International 4G iPad Models Will Work on AT&T, Not on LTE in Home Countries

[xinu]

I have read some comments about lack of 4G in Europe. To me, living in Sweden, that seems just like a rumour. I can confirm that I can get 80 Mbit/s with 30 GB monthly allowance for USD 70 / month. (top spec. subscribtion). Check yourself from map service at telia.se/privat/mobilt-bredband/merom/hastighetskarta/. We have a problem with Apple not delivering the hardware we have the infrastructure for.

I still cannot get it. What do you do with 80mbs speed when its useless after couple of 1080p Youtube clips? 30GB fills up quite fast with HD videos. How much takes lets say 1 hour of 1080p stream from NetFlix, Youtube, Hulu etc.. ? I'll bet that it is more than 2 gigs per hour.

Carriers are cheating. They dont have real problems with frequencies, it is pure CREED and nothing else. You gotta pay those billion dollar bonuses for the corporate elite, there is no money left to build up the infrastructure.

70 bucks sounds like rip-off but then Sweden is perhaps even more expensive country than Finland... Better wages too, of course..

 

[realityking]

While LTE is pretty expensive in Germany right now but coverage isn't all that bad: http://www.t-mobile.de/funkversorgung/inland/0,12418,15400-_,00.html (you have to select 4G / LTE at the bottom right).

Apple's page in Germany is at the very least misleading. It's a straight translation from the UK page (http://www.apple.com/uk/ipad/features/) which just mentions - in the fine print - "Data plan is sold separately. 4G LTE coverage is not available in all areas and varies by carrier. See your carrier for details."

Well my carrier is gonna tell me LTE is available.

 

[Chlloret]

Actually even Wikipedia differs from your definition.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3G

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4G

And considerinf the 'not achieved marks' here is a German video for you from Dusseldorf:

Fun part is at 1:20

Yes, that all says what I posted earlier? Where is the problem.

To your video, did you even watch it? The tester was in Vodafone headquarters in a dedicated 50Mbit cell and even there he averaged 13Mbs. Twice he reached a peak of 50 Mbits.
He loaded the Focus Main Page (a bitch of a page) in 9 seconds. Hmmmmm. I just opened the same page on my iPad2 on a lonely 7.2Mbit 3G conection and it was fully loaded in just under 11sec.
That is what all the fuss is about? Please. 75 Euros/month with a 20GB cut off and you can not even use it mobile (as he explained as well) An outgoing call needed 5 sec just to start since LTE is not supporting voice, incomming calls where delayed by up to 30 sec? Hello? On a phone? Some people might have hung up by then.
Those are conditions like with AT&T in New York, thanks, I stick with "3G" and 40Gbs real life downloads when the iPad3 is here.

 

[kdarling]

According to the ITU, HSPA+ and DC-HSDPA are 4G. Even LTE didn't meet the original standard, so they changed it.

True, few listen to the United Nations ITU committee. Heck, for years they classified EDGE as 3G, simply because it had the world "evolution" in its name.

Yes, the original iPhone used cellular triangulation as the sole source of location data. The GPS models now use cellular triangulation in addition to normal GPS. That's what A-GPS is.

Nope, that is NOT what A-GPS is. That's the slip Jobs made while speaking. A-GPS on iOS only involves GPS.

Cellular id (it's usually not triangulation) is a different locating technique.

So is WiFi hotspot locating.

Together they form what's called a "hybrid locating" method, but it is not A-GPS. As already explained, A-GPS for iOS is simply about getting assistance with satellite info.

 

[meatballs]

Sorry to disapoint you, but the Samsung Tablet did not accomplish something Apple could not do.

Does Apple offer an iPad that works on LTE 800/2600 bands? Nope. The question is, why not?

 

[xinu]

Elisa 4G is 19,90 euros/month 50mbit/s and no data limits.

Yes, it means I can download 50mbit/s speed 24/7/365 if I want and no extra charge or thottling.

It is not actually 4G more like 3.5G but still 50mbit/s so doesent matter what the name of the connection is.

 

[Chlloret]

Does Apple offer an iPad that works on LTE 800/2600 bands? Nope. The question is, why not?

