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Giuly

macrumors 68040
Lol, this ridiculous assumption has been debunked MULTIPLE times. How do people believe that faster speed means more data consumed?? In your 20 minutes of spare time at lunch break, when you usually stream a few videos.. with LTE+ are you magically going to be able to stream 4 hours instead?? Are the 2 new apps you try each month, suddenly going to eat up gigs of data to download?? Because your Facebook loads faster, you believe that means it is somehow using more data... not just, you know, loading faster??
Way to valiantly try to complain about AWESOME speeds... Sorry it's just not true. I guess you will have to either cheer up, or find some other imaginary issue to be grumpy with.

Have you used an iPhone with a 750MB cap lately? It's ridiculous.
 

topper24hours

macrumors 6502
Jul 27, 2012
352
0
Have you used an iPhone with a 750MB cap lately? It's ridiculous.

No. No, I haven't. I have always had unlimited. I have used about 1.5gb per month consistently since 2009.

Wtf does that have to do with speed though? Oh yeah, NOTHING. That's my point. When I went from 3G to LTE I didn't use more data, when I get LTE+, I won't use more data. More speed does NOT equal more data usage.. unless your habits on your phone suddenly & drastically change. Doing the same things will use the same amount of data. It really seems pretty simple to me.
 

Giuly

macrumors 68040
No. No, I haven't. I have always had unlimited. I have used about 1.5gb per month consistently since 2009.

Wtf does that have to do with speed though? Oh yeah, NOTHING. That's my point. When I went from 3G to LTE I didn't use more data, when I get LTE+, I won't use more data. More speed does NOT equal more data usage.. unless your habits on your phone suddenly & drastically change. Doing the same things will use the same amount of data. It really seems pretty simple to me.

No, my German friend, although the saying "Ganz einfach" is ubiquitous and quite fashionable in your natural habitat, to explain that a 0.75-2GB monthly plan on an iPhone and in the developed world being sufficient is actually the opposite of fairly easy, especially to people who constantly hit their limit and in markets where prepaid limits are much higher, for much less money than on the contracts which an iPhone requires even after you factored in the monthly deduct for the iPhone, which, even more than the devices most people on prepaid use, actually requires a fair amount of data to even function completely.

It's not like affordable plans >10GB for smartphone usage don't exist in Europe, Exhibit A:
AkgYJqy.png


It's a great deal already, and if you've subscribed to their fixed line, they even double it. Being a subscriber to Deutsche Telekom's (and unfortunately, you could replace it with too many carriers around the world) fixed line gives you the equivalent of a fuzzy warm feeling instead. You might've also noticed that connection speeds >7.2MBit/s on prepaid do exist, too. I happen to believe that this is a fair pricing for 2013, as opposed to bandwidth limits that have barely doubled since 2007 but risen in monthly costs.

It's also not fairly easy to explain, at least to me, how 64kbit/s is an appropriate connection speed for an iPhone, under any circumstances – because I do not understand things that give unpleasant experiences.

However, AT&T still tops my list:
9RLNrzN.png

I suppose that it includes a monthly candlelight dinner before they send your bill.
 
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D-Dave

macrumors 6502
Mar 16, 2010
332
59
I'm not sure what he's referring to.

Maybe he means that LTE hasn't reached the speeds that were proposed when the tech was being developed?

But that effects all phones, not just the iPhone 5.

Or maybe he is (like me) from Germany which currently means Apple's implementation of LTE will work only on one carriers Network (T-Mobile) and only on one of the used frequencies (1800MHz...only used in very densely populated areas).
So the vast Difference is that Apple has chosen somewhat odd Bands to support for the GSM Versions (or they just don't care that much about the european market?) and this results in being stuck on 3G or EDGE rather frequently with the iPhone and iPad while that other Guy using his Nokia or Samsung Phone is happily using LTE...
 

crisss1205

macrumors 6502a
Oct 7, 2008
931
267
NYC
No, my German friend, although the saying "Ganz einfach" is ubiquitous and quite fashionable in your natural habitat, to explain that a 0.75-2GB monthly plan on an iPhone and in the developed world being sufficient is actually the opposite of fairly easy, especially to people who constantly hit their limit and in markets where prepaid limits are much higher, for much less money than on the contracts which an iPhone requires even after you factored in the monthly deduct for the iPhone, which, even more than the devices most people on prepaid use, actually requires a fair amount of data to even function completely.

It's not like affordable plans >10GB for smartphone usage don't exist in Europe, Exhibit A:
Image

It's a great deal already, and if you've subscribed to their fixed line, they even double it. Being a subscriber to Deutsche Telekom's (and unfortunately, you could replace it with too many carriers around the world) fixed line gives you the equivalent of a fuzzy warm feeling instead. You might've also noticed that connection speeds >7.2MBit/s on prepaid do exist, too. I happen to believe that this is a fair pricing for 2013, as opposed to bandwidth limits that have barely doubled since 2007 but risen in monthly costs.

