already written, do not have a 3G coverage card in Moscow, promised us high-speed Internet at train stations.

The methodology has not changed much - we came to the station, sat in one of the free waiting rooms closer to the window, which, by the way, was not so easy in some places - waiting too many, took out a netbook, modems of operators and started measurements under the watchful eyes of others.


This is a typical waiting room. Kursk railway station. From many other stations it is distinguished by soft inserts on the chairs.
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Recall that the netbook is absolutely "clean", having no additional software installed, except for software bundled with modems.

Modems and applications to them were bought and installed exclusively from operators in order to avoid accusations of improperly configuring the “left” solution.

Paveletsky railway station was the first in our long journey through Moscow. It is one of the busiest stations: from here it takes an aeroexpress train to Domodedovo, electric trains of the Kashira direction, long-distance trains to the Volga region and partially to the Caucasus. Here we spent the most time and made three measurements in three different places.

The first station was chosen waiting room on the second floor. The incoming speed test results were as follows:



Then we moved to the “VIP room”, it is exactly in the same open space as the usual one, fenced with a ribbon and differs from the usual waiting room by the presence of sofas, a TV that collects money for the entrance (150 rubles / hour) and idle sockets. By the way, for the fact that we wanted to charge the laptop, at the tariffs of the “VIP hall” we wanted to take another 60 rubles.

“Having enjoyed” the VIP status, it was decided not to spend time and money on it anywhere else.
Needless to say, the test results were exactly the same as in a regular room. But you can see them on the map.
Beeline , Comstar , Megafon , MTS , Yota

The next deployment was in the aeroexpress waiting room. It is located on the -1 floor and there is a fairly large passenger traffic. WiMAX didn’t take it here, Megaphone and Beeline stayed very good at providing a speed above 1 Mbit, MTS had worse things to do.

In this waiting room there is also paid WiFi from Beeline and Megaphone. We found the outlet in a cafe located right in the waiting room. There are several tables with rosettes.

Then followed a monotonous trip to Moscow. As a result, we have the following results.



From this table, we tried to rank the operators at an average speed. What we did:

1. Megaphone - 2898 Kbps;
2. Yota - 1302 Kbps;
3. Comstar - 919 Kbps;
4. Beeline - 891 Kbps;
5. MTS - 809 Kbps.

It should be remembered that the speed can greatly depend on the workload of the operator’s base stations. And, perhaps, on another day, the operators in each particular location will show completely different indicators. So we have big doubts about the fact that Comstar is not in two stations. Although the service of those. support we could not help by phone, persistently sending to the service center.

In the near future, we will recheck this information and include Skylink here.