Not 4G but 4G speeds?

[Russ]

Earlier I had these results from my iPhone on VM's 3G service....I'm not complaining but what's 17MB all about?

[Stephen]

That would be the 3.5G speeds from using HSDPA+

It's still no where near 4G speeds though.

[Russ]

That's fair enough but at 17mb I'm not going to be too worried about VM's delay in offering 4G then.

[jb66]

I can get 20 meg at the play park near where I live. Better than the old days of it being throttled to 3meg

[Qtx]

Three mobile customers have had these 3.5G/DC-HSDPA speeds for a couple of years now. It's great as they allow unlimited (traffic managed P2P at times) tethering on their One plan too, so you can download tons

Will VM be giving all it's customers free upgrades to 4G like Three mobile has been doing?

[qasdfdsaq]

Originally Posted by Russ

That's fair enough but at 17mb I'm not going to be too worried about VM's delay in offering 4G then.

3G does up to 42Mbps.

The benefits of 4G are mostly nothing to do with download speed, yet that's the only thing most people seem to think about.

[Qtx]

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

The benefits of 4G are mostly nothing to do with download speed, yet that's the only thing most people seem to think about.

Same as with broadband but that's due to the advertising campaigns fooling people in to thinking faster is better. Your video stutters and you warp in games sir? Why you must need 152Mb as it's nothing to do with the latency and congestion on our network!

Is there any real benefit of 4G beyond connection/reconnecting speed and good latency?

[qasdfdsaq]

Well latency and control-plane setup times are a big benefit in themselves, but that's just the RAN layer. It also makes for a flatter, more robust core network architecture, and more capacity, easier rollout, and ultimately much better network performance and coverage for the same cost.

Indirect benefits perhaps, but it results in a much better end user experience than if the operators spent the same amount of money on 3G.