iPad LTE Makes it Far Easier to Use Up Bandwidth Allotments

[DTphonehome]

Wirelessly posted

Wirelessly posted

4G LTE is NOT 10x faster. Stop the lies

It's max 40% faster than 3G HSPA, as research has shown for several years , and as the AT&T CEO admitted on the Q4 2011 conference call. As a consumer you should be upset at any company claiming 10x gains

Maybe on paper it's not 10x faster, but I know that I get about 1.8-2mbps on HSPA+, and about 18-20mbps on LTE. That's exactly 10x faster.

 

[G5isAlive]

And higher wattage backlights produce higher heat.

and don't forget if you are playing graphics intensive games your iPad won't charge.

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

Prices tend to drop over time as demand increases. I just hope this happens soon enough.

I disagree. You drop prices as your cost to supply decreases. Right now, no matter how broad each carrier's coverage is, they don't offer adequate coverage to allow everyone to use it. Thus, by setting a higher cost, they don't spread themselves too thin.

As their network becomes capable of taking on more people, they'll drop the price to that more people can afford it.

(This now prompts the question of how one prices software... there's no cost per copy sold, just a cost of developing the app... I haven't figured it out yet... I doubled my price from $1 to $2 and found it only decreased downloads by about 1/3... I'm wondering what will happen if I now raise it from $2 to $3... will I see a similar small drop in downloads and thus an increase in revenue, or will the price be too high and no one willing to pay for it?)

 

[hacksr00t]

Streaming vs Progressive download

So I believe the major problem will be large videos being watched that are in fact not streamed but sent to the device via progressive download.

If you open a 2gb video and only watch 200mb of it... By the time you finish your 200mb it has completed the 2gb download. Thus 2gb of data spent.

Be careful out there

 

[rdowns]

Just because the Wall Street Journal prints manufactured BS doesn't mean you have to write a story about it.

 

[jbaesman]

Let's just wait and see what happens with the iPhone 5

This is exactly why AT&T customers have held on to their unlimited plans despite their crappy service and horrid customer relations... I can see it now -- throttling will be a non-issue because they will decide its time to just dump all of those old customer plans and force everyone into new, pricier, tiered plans that still have you going over your limit... Who cares you paid through the nose for years and didn't get the full value for your dollar...

I understand networks have limited capacity and building out more capacity costs money... but then again, customers pay through the nose and AT&T posted a $3.8 BILLION profit for Q4 2011. Rather than padding their bonus checks, they should look at investing in the infrastructure to support the services they are selling everyone...

Don't get me wrong... I don't just despise AT&T... I realize their service is on par with everyone else... I just feel obligated to point the finger at them since they continue to take my money and give my family shoddy service...

 

[Terminal_Boy]

Wirelessly posted

LTE is costing the carriers billions to roll out. That cost must be passed on to their customers or they will go bust.

Some European carriers are only now starting to break even after deploying UMTS..

 

[ZipZap]

Faster network = more usage, but also more wasted buffered bandwidth. Suppose you're a youtube channel surfer and you often only watch the beginning 20-30% before switching. On 3G you mostly pay for what you actually watched, but LTE buffers faster so even if you stop a bad video early, you've probably still buffered/paid for the whole thing.

Then this is an implemention issue and there should be some controls for this on the ipad itself.

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So I believe the major problem will be large videos being watched that are in fact not streamed but sent to the device via progressive download.

If you open a 2gb video and only watch 200mb of it... By the time you finish your 200mb it has completed the 2gb download. Thus 2gb of data spent.

Be careful out there

Apple needs to fix this so we have control of how the download is performed. All that engineering power and they could not anticipate this as an issue. They designed OS5 for 3G not for LTE and there some work that needs to be done to optimize OS5 for LTE.

 

[dvdlovr24]

Wirelessly posted



Correct. There are old unlimited SIM cards floating around on eBay that you can buy and the seller will transfer service to you, but they're very pricey.

I'm one of those who still has an unlimited data AT&T sim card from my original iPad. I ended up getting a Verizon one because their LTE is way better in my area and was about to just cancel my AT&T card. Then I saw where these cards are going for crazy amounts on eBay thanks to your post. As much as I would rather have completely unlimited data for my iPad, AT&T doesn't expect to have any LTE in my area until the end of next year. I guess it's off to eBay i go.

