So a few days ago EE they were "switching on" the UK's first LTE-Advanced network, in Tech City London:


http://www.mobiletoday.co.uk/News/27...Tech_City.aspx

Incidentally they don't seem to be marketing it as LTE-A, but rather the headline speed, but as previously reported:


I was going to ask "has anybody tried it yet" but the blurb makes the launch sound almost identical to 3's "soft launch" of 4G - a few "select" customers now with continued "roll out in 2014"

Thoughts, anyone?

It's not a commercial launch and it's not marketed as there are no end user devices available to use the service. The 'selected businesses' get to access it via a special Huawei router. Dongles / mobile wifi devices which could use it will start to be available later next year, with phones a bit after that.

It helps support EE's claims to be the fastest network around and I guess there's some kudos for them (or the UK) to currently have a live LTE network that is faster than anywhere in the world (although others in other countries will soon offer the same).

Also from the previous press release:


No mention of fixed routers - where are people getting that info from?

Oh, and there's an LTE-Advanced version of the Galaxy S4, though it's only Cat 4 and doesn't support 20+20 CA.

I'll be having a go in about a weeks time

Not heard anything from anyone about it yet though. I do know they are looking to roll it out in other limited areas though. It will be awhile before city wide happens.

Yep all the existing LTE-A devices are no use for this as they only do 10+10 CA and EE can already do 20MHz contiguous without CA.

I don't know about fixed routers - I just said Huawei router. Yes it's ac wifi for 20 devices but not a little mifi device and it's not generally available.

The other alternative is CSL's "device emulator" as shown here. Now that looks pretty portable...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BivypeCYJk4

Or you could build a software-defined radio:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...-defined-radio

EE seem to be doing everything except getting consumer prices down. At their 1Gb per month rate, you will be able to consume the entire allowance in less than 5 seconds !!

I wonder if we really need LTE at all? HSPA + is pretty good, even if not a single operator offers it in my village. Best we can do here is Edge

Umm they have the cheapest consumer prices in the industry. They've been cut drastically several times.

A year ago the pricing was £41 for 1GB.

Then they dropped it earlier this year to £41 for 3GB.

Then they dropped it a month ago to £38 for 10GB with free international roaming.

Similarly £46 a year ago got you 3GB, then 10GB, now it's £43 for 20GB + roaming.

By comparison Vodafone give you a measly 6GB for £42 and you have to pay an additional £3 a day for roaming (i.e. £90 for a month long trip). O2 give you 5GB for around the same amount.

How is that not getting consumer prices down?!

And 3UK give you 15GB for £15 per month on their MBB tariff, and all you can eat on their handset tariff for £12.90 SIM free. Their HSDPA+ runs at over 6Mbps, which, to go back to my original point is not a lot slower than LTE as it is delivered in the UK.

Yes but HSPA+ doesn't have the coverage or the latency but particularly it just doesn't have the capacity going forward.
It's not very spectrum efficient at all and there aren't enough channels per cell for the amount of users that are eventually going to be connected. As soon as a cell gets congested you would see those fast speeds quickly declining to 1-2 Meg, if that!
We are already seeing this happen in urban areas and even my local rural cell slows down at certain times of the day. If you catch it right, it'll do 15-20 Meg. Sometimes though it's only 3-6 Meg.

LTE will not only provide much more capacity and efficiency but also help to speed up the 3G side as well.

I'm talking about prices with a top end handset. 3 charge £37 a month for that privilege with no 4G as yet. At least try to make a valid comparison. If you want to talk 3G MBB tariffs, EE has unlimited data (restricted use/speeds) for £15 a month. Other networks have all-you-can-eat handset data for £12.

LTE delivers an average of around 25Mbps in the UK. If you look at Rootmetrics' London analysis the results are thus:

EE 4G: 29.6Mbps
O2 4G: 23.3Mbps
Vod 4G: 20.8Mbps
3 3G: 5.4Mbps

Not to mention EE's overall average upload speed (including non-4G) is 12.9Mbps compared to 3's 1.6Mbps in London.

3's network may run at "Up to 42Mbps" compared to the 75/150/300 of the various LTE segments but as DevonBloke mentioned capacity is a big issue.