General : STM always enforced?

[qasdfdsaq]

Originally Posted by everyday

It means upto 150mbps down - There are 8 cat's from what I can see and cat 3 is LTE and 4-8 are LTE advanced.

I hope they don't go to cat 4 and leave out cat 3! or my S4 will be useless! My phone can do 100 down and 50 up but thats all I would ever need from a mobile!

Going back to STM I do wonder how many, if any people have gone from VM to FTTC and if this has freed up the network enough to get rid of it.

I think you've misunderstoood how the categories work.

Cat 4-8 are NOT LTE Advanced. Only 6-8 are. 1-5 are all standard LTE (3GPP Rel 8). All UK networks are already Cat 4 capable and support all category devices. "Leaving out cat 3" is not a concept that exists. However, only Vodafone and EE will ever be able to exploit the full capabilities of a Cat 4 device. Cat 4 devices will work just fine on 3 and O2 but they will never achieve full speed.

LTE Advanced is fully backwards compatible and will support all previous LTE devices. A phone that does not support LTE-A does not become "useless" once the network upgrades arrive.

As with all broadband services, competition breeds progress, and just as we've seen in the LTE market VM are moving forward too. Unfortunately, one of the places I'm looking into moving to won't have FTTC for another 6 months if ever, though FTTPoD is also going to be available "soon" (it's on a FTTPoD trial exchange) so I may end up back on paltry VM service for a short period

[Chrysalis]

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

Everyone has had over 99% on 2G for a decade or more, and that was pre-mergers. EE currently claims 99.8% And again EE are planning to upgrade "all" 2G sites to 4G by the end of 2014. EE and 3 also claim 98% on 3G, not sure about the others.

3 will not take long at all to do their rollout. Not only are they're sharing infrastructure with EE, but in fact, most EE 4G signals actually come from 3's 3G transmitters. Since most EE 4G transmitters actually belong to 3 (well, originally belonged to 3 but are now shared under the MBNL agreement) and are existing 3G sites with upgraded radios bolted on the side, most of the work has already been done.

Since 3 and EE are largely sharing the same physical infrastructure and equipment, it'll be Cat 4 and above from the outset, EE intend to introduce LTE-Advanced in short order, AFAIK all the shared sites are running multimode, multiband software defined radios anyway. EE have the spectrum to introduce (and will be trialling) up to 450Mbps by the end of the year, 3 won't, even on the same spectrum. The problem with 3 is they have the least capacity of everyone but O2, and as I've said before, cheap tariffs, unlimited usage, and low capacity are not a good combination.


And we all know that all turned out on VM... At least VM has some control of node sizes...

O2's 4G auction results do look bad but I believe they will be using the BT capacity as well (BT brought some 4G).

Still 4G will be a niche thing for at least a few years.

[qasdfdsaq]

BT will be using EE's network and O2 deny having anything to do with them.

As for niche, over a million customers in less than a year isn't that niche. Took the mobile networks nearly 15 years to get that many customers the first time round. Plus, how many customers do VM have? Chances are 4G will overtake that by the middle of next year.

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

I think you've misunderstoood how the categories work.

Not at all, I merely read what the operators have said, the people who are meant to know how their own industry works. As it's not my place botheration or interest to understand them it's their problem, not mine. I merely use my phone and that is all.

[qasdfdsaq]

People who are meant to know how the industry works said your s4 will become "useless" if they run their network at full speed? LOL.

Great move. Make nearly every current generation handset useless, including the iPhone 5s

[Qtx]

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

though FTTPoD is also going to be available "soon" (it's on a FTTPoD trial exchange) so I may end up back on paltry VM service for a short period

My condolences! FTTPoD will cheer you up after though

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

People who are meant to know how the industry works said your s4 will become "useless" if they run their network at full speed? LOL.

Great move. Make nearly every current generation handset useless, including the iPhone 5s

No, but their explanation of the categorys of 4G seem to be wrong apparently.

I know my phone will work on many networks around the world but according to the box the S4 I have is only cat 3. Or maybe it's got cat 4 too (as some websites suggest) but it's not mentioned?