 

[DTphonehome]

I'm one of those who still has an unlimited data AT&T sim card from my original iPad. I ended up getting a Verizon one because their LTE is way better in my area and was about to just cancel my AT&T card. Then I saw where these cards are going for crazy amounts on eBay thanks to your post. As much as I would rather have completely unlimited data for my iPad, AT&T doesn't expect to have any LTE in my area until the end of next year. I guess it's off to eBay i go.

Just pass along my 10% when the auction is over, thank you very much!

 

[dvdlovr24]

Just pass along my 10% when the auction is over, thank you very much!

I'll be sure to do that after ebay and paypal get their ridiculous amount.

 

[coder12]

Wanna talk data use. Since i got my iPad on Friday. Telus LTE in Canada.

Image

Am I converting that correctly? That's like... 78 gigabytes! What kind of data plans do you have in Canada?

 

[drambuie]

Am I converting that correctly? That's like... 78 gigabytes! What kind of data plans do you have in Canada?

It's a promotion the major carriers have. For $5 per month you have unlimited data for the first two months. Then, for the next four months you have double the normal data for each tier. I gues the purpose is to get customers used to consuming large amounts of data.

The normal minimum tier is $5 for 10MB. The purpose of that is to give a minimal billing for months in which you use no cellular data. The fee for 5GB is $35 - $36 per month, depending on carrier.

 

[coder12]

It's a promotion the major carriers have. For $5 per month you have unlimited data for the first two months. Then, for the next four months you have double the normal data for each tier. I gues the purpose is to get customers used to consuming large amounts of data.

The normal minimum tier is $5 for 10MB. The purpose of that is to give a minimal billing for months in which you use no cellular data. The fee for 5GB is $35 - $36 per month, depending on carrier.

Wow, that's well over twice the data I get for the same price. I am jealous of you all!

 

[Spectrum Abuser]

Wirelessly posted

4G LTE is NOT 10x faster. Stop the lies

It's max 40% faster than 3G HSPA, as research has shown for several years , and as the AT&T CEO admitted on the Q4 2011 conference call. As a consumer you should be upset at any company claiming 10x gains

It can be up to 10X faster then traditional 3G. They never claimed it always would, though. And LTE can easily be 10X faster then standard HSPA in ideal conditions due to HSPA offering around 2-5Mbps in real world tests and LTE offering 20Mbps-60Mbps.

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Am I converting that correctly? That's like... 78 gigabytes! What kind of data plans do you have in Canada?

It is indeed seventy eight gigabytes.

 

[erpbridge]

Well, to those who say to use it on landline Internet... Landline Internet has caps too. Not sure about Comcast, Rogers, Verizon, or most of the others... but I know ATT has limits of 150 on DSL and 250 on Uverse. Taking the screenshot of the fellow who used 70GB in a few days... He's halfway through a typical ATT DSL cap. If you can blow through 70GB in less than a week, you'll easily max out any landline Internet that's below about 300GB cap in less than a month.

 

[nozebleed]

Or you can watch video on wifi? I am hard pressed to find a place that doesn't have free wifi wherever i go, the only times i use LTE is traveling. literally, traveling. in the car, driving somewhere.

I'm beginning to think these morons are just jealous people that can't afford an iPad, or just want to make the owners of iPads not happy with their product. like a weird, "if your not happy I'm happy" attitude.

i love the screen, i don't mind the warmth, my wifi reception is great, i could care less if there is "bleed"(??? really?) the speakers are good enough for what it is, i have no problem with using LTE, my home button is perfect, the headphone jack is flush with the aluminum, no dead pixels (that i can speak of, i don't hold it pressed to my nose), the processor is fast enough

Did that cover everything? or am i missing something

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Wirelessly posted

4G LTE is NOT 10x faster. Stop the lies

It's max 40% faster than 3G HSPA, as research has shown for several years , and as the AT&T CEO admitted on the Q4 2011 conference call. As a consumer you should be upset at any company claiming 10x gains

On iPad (LTE) i get 28 mb/s download, 9 mb/s up. On iPhone 4 (3G) I get 3 mb/s down, 1 up. You're right, it isn't 10x, its like 9.7. Real world. Huntersville, NC.

I have picture proof from speedtest.app but i don't feel like going through taking pictures off phone/ipad, uploading to photo bucket, then posting here to show you're idiot.