For what? A iPad with a chip only supporting those two bands would cover about half of European proposed LTE networks. If they emerge. Maybe. In the future. A very small number of people (some cities in extreemly thin populated scandivia but not all of scandinavia, one and a half cities in germany, two streches of land in poland) could use it, if they pay the redicolous prices while having at the same time cheaper and faster UMTS conections available.
All the while sucking battery juice for breakfast and soon showing in the all so impotant tests that its going to be far from 10 or even 9 hours of battery life.
For travelers to the states these iPads would not give fast conections at all, bad for the image.
The way Apple did it, using the first energy efficient chip available just for the states (and not even there for all networks) AND the fastst conections here on EXISTING not proposed networks, gives a truly fast device worldwide.
LTE in Europe is not being build for mobile use, its for stationary home conections. Just look at the first available LTE phones, there a joke, making the iPhone 4S a Marathon runner what battery is concerned und only work as a phone when you switch LTE off.
There are years to come before LTE will replace the momentary faster, cheaper and way easier implemented GSM networks, there is absolutely no reason whats so ever to get a tablet, any tablet, now just because its suporting LTE.

Samsung brings it out, well it says it brings it out, simply so tjey are the first. Well, good for them, it will collect dust like all the other "iPad killers" that came and went over the years, far better spect, far cheaper, soooooo much better, "free" and "open" software ect pp.

They do there thing, Apple is doing there own. I can live with it. Very well. I own AAPL. And I do agree with the decission. Trying to implement a non existing and untestd chip to satisfy some nerds that would not even buy the product was never the way Apple worked.

 

[xinu]

For what? A iPad with a chip only supporting those two bands would cover about half of European proposed LTE networks. If they emerge. Maybe. In the future. A very small number of people (some cities in extreemly thin populated scandivia but not all of scandinavia, one and a half cities in germany, two streches of land in poland) could use it, if they pay the redicolous prices while having at the same time cheaper and faster UMTS conections available.
All the while sucking battery juice for breakfast and soon showing in the all so impotant tests that its going to be far from 10 or even 9 hours of battery life.
For travelers to the states these iPads would not give fast conections at all, bad for the image.
The way Apple did it, using the first energy efficient chip available just for the states (and not even there for all networks) AND the fastst conections here on EXISTING not proposed networks, gives a truly fast device worldwide.
LTE in Europe is not being build for mobile use, its for stationary home conections. Just look at the first available LTE phones, there a joke, making the iPhone 4S a Marathon runner what battery is concerned und only work as a phone when you switch LTE off.
There are years to come before LTE will replace the momentary faster, cheaper and way easier implemented GSM networks, there is absolutely no reason whats so ever to get a tablet, any tablet, now just because its suporting LTE.

They do there thing, Apple is doing there own. I can live with it. Very well. I own AAPL. And I do agree with the decission. Trying to implement a non existing and untestd chip to satisfy some nerds that would not even buy the product was never the way Apple worked.

The new iPad has 11.000mAh battery vs. iPad 2 has 6500mAh (approx) so the new iPad draws quite lot of power..

LTE here is dirty cheap I just found out that Elisa has unlimited 4G contracts for 19,90 euros and only the speed is limited to 50 mbit/s

Unlimited Speed at 100+ mbit/s is 39,90 euros not bad at all and yes unlimited tethering and unlimited down/up without throttling.

Well, we invented GSM and whole mobile business started here so maybe thats the reason. Go and figure.

 

[Chlloret]

The new iPad has 11.000mAh battery vs. iPad 2 has 6500mAh (approx) so the new iPad draws quite lot of power..

LTE here is dirty cheap I just found out that Elisa has unlimited 4G contracts for 19,90 euros and only the speed is limited to 50 mbit/s

Unlimited Speed at 100+ mbit/s is 39,90 euros not bad at all and yes unlimited tethering and unlimited down/up without throttling.

Well, we invented GSM and whole mobile business started here so maybe thats the reason. Go and figure.

When will you realise that a stationary home service is fundamentally different to a mobile service? One got nothing to do with the other. Elisas 4G service in Finnland (and only there) is absolutely useless once you leave your house and move around. LTE does not support the mobile handshake, you can not move smoothly between (very small) cells.
But thats exacly what you do with a phone or tablet. In your home you simply use a Wifi AP to connect any Tablet to the data service. Thats no problem and is not requiering to have LTE on board the tablet.

