3's 4g advertising

Edited by deleted (Mon 18-Feb-13 15:51:53)

Only thing is I don't believe 3 yet have any 4G running...

And you can edit up to 12 hours later AFAIK

In reply to a post by ian72:

Only thing is I don't believe 3 yet have any 4G running...

They won't until 12months after EE started - as I believe that was in the negotiation for the transfer of 1800mhz channels from EE to Three. Three are also in the bidding for 800mhz and 2600mhz slots.

I would guess a few months after the bidding closes is the earliest, but all networks are advertising "future 4G" now as they don't want customers running to EE I guess.

Still questions over which handsets will support the three UK / EU freq's for LTE.

In reply to a post by pcoventry76:

Well the Iphone 5 will I hope!

And the Ipad Mini!

The current variant of Iphone 5 only supports 1800Mhz.

All the other LTE phones (Galaxy S3 LTE, Note 2 LTE, Lumia 920, Experia Z, etc) all support the 3 bands (800Mhz, 1800Mhz & 2.6Ghz).

I tweeted a picture from the newspaper advert that reveals it is the half way house, if memory s working DC-HSDPA is an up to 42 Mbps technology, so clearly superfast NOT ultrafast

But often gets similar performance to LTE in real world applications (at least, downstream & latency). There's no definition of 'ultrafast' or 'superfast' anyway, so it doesn't really matter.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

I tweeted a picture from the newspaper advert that reveals it is the half way house, if memory s working DC-HSDPA is an up to 42 Mbps technology, so clearly superfast NOT ultrafast

In the US my friends, family and work colleagues on Verizon's 4G LTE get speeds between 6 and 12 megabit. Given Verizon's CDMA 3G was limited at a usable max of 1megabit, they're quite impressed. Some people on AT&T LTE have seen 30megabit+ but I'm wondering if they were the only people in the area.

(The CDMA networks in the US had to roll out 4G LTE, as the CDMA 3G had hit the buffers on performance, and its likely they are carefully managing traffic/budgets and will increase speeds over time).

Contrast with Three's HSPA+ service giving 7 to 10megabit generally, and their claimed DC-HSPA when it launches potentially getting upto 20meg. Three's 4G LTE will need to get 30meg+ to be worth switching.

EE's LTE is as shown by the BBC videos running at peaks of 30meg but average around 10meg - I can get 18megabit on my EE (T-mobile tarrif) 3G connection *today* (with 3megabit upload).

Vodafone manages 7meg on a good day in the town centre - but generally struggles to hit 1meg everywhere else. O2 is pretty much capped at 1meg on phone tarrifs. (I've seen 4meg on an iPad). These guys could just hit 10meg on 4G LTE and amaze their customers who haven't seen.

It will all depend on the backhaul capacity per mast and number of simultaneous users - rather like comparing TalkTalk at peak times to Sky or BT. Lots to wait and see.