I was in Perth (Western Australia) the other day and finally got to experience LTE on my iPhone.
Damn, those speeds are ridiculous
I was in Perth (Western Australia) the other day and finally got to experience LTE on my iPhone.
Got this today outside the Apple store in the mall. So, INSIDE the Mall, which is a pretty 'choked' area for cellular data. The St.Louis market is dominated by AT&T because pretty much everywhere west of St.Louis, only AT&T (ironically) serves very well. Verizon, Sprint, etc. fall off the map. So on 3G, usually, I'm lucky even with a FULL signal to be able to use iMessage or get 0.5mbps download, it's always so choked. On LTE though, I managed to get this, which really impressed me considering how saturated this particular area typically is:
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Unfortunately, with more and more devices on LTE, I'm afraid soon it will be choked out as well! But for now it's pretty speedy!
I live in a rural area, and we actually got 3G really quick because a lot of people use AT&T 3G as their home ISP (it's faster / better than satellite, the only other option for many folks). I'm HOPING the same is true for LTE, because I STILL get 3G speeds that knock most peoples socks off. On HSPA+ I'm getting a consistent 12+ mbps easy. So LTE would be blazing fast in this same market I think! (Of course for the same reason it's fast, is the same reason it's not likely... not a very saturated market!)
I've read that a 'candidate' standard that is purportedly in the pipeline is a new version of the LTE technology that is theoretically up to 1.2gbps. WOW! Obviously, we'll never see 1.2gbps just like we won't see the top end of LTE speeds, but if the potential throughput is 1.2gbps, even in a saturated market we should consistently see speeds that will absolutely dethrone most terrestrial broadband. Wireless broadband is finally faster than copper based broadband, and fiber optic broadband is in limited markets and expensive to deplot. (But, again, this new LTE standard is, potentially, even faster than that!).
LTE just kicked on in Norfolk, VA for AT&T finally. I am getting close to 20 down and 15 up. Much better than it was on 4g obviously but not as fast as some people are getting. Hopefully it will speed up as they grow the LTE coverage. I would love to get in the 40s. Either way it is as fast as my home internet now but unfortunately my wife says we still only have 4g there.