The increase in Battery is only in part due to the LTE chip (the wifi version is rumored to have the same battery) but is needed for the screen. That needs way more light and more power to display that amount of pixels, the vastly improved quad core GPU as well is not going to run on love and hot air.

A battery friendly 2600mhz chip however is not in production yet, a "global" chip as well will not be available before the summer, at least not in numbers.

 

[Johnba]

I was going to reply but rjohnstone explained it perfectly:



Incredibly there's 4 different 700 bands. I hope these chipsets improve to encompass multiple LTE bands for the next iPhone. Should be interesting to see what qualcomm has available over the next 6 months.

It's not just the baseband support. You also need the antenna. I'm guessing all ipads have the same baseband chip, but you need to have specific antennas. Supporting both the 700 bands is difficult, but supporting AT&T's requirement of 800,1700/2100 LTE, 850/1900 GSM/UMTS and Verizon's requirement of 700 LTE, 850/1900 CDMA, 900/1800GSM is too much.

Just because the Baseband can support the flavors doesn't mean a device can without a huge antenna footprint...

----------

When will you realise that a stationary home service is fundamentally different to a mobile service? One got nothing to do with the other. Elisas 4G service in Finnland (and only there) is absolutely useless once you leave your house and move around. LTE does not support the mobile handshake, you can not move smoothly between (very small) cells.
But thats exacly what you do with a phone or tablet. In your home you simply use a Wifi AP to connect any Tablet to the data service. Thats no problem and is not requiering to have LTE on board the tablet.

The increase in Battery is only in part due to the LTE chip (the wifi version is rumored to have the same battery) but is needed for the screen. That needs way more light and more power to display that amount of pixels, the vastly improved quad core GPU as well is not going to run on love and hot air.

A battery friendly 2600mhz chip however is not in production yet, a "global" chip as well will not be available before the summer, at least not in numbers.

What is your LTE experience based on? It sounds like you are confusing WiMAX and LTE. LTE is a fully mobile cellular standard and support hand overs. I'd have to check if high speed (over 120km/h) are support yet, but it's at least in the spec...

 

[njvan]

That's disappointing. Especially considering I'll be in the U.S. about 0% of the time I own it.

 

[Johnba]

True, few listen to the United Nations ITU committee. Heck, for years they classified EDGE as 3G, simply because it had the world "evolution" in its name.



Nope, that is NOT what A-GPS is. That's the slip Jobs made while speaking. A-GPS on iOS only involves GPS.

Cellular id (it's usually not triangulation) is a different locating technique.

So is WiFi hotspot locating.

Together they form what's called a "hybrid locating" method, but it is not A-GPS. As already explained, A-GPS for iOS is simply about getting assistance with satellite info.

Thanks for elevating the discussion. A-GPS uses the wireless network to send information to the phone to focus the GPS scan so that instead of listening for 26 satellites the phone focuses on the ones the network predicts are the most likely to be heard. This speed the time of acquisition. This is location information is only available to the handset unless the handset specifically shares it with the network. The network can use triangulation to locate the handset for things like emergency call location. Apple augments this with WiFi look up table information where the SSIDs are compared to the cell registration to give the handset another data point to fix it's location.

I worked very hard to get EDGE to be a 3G technology and there were higher speed schemes for EDGE to support TDMA evolution. Thankfully we were able as an industry to put at least on more technology to bed in favor of harmonization on UMTS...

 

[xinu]

When will you realise that a stationary home service is fundamentally different to a mobile service? One got nothing to do with the other. Elisas 4G service in Finnland (and only there) is absolutely useless once you leave your house and move around. LTE does not support the mobile handshake, you can not move smoothly between (very small) cells.
But thats exacly what you do with a phone or tablet. In your home you simply use a Wifi AP to connect any Tablet to the data service. Thats no problem and is not requiering to have LTE on board the tablet.

The increase in Battery is only in part due to the LTE chip (the wifi version is rumored to have the same battery) but is needed for the screen. That needs way more light and more power to display that amount of pixels, the vastly improved quad core GPU as well is not going to run on love and hot air.

A battery friendly 2600mhz chip however is not in production yet, a "global" chip as well will not be available before the summer, at least not in numbers.

