back to article Everything Everywhere pushes towards 4G, wants to show off its wad

Everything Everywhere is planning to deploy 4G into the UK by the end of 2012, but mostly just to remind everyone how much it is investing in UK infrastructure. The switch to HSPA+, which will see those nearest the transmitters doubling their 3G connection speeds, will happen in the next six months or so, and, if Ofcom will …

COMMENTS

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  1. Andrew James
    Meh

    And what ridiculous price will they expect Bristolians to cough up for the pleasure of this?

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    LTE with 500Mb fair use

    here he come!

    1. Andrew James

      Re: LTE with 500Mb fair use

      How long would it take to use that 500Mb do you think, if you were downloading movies at something like 20Mbps ... ? I cant be bothered to do the maths.

      1. a33a

        Re: Re: LTE with 500Mb fair use

        Very inaccurate calculation but ...

        8Mbps is about 1 MByte ps

        Thus 16Mbps is 2MByte ps

        and therefore 4Mbps is 500Kbyte ps

        Resulting in (4+16)=(2+0.5)

        = 20Mbps = 2.5MByte p/s

        and therefore 500/2.5 = 200

        Therefore 500Mb usage allowance would be used up in 200 Seconds

        or alternatively EE won't offer such silly limits.

        1. chr0m4t1c

          Re: Re: Re: LTE with 500Mb fair use

          >or alternatively EE won't offer such silly limits.

          You're joking, right? When Orange rolled out 3G all of those years ago they wanted £15 for 3Mb.

          They're all pretty much the same, they want to posture about having rolled out the infrastructure and tell you what immense speeds you can get, but they don't want you to actually _use_ it, the technology isn't really up to that (and neither is their backbone).

      2. Ramazan
        Mushroom

        Re: Re: LTE with 500Mb fair use

        Much funnier is when you're roaming in LTE network, you can download 100Mb per minute and 1Mb costs say $1. This results in you being able to burn money with speed of $100 per minute.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      Re: LTE with 500Mb fair use

      Indeed. My usually excellent broadband provider recently offered me a fibre upgrade for an extra fiver a month. Great I thought!

      Only problem is that despite the faster connection you get less bandwidth a month. Doh!

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Sort the first generation first.

    We still have to go upstairs or into the garden to make basic voice cellphone calls, or send texts.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Already have HSPA+

    Been seeing HSPA+ on my T-MObiel powered SGS2 for a few months now. Seems to be in a lot of major cities and towns already

  5. Ben 47

    HSPA+

    I assume this is on the Orange side of the network, as I was under the impression that T-Mobile has already done it? I get the H+ symbol on SGS II when I'm on the T-Mobile network

    Or am I getting confused with something else?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: HSPA+

      H+ has been deployed, but more for spectral efficiency (b/Hz) at their end rather than to benefit the end user. The same goes for LTE.

      Another way of looking at it: you use the same amount of data, but it is sent down quicker, meaning you use the air interface less. I guess battery life would be better too, but not sure for LTE.

      Right now, except for the mobile broadband dongle products, the rates are capped, especially with the more generous data plans and/or lower rental plans.

      With the capped data rate add on , it's a precise 0.30 Mbps on every single speedtest run.

      I guess they make it 1 Mbps for LTE.

      So LTE deployment for now is.. meh.

    2. Chris Beach

      Re: HSPA+

      HSDPA+ isn't 4G, never has been, its 3.9G if anything. Unfortunatly the American marketting confused the crap out of everybody by branding HSDPA as 4G, esp if it did the 14Mbps/22Mbps.

      Even the current LTE (as used by Verizon in the US), isn't proper 4G, when they start mentioning LTE Advanced do they actually start to fully comply with the 4G standards.

  6. William Gallafent
    Flame

    Speed caps on T-Mobile

    I'm all for increasing mobile broadband speeds. The simplest way for T-Mobile to achieve this is to remove the speed caps from their existing tariffs. They are certainly there, and they are certainly not mentioned on the T-Mobile site. I think that wouldn't require very much investment either. Actually stating the speed caps anywhere on their own website (for example, in the terms and conditions / fair usage policy relating to each tariff) would be a start, of course, so that customers could decide how much to pay in order to achieve how much bandwidth rather than being sold “internet on your phone” (or whatever the name is at the moment) which they then find out (if they hunt hard enough on the interwebs) is artificially capped to 384kb/s, 0.9Mb/s or 1.8Mb/s.

    I wonder if the same network management approaches will continue. If so, good luck finding out what the speed cap on an LTE connection will be. Expect it to be a lot slower than the actual wireless link can manage, if HSPA is anything to go by.

    Here's a short-link to the usual discussion of speed caps on T-Mobile: http://qr.net/stat/hnxp

    Long-link for those that don't trust short-links :) http://support.t-mobile.co.uk/discussions/index?page=forums&topic=801019114689730134158c03af039a4

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    4G LTE?

    Is that LTE Advanced, or the more common-or-garden LTE, which runs at a tenth of the data rates specified by the ITU for 4G networks?

    1. Anna Logg

      Re: 4G LTE?

      We get this comment every time 4G is mentioned :-/

      The ITU moved the goalposts around 2 years ago so that vanilla R8 LTE could be called 4G.

      http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2374564,00.asp

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    HSPA+

    I just tried a speed test on my T-Mobile Galaxy S2 and got 8.1Mb download and 1.28Mb upload, so not too shabby!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Nothing Anywhere

      ou must've have stood right next to a mast

    2. Andrew James

      Re: HSPA+

      Where in the country are you? I only get 3.5Mbps on my broadband at home. 8Mbps on my mobile would be a huge improvement.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Re: HSPA+

        Near Watford in Hertfordshire, TM coverage checker reads 4 out of 5

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: HSPA+

      This is possible if you are on the unlimited plan and in a village somewhere next to the mast.

  9. BrightSparke
    Alert

    Devices

    1800 MHz LTE Devices are already available in Australia on the Telstra Network, so getting devices shouldnt be too difficult

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