AT&T Promises To Expand LTE To More US Markets 105
WIn5t0n writes "Even though AT&T has now promoted itself to the 'Largest 4G Network' (HSPA+), it is still lagging far behind in advancing its LTE Coverage. AT&T's largest competitor, Verizon, has turned up the heat on the company now that it claims to cover 75 percent of US population with LTE, while AT&T's network only fully covers a few cities. However, AT&T has recognized consumer unrest and has planned to expand its 4G LTE coverage into '48 new markets' by the end of the year. With the iPhone 5 (rumored to have LTE capabilities) likely to be in consumers hands by the end of this month, AT&T is now feeling the pressure to make sure its customers can take full advantage of their new phones on a faster network. The company's full rollout of 4G LTE coverage is not scheduled to be complete until at least 2013."
Wonder if they'll offer it to MVNOs (Score:4, Insightful)
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Don't expect much. MVNOs typically only have rights to sell ancient tech... eg. 2G phones when 3G was new, and now 3G phones while LTE is rolling out.
That's why it was such a huge deal that Sprint recently allowed MVNOs to use their LTE network... Imagine cheap, pre-paid 4G LTE ala Boost / Virgin Mobile. It could have a huge impact in driving down consumer costs, and driving more customers to Sprint, potentially growing them to the point that they aren't disadvantaged when competing with AT&T and Ve
YAAA Reach those data caps FAAASTER!!!! (Score:3, Funny)
Nothing matters from AT&T until they remove all data caps and follow Sprint and T-Mobile's lead.
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Has T-Mobile gotten rid of the 5GB cap where after you get throttled?
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No, I just got throttled last month after 5GB.
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too bad sprint has the slowest LTE and their 3G is slightly faster than dial up
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I just switched to T-Mobile yesterday on their new unlimited (and non-throttled) plan. T-mob is SUPER fast around here. Time for AT&T (and Verizon) to catch up with T-Mobile and Sprint.
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I can't speak for AT&T's non-LTE markets, but they rock in South Florida... especially compared to Sprint. Sprint has sucked beyond belief here for months, and we're still at least a few months away from the point where Sprint's LTE coverage will be at least as good as their current Wimax coverage. IActually, think we're still at least another month or two away from the first LTE towers even getting officially lit up.
Half the reason I left Sprint was because I hated my old phone (a crippled, bootloader
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I did some tethering without paying for it, but it was only three light sessions on my ipad. I've been using google plus a lot, that could be it. LTE is a lot faster than my home wifi, so I left wifi off
AT&T says the caps will only affect the top 5% of data users. If I'm in the top 5%, nearly eve
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Yes, but your phone would have to have an chip that supports all the frequency bands.
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If it the different providers use different frequencies then it isn't compatible is it?
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It's no less compatible than GSM which requires your chip to support the bands used by the telecom. It's more compatible than the CDMA/GSM divide which require separate chips. LTE just needs one but obviously must have wide frequency band support to be useful just like world phones have to support multiple GSM bands.
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Likewise I would assume that any phone labeled as a particular tech would be able to handle that 'entire' techs frequency allocation, such as LTE, but then again I don't know if LTE is analogous to 'GSM' in this way. Is LTE an agreed standard to be implemented by all networks claiming to be LTE or is more the '4G' type of
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Frequency bands for GSM are different between what European carriers generally use and what US/Candian carriers use because of previus spectrum allocation. Hence why GSM phones have to support mutilple bands if they want to be useful. This is no different with LTE. There are sets of bands that can be used but an LTE chip is not necessarily required to support them all just as a GSM chip doesn't necessarily have to support all bands. Finally, yes, LTE is an ITU standard.
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Thanks for the explanation!
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So (Score:3)
Any chance they'll raise the data caps high enough to make LTE actually useful?
A water pipe that can fill a football stadium in 1 minute flat does no good if it will only dispense half a glass of water a month.
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Any chance they'll raise the data caps high enough to make LTE actually useful?
A water pipe that can fill a football stadium in 1 minute flat does no good if it will only dispense half a glass of water a month.
Currently AT&T has no plans to increase data caps for those using their 4G network. 3rd Gen iPad users have been running into this problem al lot.
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AT&T will absolutely have to increase their bundled limits to remain competitive... but they'll do it "the AT&T Way" --
Today: "3 gigs for $30, or 5 gigs for $50 with free tethering, and $10 per additional gig"
Tomorrow: "10 gigs for $55 with free tethering, $25 per additional 5 gigabytes thereafter.
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A water pipe that can fill a football stadium in 1 minute flat does no good if it will only dispense half a glass of water a month.
Could you phrase that in the form of an automobile analogy?
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How about a top fuel dragster that can top out at 500MPH but only has enough fuel for 20 feet? So during the big race it is easily beaten by the ancient man driving a tuk-tuk.
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Without the illusion of massive capability from the dragster, you will tend to use less data and get better 'mileage' like the tuk-tuk.
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So a month's worth will last for nearly 7 minutes at full speed.