There is no "stationary home service" 4G or 3G contracts here. Well perhaps in Lappland some areas because it is almost the size of State Illinois and around 190.000 people. Illinois has 12 million people. Been there, Chicago in 1997 nice place but crappy networks (or was back then at least)

On the road 3G works just fine, I can even download torrents with my Android phone, while driving. Thats just cooooool

in Cities the 4G network is rapidly expanding here and soon will cover over 90% of whole country, as 3G does too.

It is not somekind of Magic thing altough AT&T and other rip-off US carriers are trying to lie to you. It is just air, there is plenty of room to move data around.

Perhaps our networks are better because our goverment actually demands the carriers to provide network services to all citizens, rural too. And it is good business, Operators have customers and goverment get more taxes and we get free healthcare. Easy !!!

PS. USA Gov spends far more tax money from GDP to healthcare than scandic countries or Canada. You got your businesses badly screwed up there. Nothing works, everything seems to cost million bucks though.

 

[Johnba]

My experience last May with O2 in the UK and and O2 in Germany. UK was much worse than Germany, but both were absolutely atrocious compared to AT&T here in the States. England wasn't too bad, but I stayed mostly around London. I took my little cousins to Legoland (in Windsor). Full signal there. Full signal GPRS. Absolutely useless. Even in the greater London area dead zones abound.

Northern Ireland, well, it's 3G in Belfast. But outside Belfast mostly a mixture of GPRS and no service. Considered myself thankful to have EDGE at my grandparents' house. EDGE never seemed so good before. At least in the US, GPRS is almost unheard of.

Germany, good 3G in the cities, but overloaded beyond belief (slow as dirt) in parts of Berlin). For the most part, EDGE between cities. Much better than the UK, but still, nothing like AT&T here in the US.

Granted, network matters. I'm looking at just one network. But still, O2 is not generally the one to have a terrible reputation. I don't want to think how bad my experience with Orange would have been (used them in Switzerland. Coverage was fine but network was overloaded beyond belief).

Meteor in Ireland and TIM in Italy both worked absolutely fabulously... so obviously my observations aren't of every network or every country.

All this much cheaper than paying AT&T roaming (Germany was pricey - like 30EUR for a SIM to use data while I was there. Vs. £10/EUR10 almost universal in other countries).

And again, looking at one network may not be fair. But wow, O2 in the UK is so atrocious I don't know how anyone puts up with it (other than price...)

One thing to consider. If you used your AT&T phone you only had access to the 1800MHz network, so no UMTS or the better 900MHz. I suffer with my Nokia E71 (AT&T model) for navigation, but anything else is miserable...

----------

There is no "stationary home service" 4G or 3G contracts here. Well perhaps in Lappland some areas because it is almost the size of State Illinois and around 190.000 people. Illinois has 12 million people. Been there, Chicago in 1997 nice place but crappy networks (or was back then at least)

On the road 3G works just fine, I can even download torrents with my Android phone, while driving. Thats just cooooool

in Cities the 4G network is rapidly expanding here and soon will cover over 90% of whole country, as 3G does too.

It is not somekind of Magic thing altough AT&T and other rip-off US carriers are trying to lie to you. It is just air, there is plenty of room to move data around.

Perhaps our networks are better because our goverment actually demands the carriers to provide network services to all citizens, rural too. And it is good business, Operators have customers and goverment get more taxes and we get free healthcare. Easy !!!

PS. USA Gov spends far more tax money from GDP to healthcare than scandic countries or Canada. You got your businesses badly screwed up there. Nothing works, everything seems to cost million bucks though.

I think the Spaniard is referring to the German (and French) requirement that 800 be built out in communities smaller than 50k first before moving to larger than 50k. This led T-Mobile to lead their LTE roll out with T-Online as ADSL replacement service. This should not be understood to be ONLY fixed line replacement, but the fastest way to show the regulators that the operators are addressing the rural needs.

P.S. I worked with Nokia's Navigator devices from our first visit to AT&T labs in 1997. A-GPS is better than GPS. what is different is the degree of optimization in the device. Today the GPS is a nice add on, not the focus of the phone. Oh and Sonera will let me use over 3GB a month, but they drop my speed. This is part of my subscription. (oh and that's 7 Euros a month)

 

[Chlloret]

What is your LTE experience based on? It sounds like you are confusing WiMAX and LTE. LTE is a fully mobile cellular standard and support hand overs. I'd have to check if high speed (over 120km/h) are support yet, but it's at least in the spec...

