I guess you run into a lot of those types of people on here, but I work on both the RAN, core, and RF. Mostly Ericsson, Nortel, Alcatel and Cisco gear.
Had to fix the truncated HTML.
Haha alright, fair enough. Glad to see there is someone else around here who knows what they're talking about. Yup, tons of posers from BBM here
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First of all, 3G will definitely be around for a while. First everyone has to be moved off of edge. Then that will he shut down. At that point, 3G will be lowest and LTE will be the next step up. Anything faster than LTE will probably have surfaced at that time.
3G will be around for a long time, primarily for voice (on AT&T) and backup data. T-Mobile still prominently relies on EDGE as their major data service across their network. There are still huge portions of the US where they don't have 3G, whereas VZW/AT&T have LTE deployed (and have had 3G for a long long time)
And for the second point, you must not go very far if you get AT&T LTE "everywhere you go". I can personally attest (as can a few friends of mine) that AT&T LTE is not nearly as widespread as it's made out to be by AT&T or by you.
Come check out the Northeast. I can go from Boston to Washington DC and never loose LTE on AT&T (or VZW). T-Mobile covers almost all major highways around here with EDGE. Pretty pathetic.
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. BTW, 3G is currently specified out to 160 Mbps. Not bad for a 2008 technology.
Even if it specced up to that 160 mbps, it looks like no US carrier will be taking advantage of the higher spec anymore, especially LTE is going to be used as their primary technology for the next decade or so. AT&T stopped upgrading HSPA+ at 21mbps, whereas T-Mobile deployed DC-HSPA+ in some areas (42 mbps), now they're basically ignoring both to go onto LTE -> LTE-A.
Let's also not forget that LTE is much more efficient with managing high traffic situations due to optimizations, whereas HSPA/EDGE/EVDO are completely dead. Probably one of the major reasons why carriers have moved onto LTE.