4G - Your thoughts?

Teledude

Teledude

Teledude

Soldato
Joined
4 Dec 2003
Posts
2,847
So what do we all think?! :D

For me personally I am not overly excited by it right now :o

Can't imagine the coverage being too good this year and to be honest 3G/HSDPA does me just fine - I can web browse / email / stream to my hearts content with minimal buffering - have even occasionally pulled down over 300mb over H before @ over 600k/sec :)
For those occasions where signal is poor, I can generally pick up openzone/fon anyway :D

My next phone will be the note 2 on my o2 simplicity tariff and I wont consider upgrading because of LTE for a while yet.
 
Nice to have, not a dealbreaker and not worth a significant amount more for.

Better 3G coverage is a better precedent for me. It provides 90% of what I need.
 
Yeah, personally I find HSPA is absolutely fine for all my needs, so I wouldn't mind if my next phone didn't have 4G at all. If they rolled HSPA out across the whole country first I'd be much happier. The fact that I get GPRS in my neighbourhood until I get over the hill into town just annoys me :(.
 
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I can see it taking the best part of a decade to get 4G rolled out nationwide, so there's no real urgency in getting a 4G phone. I suspect 4G MiFi-type devices will be more popular, especially for people with wifi only tablets and laptops.
 
I am interested in it and once it becomes viable then I will be looking for a phone that has it. By viable I mean both in price for the tariff but also the coverage. I was planning on upgrading the iphone 5 due to the 4G however now things have progressed as they have, I am quite happy to keep my 4 for another year or two until they sort out the 4G network (and what frequency everyone is using etc). Until then an upgrade seems pointless to me.
 
Would I like 4G? Yes

Would I pay a fiver extra for it? Yes, probably
Would I pay any more than that? Doubtful

Would I take 4G capability into consideration when buying my next handset? Yes
Would it be one of the main considerations when buying my next handset? No, probably not
 
Shamikebab said:
Need regular 3G first.
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You won't get it.
4g travels further than 3G signal, it's a waste of time now investing in 3G.

I can't wait, but then I travel around a lot with work and often stay in a fan with nothing to do all shift. So use mobile Internet a lot. So with that in mind ill be an early adopter as long as their is silly low limits or an insane cost. Willing to pay premium, but not an insane cost. Also hope theirs a tethering option, to save a bit of cost overall.

EE initial release won't improve range much, but once the auction happens end of next year, it should mean rural houses can get decent speed Internet.


Saundie said:
I can see it taking the best part of a decade to get 4G rolled out nationwide, so there's no real urgency in getting a 4G phone. I suspect 4G MiFi-type devices will be more popular, especially for people with wifi only tablets and laptops.
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You would be wrong, part of the contract in the auction, dictates this to the providers. By 2017 there's should be 98% coverage and EE has allready said 2014 for their 98% coverage, this is made easier due to signal traveling far further than 3G.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-19543042
Everything Everywhere, which will now be known as just EE, will continue the rollout into the new year, and aims to provide 4G to 98% of the UK by 2014.
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Glaucus said:
You would be wrong, part of the contract in the auction, dictates this to the providers. By 2017 there's should be 98% coverage and EE has allready said 2014 for their 98% coverage, this is made easier due to signal traveling far further than 3G.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-19543042
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I might be wrong, but you're going to have to wait until 2022 to be able to say definitively ;)

Joking aside, I hope I am mistaken. I would very much like to see decent 4G coverage sooner rather than later, especially for those in areas without ADSL. I just don't hold out much hope of it happening at the rate EE claim it will.
 
Glaucus said:
EE initial release won't improve range much, but once the auction happens end of next year, it should mean rural houses can get decent speed Internet.[/url]
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By that time EE are aiming to have 70% coverage so range will be greatly improved throughout 2013 and before you say the auctions are meant to happen..
 
Richie said:
By that time EE are aiming to have 70% coverage so range will be greatly improved throughout 2013 and before you say the auctions are meant to happen..
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That's coverage, not range.
They need the new bandwidths to increase the range of the transmissions from the antennas.
 
Upgrades are never a bad thing, depending on costs.

But just how fast does internet on your phone need to be? I would think upgrading the UK (not just mobile, landline as well) to IPv6 was more important.
 
Woden said:
Upgrades are never a bad thing, depending on costs.

But just how fast does internet on your phone need to be? I would think upgrading the UK (not just mobile, landline as well) to IPv6 was more important.
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4g(after the auctions) frequencies travel a lot further, so you need far less actual upgrades and installations. This is the biggest benefit, which people overlook.
People say upgrade 3G first, why? It's pointless and would cost far more.

Also 4g is not just mobile Internet it is also home/business broadband, which is essential for the economy in the modern world. Again this is written into the contracts for the bandwidth auction next year.

Meaning rural business/houses that can only get 512kb, will receive massive speed upgrades.
 
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