I use a USB Stick in combination with a MBP. I have contracts (not prepaid) for Vodafone in Germany (with LTE option) and Movistar here in Spain, I have a grandfathered AT&T unlimided thats being used in NY,NY and FLA. Spain got only test networks what LTE is concerned but I get consistend 35Mbs speed (up to 42Mbs) on the go in there UMTS service. LTE in Germany is patchy at best, outside Cologne non existant because there rural service is not accepting roaming mobiles. They permanentLy fall back to 3G and manage at best 7,2 Mbs. But in there defense, usage in densly populated Germany is heavy and Vodafone is one of the better networks. They have besides t-mobile (way better then in the States) two outfits called O2 and e-plus, both practicly unusable within cities because of overbooking and outside cities because they lack a network.
Here in Spain Movistar is the main provider, there are 3 others, incl. Vodafone, Service is generally as advertised and way cheaper then in Germany, where there main phrase is "up to" what speed is concerned.
Wimax is popular here in Spain, but still expensive and quite limited in speed, you get home lines with 4Mbs down AND up (simetrical) and they do deliver that speed pretty much 90% of the time.
Throttling is common and acepted in Germany, in Spain its in the mobile contract but is generally not put into action.
At&T send me several sms regarding "unusual data use" and wants me to change into a limited contract (incl. a new shiny iPhone 4S) but I see no reason for that.
AT&T service in Florida is generally good, in New York sometimes non existent. Shame and strange, I do not think it will improve greatly with LTE, I do not have coverage in Florida and on Long Island things move rather slowly anyway.

I know the handover is in the specs, but Vodafone in Germany seems not to know about it.

 

[Johnba]

I use a USB Stick in combination with a MBP. I have contracts (not prepaid) for Vodafone in Germany (with LTE option) and Movistar here in Spain, I have a grandfathered AT&T unlimided thats being used in NY,NY and FLA. Spain got only test networks what LTE is concerned but I get consistend 35Mbs speed (up to 42Mbs) on the go in there UMTS service. LTE in Germany is patchy at best, outside Cologne non existant because there rural service is not accepting roaming mobiles. They permanentLy fall back to 3G and manage at best 7,2 Mbs. But in there defense, usage in densly populated Germany is heavy and Vodafone is one of the better networks. They have besides t-mobile (way better then in the States) two outfits called O2 and e-plus, both practicly unusable within cities because of overbooking and outside cities because they lack a network.
Here in Spain Movistar is the main provider, there are 3 others, incl. Vodafone, Service is generally as advertised and way cheaper then in Germany, where there main phrase is "up to" what speed is concerned.
Wimax is popular here in Spain, but still expensive and quite limited in speed, you get home lines with 4Mbs down AND up (simetrical) and they do deliver that speed pretty much 90% of the time.
Throttling is common and acepted in Germany, in Spain its in the mobile contract but is generally not put into action.
At&T send me several sms regarding "unusual data use" and wants me to change into a limited contract (incl. a new shiny iPhone 4S) but I see no reason for that.
AT&T service in Florida is generally good, in New York sometimes non existent. Shame and strange, I do not think it will improve greatly with LTE, I do not have coverage in Florida and on Long Island things move rather slowly anyway.

I know the handover is in the specs, but Vodafone in Germany seems not to know about it.

Voda is using the 2600MHz as their mobility LTE and from what I can see aren't rolling out 800 much at all. Spain is not allowing LTE until TV interference with Morocco is agreed, so don't hold your breath. In the US in NY 700 LTE should help considerably, but that's because no one is on it yet...I know that Verizon was focused on NY, but I don't know about AT&T. I think they were waiting for the T-Mobile deal that failed. I didn't mean any disrespect by referring to you as the Spaniard, just couldn't see your screen name.

 

[KPOM]

At&T send me several sms regarding "unusual data use" and wants me to change into a limited contract (incl. a new shiny iPhone 4S) but I see no reason for that.
AT&T service in Florida is generally good, in New York sometimes non existent. Shame and strange, I do not think it will improve greatly with LTE, I do not have coverage in Florida and on Long Island things move rather slowly anyway.

I know the handover is in the specs, but Vodafone in Germany seems not to know about it.

