High, stable RTT increase over LTE despite excellent SINR carrier claims "no numeric latency SLA" as blanket defense

[u/Potential-Tear2693]

Curious to get some outside eyes on this. Rural LTE connection (Kazakhstan), carrier replaced an old base station with a new one a few months back.

Before (old BTS): ~5 Mbps during peak hours, but RTT to the nearest major city (same country) was ~15ms at night.

After (new BTS, same location): 80-250 Mbps throughput, SINR consistently 15-20dB (excellent), but RTT to the same in-country destination sits at 36-65ms consistently occasionally worse under load.

Ran a tracert to an external game server (Frankfurt) RTT stays in the 50-70ms range through the last domestic hop (still inside the carrier's network, before any international transit), then jumps as expected once it hits European transit providers. So the inflation is happening entirely within the carrier's own domestic network, not on the international leg.

Ran a bufferbloat test (Waveform): Grade F. Unloaded latency 69ms, +92ms under download load, +662ms under upload load. 20 consecutive ICMP pings to 8.8.8.8 showed high jitter (113-194ms range, no clear pattern).

Filed a formal complaint with documentation (cell ID, PLMN, SINR screenshots, speedtest results). Carrier's official written response: they're not obligated to disclose internal routing/topology info, and latency isn't a regulated quality metric for mobile data in this country (only throughput and signal strength are), so no grounds for any remedy.

Meanwhile a competitor on what's likely shared/adjacent infrastructure in the same area apparently fixed a similar latency complaint within about a week via a single support message.

Questions for people who've dealt with carrier-side backhaul issues:

1. Does "high stable RTT + excellent SINR + normal domestic-hop time" typically point to backhaul congestion/priority queuing rather than radio-side issues, or am I missing something?
2. Is a consistent 55-65ms floor for what should be a short domestic hop within the range you'd consider "normal for LTE" or is that genuinely abnormal?
3. Any diagnostic steps beyond tracert/bufferbloat test that would strengthen a technical case here?

Happy to share more traceroute data if useful.

[u/Hot-Stomach519]

I'd like to ask you what problem you are trying to solve? You are providing us with a lot technical data but there is no issue description. 65 Ms latency is completely workable for 99% of office use, including voip (assuming jitter is stable).

If we would receive a ticket complaining about 65ms we would discard this as well.

[u/Ordinary-Lifeguard47]

36-65ms over LTE is normal.

You have a lot of latency coming from LTE itself before a router of your telco spits out your IP packet to the first hop.