Not surprised. Cost difference between 1Gb and 100Mb tail is tiny, no point in taking 100Mb really now. LTE + 3G will potentially saturate a 100Mb circuit even though it would be unusual so better safe.

Saying that though with the network sharing operators are doing when you aggregate 2 physical networks together on the same cell that'd have a fair chance of spending some time over 100Mb.

I can comment on the EE side of things, every base station is being upgraded to 1Gbit capable backhaul when provisioned with 4G services, (some cells are being upgraged eariler where the 3G demand warrants it)

In reply to a post by bookey:

I can comment on the EE side of things, every base station is being upgraded to 1Gbit capable backhaul when provisioned with 4G services, (some cells are being upgraged eariler where the 3G demand warrants it)

The key word there being 'capable' I presume? The cost difference between 100Mb and 1Gb bearers is tiny. The base stations will almost certainly be rate limited to a lower level to avoid wasting cash.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Okay, I was going by expectation rather than actual knowledge. The people I know in the US on their LTE systems can have 5 or 6 people in a meeting room all using LTE dongles in laptops and getting 40megabit+ each - so they must have quite a different amount of MHz.

Unlikely, the specs don't cover that many options for higher MHz.

Is this 40 megabit the willy waving number reported by the dongle software, or a sustained throughput download - and if the latter, how many of them can get it at once ?

An LTE vendor published a white paper that says 40 Mbits/s is a reasonable maximum sector throughput including the distant clients as well as the locals and a with realistic MIMO configuration for a handset and 2 x 20 MHz - our 4G auction sold off 5 and 10 MHz paired channels in the "go further" 800 MHz band.

Microwave backhaul is scalable and can outstrip a single operator's base station backhaul requirements. It has range and line of sight issues etc but there are many dishes evident on masts and rooftop arrays.

In reply to a post by yarwell:

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Okay, I was going by expectation rather than actual knowledge. The people I know in the US on their LTE systems can have 5 or 6 people in a meeting room all using LTE dongles in laptops and getting 40megabit+ each - so they must have quite a different amount of MHz.

Unlikely, the specs don't cover that many options for higher MHz.

Yes, surely in a meeting room with such required specs, the dongles might well be LTE-capable, but surely they'd be using the company's local WiFi in a meeting? I certainly wouldn't want to be in charge of a meeting worth a lot of time and money, which relied on everyone having adequate LTE connectivity at the same time.

If they all simply show as "connected at 40+Mb/sec", and it is LTE, then that's not really all of them having 40+Mb/sec at once, i.e. one bloke will be doing nothing, one browsing, the next one reading something, and maybe one person streaming a YouTube video in their coffee break. That equals about 0.5Mb/sec of data transfer between the lot of them.

Edited by deleted (Tue 28-May-13 15:56:48)

In reply to a post by yarwell:

Unlikely, the specs don't cover that many options for higher MHz.

Is this 40 megabit the willy waving number reported by the dongle software, or a sustained throughput download - and if the latter, how many of them can get it at once ?

Good questions - my contact was (IT server) technical so I'm pretty sure it was peak throughtput on downloads. At our company we use the same (strange) VPN software that can show the actual throughput being achieved.

An LTE vendor published a white paper that says 40 Mbits/s is a reasonable maximum sector throughput including the distant clients as well as the locals and a with realistic MIMO configuration for a handset and 2 x 20 MHz - our 4G auction sold off 5 and 10 MHz paired channels in the "go further" 800 MHz band.

Okay, so the idea that LTE will give people real-speeds that are faster than the 10megabit peak we get today on 3G/HSPA is a dream once we have more than 2 people using it.

Microwave backhaul is scalable and can outstrip a single operator's base station backhaul requirements. It has range and line of sight issues etc but there are many dishes evident on masts and rooftop arrays.

Makes sense - I guess the masts are grouped, one central has the fibre backhaul and the rest are microwaved to the central ?

Edited by jchamier (Tue 28-May-13 19:10:08)

Some useful real-world test data from the USA.

The RootMetrics app is available on Android and iPhone here in the UK too, but I don't see any reports yet.
http://gigaom.com/2012/04/14/solving-the-lte-puzzle-...

and some info on the spectrum auctions and who bought what here in the UK:
http://www.trefor.net/2013/05/28/analysis-of-who-bou...

Edited by jchamier (Tue 28-May-13 19:29:20)