 

[BornAgainMac]

Faster network = more usage, but also more wasted buffered bandwidth. Suppose you're a youtube channel surfer and you often only watch the beginning 20-30% before switching. On 3G you mostly pay for what you actually watched, but LTE buffers faster so even if you stop a bad video early, you've probably still buffered/paid for the whole thing.

That is a good point.

 

[pavvento]

Wirelessly posted

I think anyone who purchases a capped LTE plan is a fool. People are going to burn right through their caps and do nothing but complain.

Why even purchase the LTE version of the iPad unless you have an unlimited plan??? It's funny because most of the people who bought the LTE version of the iPad have a smartphone and really don't need it.

because some people know how to be responsible and exercise self control. I have the LTE iPad for times I need a connection to get things done and don't have WiFi. It is not my plan to sit and watch movies just because it is fast.

 

[mrxak]

The speed doesn't really matter. What matters is people's change in usage as a result of the speed increase.

I agree, data caps are ********, but if you are capped, why are you suddenly increasing your usage just because the speed is faster? Just use the same data amounts you were using before, and simply enjoy less time buffering, or quicker page loads.

 

[terraphantm]

Wirelessly posted

4G LTE is NOT 10x faster. Stop the lies

It's max 40% faster than 3G HSPA, as research has shown for several years , and as the AT&T CEO admitted on the Q4 2011 conference call. As a consumer you should be upset at any company claiming 10x gains

In theory, sure. In practice, LTE is about 10x faster on average. I'm lucky if I get 2mbps on my 4S, while most LTE devices get 20mbps pretty easily. If people were actually able to max out HSPA, then you would've had a point.

because some people know how to be responsible and exercise self control. I have the LTE iPad for times I need a connection to get things done and don't have WiFi. It is not my plan to sit and watch movies just because it is fast.

What's the point of having LTE then though? You could accomplish the same tasks on a 3G network while using less battery.

 

[Fandongo]

I hope this helps drive the carriers to offer better data plans. Canadian carriers seem to be notoriously bad for this. Look at the current data plans for the iPad 4G LTE: Rogers, Telus and Bell start their plans at 10 MB per month.

That wasn't a typo. Ten megabytes. Per month.

You could burn through that in ten seconds by watching a single YouTube video.

But hey, these are the same carriers that offer off-plan and roaming data rates at 3 cents per kilobyte. That's over $31,000 per GB of data!

Hahaha, I burn 10MB just thinking about the internet.

 

[gatortpk]

I hope this helps drive the carriers to offer better data plans. Canadian carriers seem to be notoriously bad for this. Look at the current data plans for the iPad 4G LTE: Rogers, Telus and Bell start their plans at 10 MB per month.

That wasn't a typo. Ten megabytes. Per month.

You could burn through that in ten seconds by watching a single YouTube video.

But hey, these are the same carriers that offer off-plan and roaming data rates at 3 cents per kilobyte. That's over $31,000 per GB of data!

I'm glad you pointed out that it wasn't a typo, I would have assumed! Wow, 3 cents per KB! I guess here in USA, we pay about 1 cent per MB. So compared to that roaming rate, we pay 3,000 times less. I don't get it. Even my Mother uses 50 MB on her iPhone per month (much more on an iPad probably), and she doesn't use much internet (on the iPhone). How much would a 50 MB plan cost on Rogers, Telus or Bell cost?

 

[Stridder44]

I hope this helps drive the carriers to offer better data plans. Canadian carriers seem to be notoriously bad for this. Look at the current data plans for the iPad 4G LTE: Rogers, Telus and Bell start their plans at 10 MB per month.

That wasn't a typo. Ten megabytes. Per month.

You could burn through that in ten seconds by watching a single YouTube video.

But hey, these are the same carriers that offer off-plan and roaming data rates at 3 cents per kilobyte. That's over $31,000 per GB of data!

How the hell is this considered okay by anybody?

 

[DESNOS]

Faster network = more usage, but also more wasted buffered bandwidth. Suppose you're a youtube channel surfer and you often only watch the beginning 20-30% before switching. On 3G you mostly pay for what you actually watched, but LTE buffers faster so even if you stop a bad video early, you've probably still buffered/paid for the whole thing.

It's worth noting how Netflix currently stops buffering once it reaches 4 minutes of buffered video, making the difference between 3G and LTE not that great, even if you don't watch the entire video. YouTube and streaming sites like it tend to be very lazy with that sort of thing.