Quote:
Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq
Funny the number of people who do not understand how things work and jump immediately to this false and illogical conclusion that is completely unsupported by facts.
Hundreds of thousands of tests by multiple independent investigators have found data speeds to have increased by 2x-3x on average across all users, including all existing 3G customers.[COLOR=Silver]
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In fairness, he is posting from his own experience. It may well be true that his connection got worse at the time O2 launched 4G.
It's also worth pointing out that at least one investigation (conducted on behalf of the BBC's Watchdog programme) concluded that several mobile networks had re-allocated a lot of their 3G bandwidth to the 4G network, so 3G users were noticing slower speeds. This seems logical. The backend network linking the sites has a limited bandwidth. Previously, the 3G users on that site would have had nearly 100% of the bandwidth available to them, as GPRS and voice signals use almost no bandwidth. Now, 4G has come along and can use many times more bandwidth than 3G. Even if the providers aren't specifically reserving bandwidth for 4G (which they may be), 3G phones in busier cells are going to be competing with 4G phones for the limited bandwidth on the cell's data link.
I've personally noticed my own connection (via EE) getting slower since they rolled out 4G, and that is one possible cause. The other is that when I joined T Mobile, it was just before they merged with Orange. When they merged, I had access to T Mobile and Orange cell sites in every cell. So, in most areas, my phone could connect to several cells. EE have spent years closing sites to consolidate the networks. Put simply, they cut the number of sites, but increased the number of customers. So, less bandwidth on each site to each customer.