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That is TWC Maxx and it's incredibly limited currently... But they're expanding its footprint this year considerably, and a lot of states approving the Charter merger are making it a requirement for their approval - even though Charter doesn't offer a price point that low currently.

That's insanity. 200/20 for $30?? In what regions is that being offered?
 
That's insanity. 200/20 for $30?? In what regions is that being offered?

Like NYC and LA. Bigger markets. I think 200/20 is their 50 or 60 dollar plan and he has a timed deal. It's the equivalent price to Extreme on their website. Or 30/2 where it doesn't have Maxx.
 
Are they going to increase capacity? Because if they don't increase capacity, then they can't increase my data cap, which means it's all essentially useless. I mean, do you really need your website to load in 0.4 seconds instead of 0.8 seconds? It's good to prepare for the future, but man, data caps have been stuck in the mud for a while now.
 
Okay, okay, ATT. Just say what you really meant to say. 5G is for non-unlimited people, right?
 
Haha,

Here in India (Mumbai) i just got 4G LTE. I was excited. As i travel from my home to office, i have better chance of spotting an UFO than an LTE symbol. 40% of travel distance i get Edge, 60% is 3G of which now, 1% of it goes to 4G. And i live in and travel through the center of the city.
Seriously speaking, i'd be happy to have 100% 3G coverage, than spotty 4G
 
We don't need faster data, we need reasonable amounts of it. Plans should start at 50 GBs for 30 dollars.
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With that kind of speed by 2020, I can't help but think "what will be the point of cable or fiber?"
Data Caps that aren't 5GB for 50 dollars.
 
I get 4-5 bars and I'm lucky to reach over 12Mbps with 4G/LTE. iPhone 6S Plus in multiple metro cities.

Maybe with 5G/LTE I'll get 15-17Mbps.

I don't believe 10-100x faster. I'm thinking they meant to say is we'll charge you 10-100x more for 5G
 
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I've been with Verizon for almost 2 years, so I don't know if this is still relevant, but AT&T royally sucked coverage wise. They didn't care about actually area, but instead population density. I used to travel around the southeast and it was when I saw buildings that I'd get 3G and later on, 4G, and then LTE.

I don't mind paying more money for VZW and I can be on a boat on a lake in the mountains and make a call or stream music. AT&T was an absolute joke.
 
Does this mean I'll connect my call before I even dial?? I'd rather they strengthen their network. I'm in the middle of a metro area. My signal at home is very poor... 1 of 5 on the scale. Sometimes, lose the call. If I travel even 2-3 blocks, I show maximum signal.
 
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At what point can we say enough is enough and carriers focus on blanketing the map (or partnering with other carriers in other countries for cheaper roaming, overseas calls, etc)?

Maybe it's just me but I've felt LTE to be plenty fast. What on earth are we downloading on mobile connections that require speeds faster than virtually instant page loads?

New tech is always exciting but it just seems like a sidegrade rather than upgrade at this point. Ah well.
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How would you blow through your data plan faster? You will still visit the same websites showing the same data, it will just load faster. The only way i see using more data is if i start streaming 4K, which is crazy anyway on a phone.
Back when 2g/3G was the norm, mobile websites heavily optimized for slow data speeds thereby eating less data. Of course the reasoning for this was because of speeds. A mobile webpage isn't really great if t takes 30+ seconds to load. As we see faster speeds we still do see optimized webpages but now they include much more than they did half a decade ago, again because with today's tech we load pages faster therefore we can load more data in less time. I expect this will only become worse as time goes on.

You're not necessarily wrong, but you can look at data consumption trends over the years and see that, on average, they're trending upwards too, not downwards. To a person who doesn't necessarily understand data (someone like my mom who can't grasp that an email takes way less data than a Facebook video clip, for example), this is compounded. They don't feel like their activities are any different yet they're using more data than they were yesterday.

Now, obviously the person you quoted was exaggerating quite a bit. We won't blow through data plans in minutes. But it's a fair bet that data consumption will go up if precious trends continue.
 
That's not how data works. But leave it to MR members to fail fantastically at something else simple as this.
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200/20 here for $30 a month on TWC, sounds like you need to negotiate.
Negotiate? Maybe, but unfortunately I live in a more rural part of upstate NY. Not a lot of choices.
 