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> have no idea if 4G is going to make the ping time any shorter.
It will be much shorter. Theoretically HSPA is ~100ms (plain UMTS is even longer), LTE should be about ~5ms
Also, IPv6 and Mobile IPv6 (much better story than Mobile IPv4).
And yes, the ads and analytics are terrible. I have adblock on my phone, I wonder if there is a usable noscript?
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First, they were using the term 4G before ITU. Secondly, ITU revised things just last year once again such that even LTE is not 4G according to them. Only LTE-Advanced and WirelessMAN-Advanced are now officially 4G.
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And here [mybroadband.co.za] is the source since I forgot the link.
4G LTE is 4G Lite (Score:2)
Secondly, ITU revised things just last year once again such that even LTE is not 4G according to them. Only LTE-Advanced and WirelessMAN-Advanced are now officially 4G.
A lot of people misread "4G LTE" as "4G Lite". I guess they're right.
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So they reverted to the very first definition? Pretty sure it was 100MB/s theoretical DL to be true 4G, then they allowed LTE, which at least still has other cool advantages (latency, IPv6), then they allowed HSPA+ (aka crap) to be called 4G, cause the phone companies where calling it that anyway.
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>HSPA+ proponents rightly said their technology was just as fast as LTE over these blocks
[citation needed]
And doesn't change the fact that UMTS/HSPA sucks tech-wise compared to LTE
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If this is false advertising, what is true advertising? Can you think of a single ad out there where the company told the complete and clear truth about a product? Anybody?
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The thing is that the same people whining about HSPA+ being called 4G will now have to say that calling LTE as 4G is false advertising due to ITU's final standardization. Only LTE-Advanced is officially 4G. In the end this all just useless pedantry.
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If this is false advertising, what is true advertising? Can you think of a single ad out there where the company told the complete and clear truth about a product? Anybody?
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4G is any wireless service that provides speeds in the 10+mb range. Regardless of standards bodies or advertising.
Basis...
3G was a 1+ mb service
2G was 100K+ mb service
1st Generation was a 9600bps service.
***
Each generation has been an order of magnitude higher in base speed.
5G should theoretically be in the 100mb range. But I wager that we'll see 4G pushed to about 20-30mb, and 5G will be claimed with a 50mbs. (But at least that will be a 1/2 a magnitude increase).
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Why would 5G only be 100mbps? That's 1/3 of LTE's theoretical peak download rate. LTE-Advanced, actual 4G by ITU's standard, has theoretical peak down rate of 1gbps.
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Did you read what I said. ITUs standard is meaningless. Theoretical peak is meaningless. ITU decided on a whim to make 4G = 1gps. But if you look at the history, in context to the data rate from 1x on word. The base speed was usually around 10x the old generation.
Thus 4G should be 10mbs, and 5G will be 100mbs. The fact that LTE technology could theoretically hit 300mbs is irrelevant. The role out of a 5th generation data service should be 100mbs. And 6th generation should be 1000mbs (or 1gbs).
Upgrading the system (Score:2)
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Not much, in fact, there is almost zero difference between Obama and Romney.
Or "Robamneya"
No, zero bars kills (Score:2)
As the patient's condition became critical shortly before 1pm, the substitute nurse tried desperately to reach the lunching anesthetist, but to no avail.
(desperate attempt to swing it back on topic) Perhaps the point isn't that socialized health care kills as much as that loss of the cellular signal kills.
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I *think* he's trying to say all malpractice in socialized systems is Obama's fault.
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LTE coming to your area. Film at 11:00. (Score:2)
I've been told by AT&T reps for months that LTE is coming to the Salt Lake City area Real Soon Now. I didn't know what I was missing till a recent trip to a few LTE cities. I would love to have LTE, but I am not holding my breath. It was scheduled for Spring, then Some Time over the Summer, and now Maybe By the End Of the Year.
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Comcast told me for about 7 years that broadband was coming to my area (one of the three biggest cities in Connecticut). It finally came, the year I left the state.
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Uh-huh (Score:2)
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No, you pay no extra for 4G. Their data plans don't discriminate between whether your data usage is 3G or 4G. You jst buy a block of data amount. AT&T has plenty of things it can be ragged on for so there is no need to make shit up.
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Hence why I'm joking around about it.
is LTE really that much better? (Score:2)
i have an iphone 4S on AT&T. i was at the store playing with a Samsung Galaxy Note yesterday. it benches at almost 12Mbps but in normal use it doesn't seem that much faster than my iphone
could it be that most phones today are still hardware limited and higher bandwidth speeds are just marketing hype?
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Yes. It has much lower latency, which is better for real time applications.
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On of the major benefits is spectral efficiency: LTE can deliver reasonable good service to more people on the same frequency allocation. This is why Verizon is so keen on getting as many data-heavy users off their overloaded EVDO network and onto LTE. Now, the extent to which a technology can provide consistent service to more people in a given geographical area within a given chunk of spectrum is a tricky thing to benchmark. Ultimately, however, user experience is going to be determined much more by such
Are any speed test results to be believed? (Score:2)
Does anybody believe any of the so-called "benchmarking" speed test web sites?
