AT&T Looking To Launch LTE (4G) Network by Mid-2011

[AidenShaw]

Meh. 3G is good enough for me.

That upload speed is horrifying. What part of the country are you in?

Even more horrifying is the ping latency - more than a third of a second !!!

 

[valkraider]

I think a lot of you a painfully misguided as to what LTE will mean. I see a lot of "fix my 3g first" comments.

As mentioned by a few smart chaps on this thread, its all about mobile backhaul. You have to understand that most 3g base stations still use TDM transmission (T1 etc) to get to the RBS controller node. This is where there is a huge bottleneck. The sudden surge in data was not adequately planned for.

LTE is now driving the importance of mobile backhaul even more by utilizing ethernet speeds to each base station. This has a few challenges... the newer base stations allow for splitting voice and data where voice goes over TDM and data over ethernet, but the older ones dont do this. So ethernet pseudowire solutions etc are the rage right now. High capacity ethernet to the base station is the key for data growth here.

so essentially LTE backhaul expansions will benefit all services including 3G/Edge.

I think a lot of YOU are painfully misguided about the "customer service" aspect of running a business.

No one cares about the technology under the covers. I could care less if the packets were carried by purple bunnies holding little satchels...

I pay $150 a month - it would be nice if my 3G service would extend more than three feet outside of a city... I don't need 5Mbps speeds everywhere - I would just like a little better than Edge 100kbps. I would be happy with reliable 700kbps to 1Mbps speeds in rural areas.

But even then, a good Edge connection can be OK too - a solid 100kbps connection will work OK for most uses - but in rural areas even with full Edge signal the data connections just fail or spin endlessly, as though the Edge data indicator is just a cruel trick.

So whatever needs to be done - telling customers who live in or pass through rural areas that they are stuck on unreliable and slow Edge connections but we are working on 4G in some cities - is just bad business.

I don't care about controller nodes or backhaul technology or what kind of guy wires they use on the towers. Not my problem. I just want to have good reasonable service at *least* on every interstate in the country...

And don't tell me Verizon either, because I make road trips with people and we all have different services, and let me tell you that even if a "coverage map" says you have service - doesn't make it actually work. Even Verizon has problems in the rural west... They say they have 3G there but it doesn't connect or is dog ass slow... And Sprint and T-Mobile? Forget it once you leave town... I have a 3G Verizon data card that often barely competes with my AT&T iPhone on Edge...

Once you leave a city - it's a whole different ballgame.

 

[chrmjenkins]

I think a lot of YOU are painfully misguided about the "customer service" aspect of running a business.

No one cares about the technology under the covers. I could care less if the packets were carried by purple bunnies holding little satchels...

I pay $150 a month - it would be nice if my 3G service would extend more than three feet outside of a city... I don't need 5Mbps speeds everywhere - I would just like a little better than Edge 100kbps. I would be happy with reliable 700kbps to 1Mbps speeds in rural areas.

But even then, a good Edge connection can be OK too - a solid 100kbps connection will work OK for most uses - but in rural areas even with full Edge signal the data connections just fail or spin endlessly, as though the Edge data indicator is just a cruel trick.

So whatever needs to be done - telling customers who live in or pass through rural areas that they are stuck on unreliable and slow Edge connections but we are working on 4G in some cities - is just bad business.

I don't care about controller nodes or backhaul technology or what kind of guy wires they use on the towers. Not my problem. I just want to have good reasonable service at *least* on every interstate in the country...

And don't tell me Verizon either, because I make road trips with people and we all have different services, and let me tell you that even if a "coverage map" says you have service - doesn't make it actually work. Even Verizon has problems in the rural west... They say they have 3G there but it doesn't connect or is dog ass slow... And Sprint and T-Mobile? Forget it once you leave town... I have a 3G Verizon data card that often barely competes with my AT&T iPhone on Edge...

Once you leave a city - it's a whole different ballgame.

And all of that doesn't matter. Cities drive the majority of mobile business, and even with backhaul upgrades, that's not going to permeate creating 3G and 4G connections in the rural areas. These are businesses that are out for profit, and the millions of customers concentrated in cities are where it's at. Why do you think smaller local cell phone providers were and still are prevalent in some areas?

 

[valkraider]

And all of that doesn't matter. Cities drive the majority of mobile business, and even with backhaul upgrades, that's not going to permeate creating 3G and 4G connections in the rural areas. These are businesses that are out for profit, and the millions of customers concentrated in cities are where it's at. Why do you think smaller local cell phone providers were and still are prevalent in some areas?

I agree with you...

I am happy with AT&T. I live right in the densest part of a large city, and my 3G is great.

But I also travel outside of the city, as do most of the people I know.

So when I look for a cell provider - I do look at how well they cover the places I will travel. Am I asking for full coverage of every nook and cranny in the country? No. I live in the west - we have VAST VAST expanses with nothing (and I mean NOTHING) for hundreds of miles. No need to cover *all* of it. But they should at least cover all the interstates - and many of the major highways where there are no interstates. Because people DO travel, even people who live in cities.

And like I said, we don't need a massively fast pipe out in the boonies - but it would be nice to have a simple reliable and OK speed connection - to check weather, or look at a map or two, or read email and update facebook, or to read Wikipedia on the area we are driving through or whatever...