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AT&T Looking to Add '4G' Network Indicator to iPhone 4S Status Bar

Nicky G said:
Mostly the fact that it doesn't seem at all clear that the iPhone 4S has HSPA+ -- just because the AT&T network does haver this capability, you still need a phone with an HSPA+ capable/enabled chipset to actually be using HSPA+.
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I thought they announced that it does have HSPA+...?
 
Looks like AT&T didn't waste any time. They're already listing it as a 4G phone. Kind of humbling to see that Apple isn't officially jumping on the 4G ship just yet.
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How about

We ditch the labels for the general populous and make the carriers simply advertise max theoretical throughput like other ISPs do. That might make too much sense, though.
 
I don't really care much for the official definitions of what various generations of wireless are capable of. To me it is all about how I perceive the experience on average. I compare them to the experience of existing wired broadband technologies.

2.75G - ISDN speeds
3G - DSL to lower end cable modem speeds
4G - Higher end cable modem speeds and beyond

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Geckotek said:
You're trusting the details of a Wikipedia article?
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Why not, when every other source I can find also says 14.0?
 
lilo777 said:
We are talking in layman's terms here 😉 Since the definitions do vary, I think most people would agree that Verizon's LTE is pretty close to 4G or even already there.
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Refer to my first comment in the thread.

'Whosoever allowed marketing of 3G/3.5/3.7G speeds as 4G speeds is an idiot.'

On another LTE Advanced is the only standard that passes the requirement of the IMT Standards for 4th Generation Wireless Networks. LTE more or less has a speed of about 330 Mbit/s at best. This is treated as a peak rate for LTE speeds in statistical calculations. Much of what we have as of now is baby LTE; its not even close to real LTE let alone 4G.

I give it at least 4-8 years for actual 4G speeds to show up on a handful of networks in the world.
 
imamac said:
We ditch the labels for the general populous and make the carriers simply advertise max theoretical throughput like other ISPs do. That might make too much sense, though.
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That would mean even less to the general populace. Most people have absolutely no idea what data rates mean. They don't understand the units or what is fast and what is slow.
 
Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3)

rjohnstone said:
Stratus Fear said:
According to the table at the link below, release 5 is capable of 14.4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Speed_Downlink_Packet_Access#User_Equipment_.28UE.29_categories

I still think its probably HSPA+. Other 14.4 advertising phones like the Atrix 4G claim to be HSPA+.
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Release 5 tops out at 14.0Mbps 😉

The Atrix is a Release 7 HSPA+ device.
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Multiply the number of codes by the data rate for that modulation. It comes to 14.55. Wikipedia may be wrong in how they list the rates I suppose.
 
WestonHarvey1 said:
That would mean even less to the general populace. Most people have absolutely no idea what data rates mean. They don't understand the units or what is fast and what is slow.
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I think Grandpa would find it easier to understand that 14Mbps is faster than 7Mbps. As it is, you would have to explain that this version of 3G is faster than this other version of 3G, which to most I would expect is more confusing.
 
imamac said:
I think Grandpa would find it easier to understand that 14Mbps is faster than 7Mbps. As it is, you would have to explain that this version of 3G is faster than this other version of 3G, which to most I would expect is more confusing.
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But will he know that 14Mbps is slower than 2Gbps?

Also, there's no need to explain to someone that one version of 3G is faster than another, because in practice it really doesn't matter. Grandpa doesn't tether, and doesn't much care if his YouTube videos are a little more compressed on one network as opposed to another.
 
imamac said:
LOL. Probably not, but it's easier to look that up than sort through the 4G debate. 🙂
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I think us techie people are probably better off describing networks amongst ourselves with the acronyms, anyway. We seem to like acronyms a lot anyway. Although, these are some of the worst tech acronyms since MMORPG.
 
WestonHarvey1 said:
I think us techie people are probably better off describing networks amongst ourselves with the acronyms, anyway. We seem to like acronyms a lot anyway. Although, these are some of the worst tech acronyms since MMORPG.
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Indeed. I'm a Telecom guy and a military guy. Those two together make for a crazy number of acronyms.
 
I seriously hope they do not do this, at least not in all areas. Pretty much every carrier here in Sweden has had at least 21 Mbit/s theoretical max speeds fo a while on HSPA.

But all of them still refer to it as 3G (or sometimes turbo-3G, as the older 384 kbit/s W-CDMA UMTS standard) and their estimated 'practical' speed limits.

The term 4G is only used for LTE (although some would argue that the next version of LTE is when you can really refer to it as 4G).
 
So What? I get basically zip coverage in Santa Monica. Complained for over 8 months now. Always "coverage will imporve soon" or "have you rebooted your phone". Been with AT&T since teh 3G Iphone, almost 4 years now. Im going to sprint, at least I can use my cell and get an unlimited plan so I can make use of Itunes Match at work. Plus no longer will I get billed 50 c for every sms text message I overused used becuase I coudl not use AT&Ts crappy network. Sprint is miles better herein terms of coverage and their plan is far better value than AT&T/Verizon, even including unlimited SMS.

By the way, as I understand it, siwtching to a 4G contract will invalidate your unlimited grandfathered in plan with AT&T, so there is no pointi n hoping that you will get that service by stickign with them.

Yeah, thansk AT&T, you suck
 
alent1234 said:
14.4 is HSPA+

my htc inspire has H+ for the signal bar and no way it does 21mbps
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I'm on T-Mobile and while the HSPA+ are much better than 3G, they aren't LTE. 4G has been bastardized for a long time though. Mind you, if I had an iPhone I would like it to be able to distinguish between the two in SOME way.

The latest firmware updates on a bunch of the HTC devices (I can't speak for anything else) on T-Mobile's network has change it from "H" to "4G".
 
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