Explainer: What is Gigabit LTE?

Julio Franco

Posts: 9,092   +2,043
Staff member
Until data caps get increased to a usable amount. 450/600/gigabit is useless for everyone. At&t charges an arm and a leg for unlimted. Sprint and T-mobile have unlimited but there networks aren't as big (T-mobile) or good (sprint) as Verizon/At&t. But T-mobile is getting better and better every year. So maybe in 2/3 years things will change for the better.

Plans are slowly getting more data. But they are moving at a snails pace. But I will say that all the noise T-mobile has made has gotten me more data from Verizon at a better rate.
 
Having this speed with those ridiculous data packages can be compare to have a Ferrari with a 10$ a month allocation for gas : absolutely useless.

What is this obsession for speed we can't use ???? How about to offer better data packages instead ???
 
Gigabit LTE explained. Reduced health in the community due to increased RF pollution.
 
Signal strength can be for voice or data; remember some carries no longer differentiate between the two. When I have a strong signal on my meter, I don't worry about rebuffering or lag much at all. And it's a good point: SO many people still talk about signal strength (or any signal) a lot more than data throughput. Big cities, or small towns, reliability matters more than speed for most people.
 
Gigabit...LMAO
In my neck of the woods S.W. Missouri...I'm lucky during the hours of 5am to 1am to get 8-10mbs
In "non peak" hours, I MIGHT get 12-15mbs...now, if I go to Tulsa, I get 30-60mbs
at any time. In the mid Missouri area (around Jeff City/Columbia), I'll get 40-50 at any time.
The at&t network here is NOT heavy enough to handle the data load.
 
Gigabit...LMAO
In my neck of the woods S.W. Missouri...I'm lucky during the hours of 5am to 1am to get 8-10mbs
In "non peak" hours, I MIGHT get 12-15mbs...now, if I go to Tulsa, I get 30-60mbs
at any time. In the mid Missouri area (around Jeff City/Columbia), I'll get 40-50 at any time.
The at&t network here is NOT heavy enough to handle the data load.

and a hellish lot of other places. I do not anticipate this getting improving, as a (very) few megalopolis are the only measurement needed to Define performance.

OT, (what else is new Phr3d?):
I'm gonna crowd-fund a new router - plain jane, good performance wifi and put the modem Tim described in this article to handle all bonding for standard landline ISP work. The new feature will be failover to AT&T 100GB of permanent data, available in increments of UP TO 10 GB in a month, so we can live with our miserable-pitiful-dropsAllahTime 'looking-up'-even-google.com high speed cable ISP (I live in an older section of a large city-they're obviously Never gonna make it better after five years of many business complaints). No Per Month horseshyte (no carryover, Duhh), just a WAD of pre-paid cel-data to use as needed with a monthly limit so AT&T don't get worried (anyone else on a cable connection get endless "looking up" web-link delays, Not DNS related, just poor US cable ISP -- doesn't happen on our DSL connection).
end rant
 
Last edited:
Surely it seems overkill with current datacaps... But I can easly see this as the killer of ADSL and Cable internet in the not so far future... The telcos kill 2 rabbits with one shot, building cellphone coverage and internet access for home users in one move... I live in Brazil, and downhere ADSL and Cable internet is the most often used solution in 90% of the cases... 4G LTE network is not that great, the best I can get often is 6Mbps on a snapdragon 810 cellphone.
It`s getting each year more costier to the telcos to keep the pots infrastructure (phone poles, etc) mainly because of larbor costs... Fibre infrastructure here in Brazil is the bare minimum to answer for small office/enterprise use, and is even more costier than POTS...
That`s why I think GbLTE is really going to be huge in developing countries, like Brazil.
 
Back