In NYC, the issue is capacity. Almost without fail, from 9:00-6:00 at my office, I can get 4 bars of signal but messages won't go through and calls often drop. This doesn't happen on weekends, or even on semi-holidays like Presidents Day when the government and banks are off but the rest of us are working.

LTE might help this a little at least on the data front, since it is more efficient and there are fewer people using it. However, spectrum will still be an issue. That's one reason I was actually hoping the FCC would approve AT&T's purchase of T-Mobile. T-Mobile has an inadequate infrastructure but lots of capacity. It works well in Manhattan, but poorly in the suburbs. However, now that the deal is dead, AT&T will need to do something else to improve capacity. They are starting to "encourage" 2G phone users to upgrade, so I'm guessing within a few years they will shut off GSM/EDGE.

 

[Johnba]

In NYC, the issue is capacity. Almost without fail, from 9:00-6:00 at my office, I can get 4 bars of signal but messages won't go through and calls often drop. This doesn't happen on weekends, or even on semi-holidays like Presidents Day when the government and banks are off but the rest of us are working.

LTE might help this a little at least on the data front, since it is more efficient and there are fewer people using it. However, spectrum will still be an issue. That's one reason I was actually hoping the FCC would approve AT&T's purchase of T-Mobile. T-Mobile has an inadequate infrastructure but lots of capacity. It works well in Manhattan, but poorly in the suburbs. However, now that the deal is dead, AT&T will need to do something else to improve capacity. They are starting to "encourage" 2G phone users to upgrade, so I'm guessing within a few years they will shut off GSM/EDGE.

They've already told device manufacturers that no new 2G devices are approved. No cities and no codec for 3G voice have been shared with me, but the target is clear. 2G will die in the US on AT&T over the next 2-3 years...

 

[KPOM]

Voda is using the 2600MHz as their mobility LTE and from what I can see aren't rolling out 800 much at all.

Is that going to cause issues? Sprint/Clearwire have 2500MHz spectrum here, and they are regarded as having the worst possible allocation as far as LTE is concerned, since that signal won't travel far.

I'll find out in a week how Verizon's LTE signal works here in NYC, since I opted for the Verizon iPad because they are including hotspot while AT&T isn't. They and AT&T both use 700MHz spectrum, but different frequencies within that space. That, along with Verizon's fallback of CDMA EVDO vs HSPA+ is why a separate Verizon version was necessary.

----------

They've already told device manufacturers that no new 2G devices are approved. No cities and no codec for 3G voice have been shared with me, but the target is clear. 2G will die in the US on AT&T over the next 2-3 years...

Now it makes sense why AT&T disabled the 3G on/off toggle switch in iOS 5.1.

 

[Johnba]

Is that going to cause issues? Sprint/Clearwire have 2500MHz spectrum here, and they are regarded as having the worst possible allocation as far as LTE is concerned, since that signal won't travel far.

I'll find out in a week how Verizon's LTE signal works here in NYC, since I opted for the Verizon iPad because they are including hotspot while AT&T isn't. They and AT&T both use 700MHz spectrum, but different frequencies within that space. That, along with Verizon's fallback of CDMA EVDO vs HSPA+ is why a separate Verizon version was necessary.

Clearwire was using 2500MHz "creatively". It was not specified how it could be used and they found out that in fact they can't use it. 2600MHz is an ITU specified LTE frequency that will work well in dense cities or campuses like airports where the MIMO RF of LTE will actually speed up data transmission over UMTS. where 2600MHz isn't as good is in penetrating buildings, so micro sites and lots of towers will have to be deployed. Many European counties are doing 800 MHz for geographical coverage and 2600 for dense urban. Eventually we will see 800/2600 LTE in Europe, but that with 900/1800/2100 is tough today and it's due to physics not silicon, so it will be tough nut to crack.

 

[Chlloret]

Voda is using the 2600MHz as their mobility LTE and from what I can see aren't rolling out 800 much at all. Spain is not allowing LTE until TV interference with Morocco is agreed, so don't hold your breath. In the US in NY 700 LTE should help considerably, but that's because no one is on it yet...I know that Verizon was focused on NY, but I don't know about AT&T. I think they were waiting for the T-Mobile deal that failed. I didn't mean any disrespect by referring to you as the Spaniard, just couldn't see your screen name.