I almost believe there's a full time team at every major provider of consumer internet access whose job it is to packet shape and/or outright fake every benchmark web site. Even if the motivation isn't to fool people outright (ie, not provide the service level they're charging people) but to just keep every ignoramus out there from hammering customer service about how their speed tests aren't living up to their expectations.
The o
Crazy bandwidth in DC area (Score:3)
I was in the DC metro area recently and took a screenshot of a speedtest because I couldn't believe it. A Samsung SIII on AT&T registered 45M down. Unfortunately, we can't touch that at home because there is no AT&T LTE coverage anywhere in our state.
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That makes sense.. make regulators think you're providing real bandwidth. They forgot some of those folks don't always stay in DC :)
Don't forget about us... (Score:1)
How about percentage of the LAND AREA? (Score:3)
"75% of the population"? How about a percentage of the LAND AREA. Like 99+%?
The whole POINT of wireless is that you can use it when you're ON THE ROAD, somewhere OUT OF A CITY, or otherwise anywhere but parked at home or the office. The carriers seem to have lost track of that.
Perhaps it's a side-effect of the FCC's abandonment of access requirements to the legacy, subsidized, landline infrastructure, leaving landlines to a duality of incumbent Tellcos and Cable companies, which only have to incrementally upgrade while their no-longer-existent competition must wire the world from scratch? That ends up with wireless data carriage repurposed as a cheaper-to-install alternative to landlines, driving mobile service into secondary status in corporate mindshare. Of course, in such a market the incumbents (like AT&T), with their existing landline structure, have less incentive to roll out service than their wireless-only and wireless-mainly competition.
Re:How about percentage of the LAND AREA? (Score:4, Insightful)
Because it's stupid to have cell coverage in vast swathes of uninhabited areas? Most people don't want to pay more just so the peaks of the Rocky Mountains and the entire Death valley desert can have LTE coverage.
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The peaks of the Rockies have decent coverage, actually. As long as you can see a road, you'll probably get some signal. Much better line-of-sight from the top.
The valleys, on the other hand...
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Because it's stupid to have cell coverage in vast swathes of uninhabited areas?
What does habitation have to do with anything? Some uninhabited areas have lots of travelers. Airports probably have a population of zero, yet those travellers I'll bet use a lot of the provided cell coverage. Same goes for the endless stretches of Interstate in places like Wyoming and Montana. Population zero but lots of people using the road.
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Next time you're driving out there in the middle of nowhere and you feel like you deserve 4G, look right, then look left. Did you see any fiber optic cable on poles? There's your answer. Rural towers are usually sitting on the end of a microwave link back to a 'hub' tower that's T1 or fiber-fed. Those microwave links and T1s aren't going to support LTE service.
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You realize that AT&T is constrained by this thing called "physics", right?
At a number of places I've seen my AT&T phone get really poor signal while Verizon owners have great signal.
Are you accusing Verizon of tampering with the laws of physics?
The truth is that you can work around things like thick walls with microcells inside walls... AT&T needs to do more as often even in a major city service will be crappy depending on where you are.
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How often do you find yourself driving through the wasteland of Nevada, absolutely needing the youtube video to stream smoothly? I'd wager not enough to justify paying more on your monthly bill.
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The whole POINT of wireless is that you can use it when you're ON THE ROAD, somewhere OUT OF A CITY, or otherwise anywhere but parked at home or the office. The carriers seem to have lost track of that.
Er, you realize that the vast majority of people, even when they're on the road and out of their home/office, are going other places where people live, right? Usually in their own city? For most people, I'd wager that the huge majority of their cell phone calls are made within a half-hour drive from their h
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Of course HSPA+ is not LTE. Who said it was? This is clearly about AT&T expanding its LTE service not HSPA+. Maybe you should relearn how to read? Also, both LTE and HSPA+ are 'evolved 3G'. LTE-Advanced is actual 4G.
LTE Buildout (Score:2)
Don't Care (Score:1)
AT&T put the 3 gig limit on my unlimited plan AFTER I renewed a contract.
Bye bye AT&T.
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What'd I do?
Forget LTE... (Score:2)
If I was in charge at AT&T, I would spend whatever money it took to improve the 2G/3G coverage of AT&T to the point where its better than Verizon. Lots of people have made "I hate Verizon but dont get coverage from anyone else so I have no choice" complaints, if AT&T fixed that, more people would switch over from Verizon and could move towards making AT&T the #1 carrier in America.
Thanks for lying to me, AT&T (Score:2)
I know that I shouldn't be surprised, and in fact I'm not. However, our AT&T rep has been telling us that AT&T would be rolling out LTE in my market "soon" for over a year. According to this map, we're not even on the "soon" list.
We switched to AT&T because they had the iPhone. Apple tech is a big part of our inudstry, and our President and CEO especially are big fans, and they decided that we couldn't do without. At this point though, 90% of our phones have gone out of contract in the past