It's also not fairly easy to explain, at least to me, how 64kbit/s is an appropriate connection speed for an iPhone, under any circumstances – because I do not understand things that give unpleasant experiences.

However, AT&T still tops my list:
Image
I suppose that it includes a monthly candlelight dinner before they send your bill.

Why are you comparing an individual data plan to a family talk/text/data plan?
BIEYhfa.png
 

avanpelt

macrumors 68030
Jun 2, 2010
2,956
3,877
Apple has been ahead before when it comes to wireless standards in computers. They were one of the first to adopt Wireless N in their notebooks and AirPort base stations. All their new MacBooks already support Wireless AC (as well as AirPort and TC). It is possible, especially if efficient cellular chips already exist.

Apple may have been ahead of the curve when it comes to computers and networking; but they've been notoriously behind the curve when it comes to adopting the latest and greatest cellular technology in the iPhone/iPad. I will be very surprised if the iPhone(s) announced on Tuesday have support for LTE-A.
 

Giuly

macrumors 68040
Why are you comparing an individual data plan to a family talk/text/data plan?
Image

No need to compare, both are ridiculously expensive for a diminutive amount of data.

To put this into context: You are on a road trip and want to watch a movie on your iPad, which happens to be 1.5GB – AT&T charges you $45 for it, over four times as much as the movie itself cost on iTunes. You could've bought the Special Edition BluRay with the action figure gimmick for that.
If you watch three movies, you could've bought a BluRay player along with the three movies on BluRay for the same money.
 
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Nicky G

macrumors 65816
Mar 24, 2002
1,148
1,284
Baltimore
can you explain why this is so much better than LTE? Don't know a ton about this stuff but my iPhone 5 gets 10-15mbps now and runs pretty quick... thought regular LTE is good up to 100?

Theoretical 150mbps doesn't mean those are actual speeds experienced, right?

LTE Advanced should give users 75Mbits/second rates, in the real world, I think. I will TAKE IT.

----------

Ahahahahahhahahahaha..... At the rate the US carriers move we'll see this in 2023 with a premium data fee as well as a ridiculous data cap :rolleyes:

You realize that for the last several years, US cellular carriers have basically raced to the front of the pack when it comes to adopting new cellular technologies, right? A few other countries are in our league, but we're hardly toward the end like we used to be.

You are right about fees and caps, though!

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Maybe in the USA, with your crippled version of LTE.

LTE is already faster than wired connections in australia. We are about to switch part of our office to LTE because it has reliable 50Mpbs upstream according to our tests.

I wouldn't count on AT&T giving you a a properly fast version of LTE-A. They didn't do it with 3G and they didn't do it with LTE. Why would they start now?

PS: I looked it up, and Telstra (Australia's best carrier) is working on 300Mbps LTE-A, expecting to roll it out "soon".

Screw you Aussies and your raging wireless! At least porn on the internet isn't illegal here in the USA. ;-P

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Deutsche Telekom isn't technically deploying LTE Advanced. The standard for that is a maximum speed of 1Gbps. No one seemed to mention that tidbit of information.

LTE Advanced will scale to 1Gbit/sec but I don't think the underlying technology require speeds of that rate.

Honestly, I tend to think of the "generations" in terms of orders of Magnitude. Which kind of goes against my point of LTE Advanced being the first true 4G tech, which used to be true, until they redefined HSPA+ and LTE as 4G. But, thinking of it int he following way is actually kind of more useful in some ways:

2G cellular data: upper tens to maybe 100-ish Kbit/sec rates (down)

3G cellular data: Couple of Megabits/sec (down), maybe 1Mbit/up

4G cellular data (counting current generation high-end as 4G): 10-30Mbit/sec (down), maybe 10ish up on a good day here in the USA

So the next real "generation" in this more "layman" way of describing it should give us 100+ Mbit/sec down, probably up to a few hundred. And then after that, we'll be getting to Gigabit speeds.

I expect to see the 100 to several hundred Megabit rates being fairly prevalent in the USA and other places by 2016, and Gigabit wireless cellular around the turn of the decade.

God, and I still remember my screeching 2400 baud modem... :D
 

milan03

macrumors 6502
Jul 16, 2002
440
13
New York City
LTE Advanced should give users 75Mbits/second rates, in the real world, I think. I will TAKE IT.

----------



You realize that for the last several years, US cellular carriers have basically raced to the front of the pack when it comes to adopting new cellular technologies, right? A few other countries are in our league, but we're hardly toward the end like we used to be.