In any case 100 down and 50 up on a mobile is as fast as I will ever want to go.

[Chrysalis]

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

BT will be using EE's network and O2 deny having anything to do with them.

As for niche, over a million customers in less than a year isn't that niche. Took the mobile networks nearly 15 years to get that many customers the first time round. Plus, how many customers do VM have? Chances are 4G will overtake that by the middle of next year.

approx 3-4% then.

[Kushan]

Originally Posted by everyday

No, but their explanation of the categorys of 4G seem to be wrong apparently.

I know my phone will work on many networks around the world but according to the box the S4 I have is only cat 3. Or maybe it's got cat 4 too (as some websites suggest) but it's not mentioned?

In any case 100 down and 50 up on a mobile is as fast as I will ever want to go.

It uses a Snapdragon 600, which is CAT3. The 800 is CAT4 and Samsung specifically hailed the Note 3 as being one of the first CAT4 phones, so I very much doubt the S4 will ever have CAT4 capabilities, unless they roll out an upgraded version (which isn't too unthinkable, they did that with the S3 I think).

[qasdfdsaq]

Originally Posted by Chrysalis

approx 3-4% then.

3-4% of what? It's already accounting for 40% of new sales, and that's before prices were dropped by nearly 75% over the last 6 months.

---------- Post added at 17:30 ---------- Previous post was at 17:27 ----------

Originally Posted by Kushan

It uses a Snapdragon 600, which is CAT3. The 800 is CAT4 and Samsung specifically hailed the Note 3 as being one of the first CAT4 phones, so I very much doubt the S4 will ever have CAT4 capabilities, unless they roll out an upgraded version (which isn't too unthinkable, they did that with the S3 I think).

The Snapdragon 800 is actually a LTE-Advanced ("true 4G") chipset and an upgraded version of the Galaxy S4 with it already exists. Originally released as Korea-only a leaked UK EE firmware for an international model has surfaced, suggesting it will be coming over here too.

---------- Post added at 17:31 ---------- Previous post was at 17:30 ----------

Originally Posted by everyday

I know my phone will work on many networks around the world but according to the box the S4 I have is only cat 3. Or maybe it's got cat 4 too (as some websites suggest) but it's not mentioned?

In any case 100 down and 50 up on a mobile is as fast as I will ever want to go.

The S4 LTE (GT-i9505) is category 3, yes. And yes, it can readily do those speeds - both of which are faster than BT FTTC and the upload alone is ten times faster than what VM can give me even without STM

Then there's the S4 3G (GT-i9500) and S4 LTE-Advanced (GT-i9506) and the S4 active, S4 mini, and so on...

Well 100 down and 50 up will do me until the next upgrade

[kwikbreaks]

Back on the original topic - I've just exceeded double the threshold and suffered no slowdown. I did think I'd seen STM over the weekend but it may just have been congestion as my SamKnows reports show that there is plenty of that but using multiple streams still allows downloads using a download manager or TBB speedtests to hit the headline rate.

I can't figure out what they are doing as it seems they deny any knowledge of STM being absent anywhere.

===

No I was wrong. STM has now kicked in but about 30 minutes after the downloads completed. That's quite a joke really if speeds are restricted way after the time when it actually matters.

[Kushan]

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

The Snapdragon 800 is actually a LTE-Advanced ("true 4G") chipset and an upgraded version of the Galaxy S4 with it already exists. Originally released as Korea-only a leaked UK EE firmware for an international model has surfaced, suggesting it will be coming over here too.

I thought you said that only Cat6-8 were LTE-A? The Snapdragon 800 is only CAT-4, so is there more to it than that?

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

The S4 LTE (GT-i9505) is category 3, yes. And yes, it can readily do those speeds - both of which are faster than BT FTTC and the upload alone is ten times faster than what VM can give me even without STM

This is true, but how much bandwidth is there to go around, really? DC-HSDPA+ is meant to be 42Mbit but I rarely ever see it break double digits. Not only are you dealing with the perils of a wireless technology, you're also competing with sometimes hundreds of other people. I would like to know how much capacity the various spectrum blocks can truly have.