Thats ok, I am originally German but live in Spain and are Stateside every other month.
I'm really not waiting for the LTE here, the UMTS coverage is very good, both on 900 and 1800, so there really is no reason to "upgrade" for a few didgits on paper that probably never materialize in the real world.
In NYC LTE is hailed to be the savior but again, lets wait and see. Even if it works, a million iPads and the same number of iPhones in autum will eat the bandwith like nothing else.
NOTHING will convince me to go to Verizon. Bad karma
We will see when I got the new iPad, I can put it to the test easter.

I do realize that its quite a challange to cover a place like NYC, covering a country like Finland, thinking of the possible users, is childsplay against that.

 

[xinu]

Thats ok, I am originally German but live in Spain and are Stateside every other month.
I'm really not waiting for the LTE here, the UMTS coverage is very good, both on 900 and 1800, so there really is no reason to "upgrade" for a few didgits on paper that probably never materialize in the real world.
In NYC LTE is hailed to be the savior but again, lets wait and see. Even if it works, a million iPads and the same number of iPhones in autum will eat the bandwith like nothing else.
NOTHING will convince me to go to Verizon. Bad karma
We will see when I got the new iPad, I can put it to the test easter.

I do realize that its quite a challange to cover a place like NYC, covering a country like Finland, thinking of the possible users, is childsplay against that.

So why South Koreans have the fastest mobile networks in the world then? Are they more sparsely populated than we here in Finland?
The more density --> more clients --> more money --> more speed
NYC is so broke that they just cannot put decent networks there? poor poor NYC glad I dont live there. Sounds awful.

You are not making sense at all. No logic.

But maybe USA catches up in next decade and you can surf the www with your mobile phones. Now your situation is quite sad..

And you are saying that LTE is useless crap, cannot use it unless you are stationary? And then you will use WiFi anyway.. So why Apple put those words crappiest LTE chips on their Resolutionary iPads then at the first place?

And then you tell us that you own AAPL and you still feel that Apple makes everything logically and right..

 

[KPOM]

I do realize that its quite a challange to cover a place like NYC, covering a country like Finland, thinking of the possible users, is childsplay against that.

True, but China seems to have better mobile coverage than the US, and they have 4x the number of people and about the same number of mobile users. That said, they probably don't have the same concerns about zoning and "not in my backyard" syndrome that we get in the US (if they want to put up a cell tower, they'll just go ahead and do it).

 

[xinu]

In NYC, the issue is capacity. Almost without fail, from 9:00-6:00 at my office, I can get 4 bars of signal but messages won't go through and calls often drop. This doesn't happen on weekends, or even on semi-holidays like Presidents Day when the government and banks are off but the rest of us are working.

No, the issue is crappy network providers that are ripping you off.

High-Speed networks work just fine in Japan, China, Korea and oh boy those are much more populated than some small little New York.

 

[Chlloret]

In NYC, the issue is capacity. Almost without fail, from 9:00-6:00 at my office, I can get 4 bars of signal but messages won't go through and calls often drop. This doesn't happen on weekends, or even on semi-holidays like Presidents Day when the government and banks are off but the rest of us are working.

LTE might help this a little at least on the data front, since it is more efficient and there are fewer people using it. However, spectrum will still be an issue. That's one reason I was actually hoping the FCC would approve AT&T's purchase of T-Mobile. T-Mobile has an inadequate infrastructure but lots of capacity. It works well in Manhattan, but poorly in the suburbs. However, now that the deal is dead, AT&T will need to do something else to improve capacity. They are starting to "encourage" 2G phone users to upgrade, so I'm guessing within a few years they will shut off GSM/EDGE.

You are right, signal is always good but there is nothing coming down the line.
LTE is not for voice, so it will maybe free data channels and I'm guessing the low 700mhz frequency is helping on the penetration front but the fact that few people are on it will change rapidly from friday.
My hope for my time in NYC with the new iPad is VoIp and imessage, if that works over the LTE, at least in the beginning, it would be a great help.
I'm there on easter, but then, as you say, during the hollydays its not too bad anyway.
In FLA the coverage for LTE is a long way off in my swamp but 3G is doing just fine.
2G coverage will fade, sure, they want those bands as well. I think a small price to pay. Long gone are the days where a cell could last two weeks.