You are right about fees and caps, though!

----------



Screw you Aussies and your raging wireless! At least porn on the internet isn't illegal here in the USA. ;-P

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LTE Advanced will scale to 1Gbit/sec but I don't think the underlying technology require speeds of that rate.

Honestly, I tend to think of the "generations" in terms of orders of Magnitude. Which kind of goes against my point of LTE Advanced being the first true 4G tech, which used to be true, until they redefined HSPA+ and LTE as 4G. But, thinking of it int he following way is actually kind of more useful in some ways:

2G cellular data: upper tens to maybe 100-ish Kbit/sec rates (down)

3G cellular data: Couple of Megabits/sec (down), maybe 1Mbit/up

4G cellular data (counting current generation high-end as 4G): 10-30Mbit/sec (down), maybe 10ish up on a good day here in the USA

So the next real "generation" in this more "layman" way of describing it should give us 100+ Mbit/sec down, probably up to a few hundred. And then after that, we'll be getting to Gigabit speeds.

I expect to see the 100 to several hundred Megabit rates being fairly prevalent in the USA and other places by 2016, and Gigabit wireless cellular around the turn of the decade.

God, and I still remember my screeching 2400 baud modem... :D

Current T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon's 2x10Mhz LTE deployment can peak at 73.6Mbps. Average 5-12Mbps. No US carriers have more than 2x10Mhz LTE deployed at the moment, so you won't see much higher peak until Verizon deploys 2x20Mhz this year, which will peak at 150Mbps.

yKMynV8l.png


Keep in mind Verizon isn't even deploying LTE-Advanced, so understand that achieving 150Mbps doesn't mean your network is LTE-A. You just have to have more spectrum for wider channels.

That said, to scale it close to 1Gbps, you'd need 5 times 2x20Mhz for a max of 100Mhz of spectrum, and higher order MIMO. That's not happening as no carriers have that much spectrum. And no user equipment can bond more than two times 2x10Mhz, so 150Mbps is the limit.

Time to relax, there isn't a magic button that will make your phone magically go 1Gbps...
 
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chrmjenkins

macrumors 603
Oct 29, 2007
5,325
158
MD
Time to relax, there isn't a magic button that will make your phone magically go 1Gbps...

I've found that 20 Mbps is adequate for anything I've ever wanted to do. My phone regularly hits 30+ Mbps on T mobile (have a DAS on a church right next door) when at home and my cable is actually limited to 21 Mbps and it's never been an issue, so these posts fretting about more bandwidth are always amusing. I can understand for a tethering user though.
 

Nicky G

macrumors 65816
Mar 24, 2002
1,148
1,284
Baltimore
I've found that 20 Mbps is adequate for anything I've ever wanted to do. My phone regularly hits 30+ Mbps on T mobile (have a DAS on a church right next door) when at home and my cable is actually limited to 21 Mbps and it's never been an issue, so these posts fretting about more bandwidth are always amusing. I can understand for a tethering user though.

It's not what you are doing today. It's what having gobs of bandwidth allows for in the future, that isn't even possible now. I am exceptionally excited about ridiculous wireless bandwidth hitting over the next decade, it's going to allow for stuff that we literally haven't even yet imagined.

Very soon, most people will have a single computer, and it will be mobile. Everything else will just be an interface for that one computer. A huge amount of what you do with the "computer" will really be tapping into cloud (I hate that word) services.

All of the other interfaces -- for touch, screen, speakers, you name it -- will just connect wirelessly to your computer. Because at the end of the day, as long as you have low latency and good bandwidth, all you need to do is stream audio, video, and user interface inputs back and forth.

Eventually, your computer will go away completely, and all you'll EVER be using is an interface to something in the cloud. Again, as long as you can do high-quality low-latency streaming in both directions, having any processing or storage going on locally won't even matter.

This is clearly the direction things are going. Lots and lots of wireless bandwidth is going to be a KEY part of this evolution of computing. And mark my words, this is going to be the reality by the turn of the decade.
 

chrmjenkins

macrumors 603
Oct 29, 2007
5,325
158
MD
I have no doubt that more bandwidth will bring good things, including pressure on companies to up bandwidth on dedicated landlines. I find it hard to be overly happy at the idea of a single dedicated computing interface, however. I'm curious how the hobbyist/enthusiast community will respond to these tendencies. I want my personal device to be more intuitive and to understand my needs better, but that doesn't mean I don't want the option for dedicated hardware to evaporate.
 

Nicky G

macrumors 65816
Mar 24, 2002
1,148
1,284
Baltimore
I have no doubt that more bandwidth will bring good things, including pressure on companies to up bandwidth on dedicated landlines. I find it hard to be overly happy at the idea of a single dedicated computing interface, however. I'm curious how the hobbyist/enthusiast community will respond to these tendencies. I want my personal device to be more intuitive and to understand my needs better, but that doesn't mean I don't want the option for dedicated hardware to evaporate.