[qasdfdsaq]

Originally Posted by Kushan

I thought you said that only Cat6-8 were LTE-A? The Snapdragon 800 is only CAT-4, so is there more to it than that?

Cat6-8 are LTE-A only, support for them requires a device to be LTE-A. LTE-A did not remove the previous categories though so an LTE-A device does not have to be cat 6/7/8, it can also be cat 4. In this case we have a device that supports LTE-A capabilities (i.e. carrier aggregation) but not the increased speeds it brings, and only supports previously existing LTE speeds. The main benefit at the moment is to allow carrier aggregation so operators that do not have fully contiguous allocations of the maximum available spectrum to achieve standard LTE speeds by combining multiple, smaller blocks. For example 3, which has allocations of 2x15Mhz and 2x5Mhz can combine the two into a single 2x20Mhz to achieve 150Mbps with LTE-A, while with LTE (standard) they could never achieve full Cat 4 speed. It doesn't benefit anyone else really, since EE and Vodafone already have multiple contiguous blocks of maximum size, which is a very rare asset globally.

This is true, but how much bandwidth is there to go around, really? DC-HSDPA+ is meant to be 42Mbit but I rarely ever see it break double digits.

That depends on your cell size and how well you manage/optimize your network. Things change quickly - the average I get from DC-HSPA now is 11Mbps, compared to 2Mbps a year ago - though O2 still does 12Mbps without DC-HSPA in my neck of the woods. Plus, dual-cell is implemented really really badly in the UK by all networks IMO. And then there's the fact the app most people use (Speedtest.net) being next to useless for anything above 10Mbps on mobile.

For LTE(A) EE and Sodafone both have 3-4x the allocated spectrum than they had for 3G, and with LTE MIMO is basically universal thereby doubling capacity again under certain conditions. That's why EE advertise "average" speeds on LTE as around 5x that of 3G, which they conservatively put as 10-15Mbps vs. 2-3Mbps

Not only are you dealing with the perils of a wireless technology, you're also competing with sometimes hundreds of other people. I would like to know how much capacity the various spectrum blocks can truly have.

Well then you're looking into matters of cell density and spectral efficiency, but take a typical example of a 3-sector macrosite in a city, which would deliver a max of 3x150Mbps (450Mbps) usable capacity using a single 20Mhz carrier, EE and Vodafone both have enough spectrum for three of these, putting them at a total capacity of 1350Mbps per site. Cell density can be dozens to hundreds per square mile in cities, and total 15,000+ across the UK per network. To be fair capacity will more likely be limited by the gigabit backhauls VM are putting in for these sites, if not by poor signal or interference than total spectrum capacity.

To put it in perspective, the amount spectrum each of the larger networks have dedicated to 4G is roughly equivalent to the amount VM have dedicated to "fibre broadband" - except with equal down and up spectrum. So instead of 16 down, 4 up, you've got the equivalent of something that's more like 15 down, 7.5 up on mobile (7.5 down x2-way MIMO)

---------- Post added at 22:22 ---------- Previous post was at 22:21 ----------

Originally Posted by kwikbreaks

I did think I'd seen STM over the weekend but it may just have been congestion as my SamKnows reports show that there is plenty of that but using multiple streams still allows downloads using a download manager or TBB speedtests to hit the headline rate.

That does sound distinctly like congestion. I usually use a UDP speedtest to rule that out as that completely eliminates the effect of "multiple streams".

No I was wrong. STM has now kicked in but about 30 minutes after the downloads completed. That's quite a joke really if speeds are restricted way after the time when it actually matters.

Joke? VM? Blasphemy!

[Chrysalis]

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

3-4% of what? It's already accounting for 40% of new sales, and that's before prices were dropped by nearly 75% over the last 6 months.[COLOR="Silver"]

of EE's 27million users

most people dont buy a £500+ phone every year

4G will be mainstream when low end phones that cost circa £100 come with it, I guess in a gen or 2 that will be the case so either 2014 or 2015.

The barrier just isnt EE's extorniote prices but the phone prices as well.

Also the S5 is coming out earlier than scheduled since the S4 has had poor sales.