Maybe it's just me but I've felt LTE to be plenty fast. What on earth are we downloading on mobile connections that require speeds faster than virtually instant page loads?

New tech is always exciting but it just seems like a sidegrade rather than upgrade at this point. Ah well.
Remember that we are talking about technology that will be rolled out about 5 years from now. People will use their phones and other devices differently than they do today. How about downloading HD videos in seconds, or doing an iCloud backup of your device over cellular in a minute? How about cloud gaming that requires very low latency which today's networks can't provide? Or perhaps you will use the cellular network not just for your phone, but also in your connected car and "Internet of things"-type devices.

Besides, 5G will also increase the overall capacity of the networks. Next decade it will be needed just to keep up with the rapidly increasing traffic in mobile networks. There are also many under-the-hood changes in the core network that aren't directly visible to the customer, but should make it easier for the providers to adapt the networks to demand and add new kinds of services.
 
I'm in the "make the coverage better, AT&T" camp more than the "let's make it faster" camp. It's ridiculous that as I sit in my office 10 miles away from downtown Houston that I have 2 bars of LTE and sometimes just 4 bars of 4G on my iPhone 6. It's even worse when I go home, which is only 25 miles from downtown Houston and have no signal whatsoever. Had to get a landline for the first time in 10 years because of this. I'd take more coverage and reliability over speed at this point.
 
Why should development stop? New applications for faster network speeds are developed constantly so nobody knows what will be possible in the future. Faster transfer rates can also help the network overall, i.e. congestion.

Most people would be perfectly well served with a 5mb connection to their phone. Raw speed isn't the issue at this point. It's data limits and expensive data plans.
 
5G will be heavily focused on more small cells using higher frequencies.

Makes me wonder whether in New Zealand whether we'll see Spark and Vodafone offer fixed wireless broadband given that Chorus (the company that owns the telephone lines themselves) charges the carriers $41 per month for ADSL/VDSL so what 5G offers is the possibility of the carriers being able to avoid the $41 'tax' and keep a lot more profit for themselves. A good example of that is Skinny in NZ where for NZ$55 you can get a 60GB per month using traditional 4G over 1800MHz so I could imagine that macro-cell sites using 5G they could increase the traffic allowance resulting in 95% of end users covered and keeping around the fibre option for those who really push the limit in terms of speed and downloads.
 
Remember that we are talking about technology that will be rolled out about 5 years from now. People will use their phones and other devices differently than they do today. How about downloading HD videos in seconds, or doing an iCloud backup of your device over cellular in a minute? How about cloud gaming that requires very low latency which today's networks can't provide? Or perhaps you will use the cellular network not just for your phone, but also in your connected car and "Internet of things"-type devices.

Besides, 5G will also increase the overall capacity of the networks. Next decade it will be needed just to keep up with the rapidly increasing traffic in mobile networks. There are also many under-the-hood changes in the core network that aren't directly visible to the customer, but should make it easier for the providers to adapt the networks to demand and add new kinds of services.
I can see most of these examples holding true if and only if telcos decide to lighten up on data caps. This could happen, but as time has gone on, we have seen them moving farther and farther away from that. Not a whole lot of people are going to be downloading entire HD movies in seconds with 2,3 even 10 gb plans. LTE is more than capable enough to handle the latency of most games. I'd venture to guess plenty of people who are wired and playing online games have higher latency than you would generally see on LTE. In fact, I've games whilst tethered and it's indistinguishable. Not sure I can think of a game that demands less than 50ms latency at all times (or ever). I have a pretty weak LTE connection from where I am right now and I get 34ms. On fiber (over wifi) I'm pulling 11. That's more than three times faster when talking numbers, but when we are talking human reaction time, it's nothing, and can realistically statistically be considered completely equal.
 
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How would you blow through your data plan faster? You will still visit the same websites showing the same data, it will just load faster. The only way i see using more data is if i start streaming 4K, which is crazy anyway on a phone.
Sites and user adjust to what is available. Or didnt you notice the internet has changed 'a bit' the last decade?
 
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