Quote:
Originally Posted by alanbjames
If people here tried to use the cloud for streaming music they are in for a real shock. 3G was tediously slow around 3mb.
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If you think 3Mb is tediously slow you should probably take note of the fact that was the average speed across all UK cities as recently as 2011. Furthermore, 3Mb is absolutely plenty for streaming music given that music is typically closer to 0.2Mb, and 3Mb allows you to download an entire song in less than ten seconds.
Quote:
Originally Posted by alanbjames
The Internet was actually so slow in Neath that the Wifi on the bus itself was faster.
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To be fair, this should really be the norm. Buses and trains are equipped with anything up to 8-radio DC-HSPA + LTE systems with satellite backup in some cases, with large antenna mounted on the roof of the vehicle able simultaneously draw over 100Mbps from each of the four networks at the same time. Although practically never used in the theoretical maximum configuration, it'll still beat a puny little battery powered device inside a metal cage unless it's an embarrassingly bad implementation or they've artificially limited it.
Case in point, Scotrail trains and some upgraded Lothian buses and refurbished Virgin East Coast trains use the
Icomera X6, supporting quad-4G connections, 8 SIM cards, and 14 antenna.
---------- Post added at 01:46 ---------- Previous post was at 01:35 ----------
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stephen
MY VM mobile isn't the fastest even with HSDPA+ but I can still stream music completely fine around Glasgow. I have about 10 albums saved to the SD card just in case and using wifi I can download music from google to my phone so can still listen when in a tunnel or without a data connection.
All I am saying is no SD card slot on a phone isn't the dead end it used to be. Especially with in built memory being larger now. I remember my first Android device, a HTC Desire. That ran out of space very quickly.
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I used to say that even for a relatively nomadic person like me I'd spend 98% of my time inside range of 3G/4G and/or WiFi thus making the lack of coverage outside cities relatively insignificant. And even a year ago, when 4G coverage was half what it is now, people's phones spent 53% of the time connected to 4G. But that's not considering the time weighting, after all the 33% of the time I spend asleep and 75% of the time I spend at home or work I don't use my phone anyway. It's precisely that remaining 2% when I use my phone the most, and also happens to be the time when I'm least likely to have WiFi to fall back on.
And yes, if you do spend all your time in large cities and/or have the foresight to predict everything you want to listen to on a trip in advance, you'd be fine with limited internal storage.
But the state of things these days remains that on a train trip from Edinburgh to Aberdeen, although with a very powerful dedicated radio you could get 3G data service for up to 94% of the trip, your typical mobile phone will barely manage to maintain useable connectivity more than 50% of the time without relying on 2G. And from Glasgow to Aberdeen is even worse since it isn't on the ECML.
And not to mention the massively increased battery drain that any form of streaming imposes on mobile devices.
And if you happen to be a mobile railway surveyor in Scotland like I did for a while, you already have to carry two phones just to get a useable
2G signal more than half the time, let alone anything capable of media streaming. At least prior to the GSM-R rollout.