Average people used to know how to work on their cars, too, but that for the most part went away. I think computing is going to go in the same direction, already is, obviously. When I was getting really into computers originally, maybe 1991/1992 period, anyone who was using a computer, was into the BBS scene, on the Internet, etc. knew how to build a computer from scratch, using components. I'd wager that less than a couple of percent of computer users today can do that. Maybe even less than 1%.

I think there will always be room to muck about when it comes to server-side computing infrastructure, because that's where most of everything will actually be happening. But client-side? How many people hack their phone's hardware? Their computer screen? Speakers? Keyboard? That's all we'll really be sitting in front of.

Now, software? That's a different story. I think way more people should get into coding, and how to get people's APIs to talk to one another. That's where all the real exciting stuff is happening. Hardware is kind of a necessary evil, at the end of the day it's all about software. Put your energies there, I say!
 

chrmjenkins

macrumors 603
Oct 29, 2007
5,325
158
MD
Average people used to know how to work on their cars, too, but that for the most part went away. I think computing is going to go in the same direction, already is, obviously. When I was getting really into computers originally, maybe 1991/1992 period, anyone who was using a computer, was into the BBS scene, on the Internet, etc. knew how to build a computer from scratch, using components. I'd wager that less than a couple of percent of computer users today can do that. Maybe even less than 1%.

I think there will always be room to muck about when it comes to server-side computing infrastructure, because that's where most of everything will actually be happening. But client-side? How many people hack their phone's hardware? Their computer screen? Speakers? Keyboard? That's all we'll really be sitting in front of.

I take issue with the analogy. To me it's more like everyone owns a car and then suddenly they're all forced to take the bus (since computing power is now operator owned and shared). Perhaps I need to break out the cane and keep off lawn sign early.
 

name99

macrumors 68020
Jun 21, 2004
2,188
1,997
I would call carrier aggregation pretty interesting.



I think that trivializes the design effort that goes into building a device that has to be ergonomic, small and work in a variety of odd user-imposed conditions. It's not a simple thing to add antennas like that, else why would they have not done it yet? Of course, there's no question it would be of a big benefit. The full Rx and Tx diversity they added to the 4S for calls did help measurably.

Way to miss the point.
(a) Carrier aggregation requires more spectrum. I discussed that.
(b) I am not trivializing the difficulty of adding antennas. I AM pointing out that the work to do so, and much of the benefit derived, are INDEPENDENT of LTE-A.
 

chrmjenkins

macrumors 603
Oct 29, 2007
5,325
158
MD
Way to miss the point.
(a) Carrier aggregation requires more spectrum. I discussed that.

Not explicitly so, no. Carrier aggregation is what makes more spectrum interesting.

(b) I am not trivializing the difficulty of adding antennas. I AM pointing out that the work to do so, and much of the benefit derived, are INDEPENDENT of LTE-A.

You said it was a smarter path. I disputed that citing the difficulties, as did milan03, specifically mentioning the RE/CE headache that many antennas cause in a small form factor in addition to higher power dissipation.

I don't dispute the points you make in the quotes here, I'm just disputing that was the actual intent of what you said originally, more so in the second case. The first was merely an omission.
 
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MRSucks

macrumors member
Aug 9, 2013
98
0
... Another reason for the US duopoly to increase rates / fool their customers about their "game-changing" (actually stupid & greedy) plans.
 

terraphantm

macrumors 68040
Jun 27, 2009
3,814
663
Pennsylvania
That's certainly not correct. HSPA+42 will peak right under 35Mbps since 42Mbps advertised speed doesn't account for the overhead. LTE advertised peak throughput does include the overhead.

Here is T-Mobile's HSPA+42 in NYC compared to 2x5Mhz LTE network:

Image

I forgot about t-mobile. Problem with T-mobile is that the coverage is awful once you step outside of a city. Where I live, T-mobile is still mostly EDGE (Verizon and AT&T both have LTE though). Good luck getting anything near 42mbps on AT&T w/o LTE
 

milan03

macrumors 6502
Jul 16, 2002
440
13
New York City
I forgot about t-mobile. Problem with T-mobile is that the coverage is awful once you step outside of a city. Where I live, T-mobile is still mostly EDGE (Verizon and AT&T both have LTE though). Good luck getting anything near 42mbps on AT&T w/o LTE
T-Mobile works brilliant here in NYC. Remarkable performance on LTE, then fallback to HSPA+42 in AWS and another HSPA+21 in PCS. Beautiful!
 
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