[ard100]

Some more news on vodafone 4g http://www.engadget.com/2014/10/15/v...lte-a-roaming/

[Mark C]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ard100

Some more news on vodafone 4g http://www.engadget.com/2014/10/15/v...lte-a-roaming/

Yes, although EE claim that you can roam with 4G in The Netherlands. Well, I was there last month, and I couldn't get above 3G on KPN and T-Mobile NL, even though it's claimed that compatible frequency bands for my iphone5 are used there ?

[moox]

Nice to see that they're blabbing on about LTE-A when they can't even get UMTS to a lot of places (and their latest wheeze of graciously installing a ruggedised femtocell in a village if you provide the power source and broadband connection is just woeful) - and some of the places that do get it don't seem to have the backhaul to handle it (VF 3G is recently available here at blistering GPRS performance and latency)

[jabbamk1]

Dat 2600MHz!!!!

[enapace]

In fairness Vodafone technically could claim they have the first Commercial LTE-A network in the UK as don't think EE's is yet Commercial is it?

[uno]

Although noting the official launch list 2600mhz is also available in parts of Leicester. It's only on a limited amount of masts but engineers are busy going round doing the upgrade work.

[iGeek2014]

It'd be nice to be able to receive 4G LTE in Derby (and at least 3G in Ashbourne) first!

[japaul]

EE already have a quite a bit of LTE-A in London now and not just central London so I'd expect them to announce something soon.

I've already posted some instances of Vodafone 2600 turning up a few times and guessed this was really being aggregated with 800MHz rather than running alone. Was only able to use the 2600 bit on it's own of course with what I had but it was still impressive. Since I'm not so hot on the latest phones if i just want to have a go with it at full chat anyone know which phones are or will be Cat 6?

[jchamier]

Quote:

Originally Posted by japaul

Since I'm not so hot on the latest phones if i just want to have a go with it at full chat anyone know which phones are or will be Cat 6?

Looks like the Note 4 released today is Cat 6 with Qualcomm MDM9x35 modem:
http://anandtech.com/show/8613/the-s...-note-4-review

The same modem is in the Korea released Galaxy S5-Broadband LTE which is a modified S5.

These support upto 300mbps, so its not the full 5 carrier aggregation promised in the original LTE-A briefings, but its starting to move things forward

(Its a shame Apple didn't manage to get this into the iPhone 6/6+ but reports are that Qualcomm's yields are still low for mega mass market at this point).

[jabbamk1]

Ascend Mate7 from Huawei is also cat 6.

Much better phone than the Samsung imo.

[japaul]

Thanks to both of you. So not exactly a long list then

I guess once EE/Voda start marketing this they'll need something to identify which phones can take full advantage. Any betting what this will be? 4G+, 4.5G...

[jabbamk1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by japaul

Thanks to both of you. So not exactly a long list then

I guess once EE/Voda start marketing this they'll need something to identify which phones can take full advantage. Any betting what this will be? 4G+, 4.5G...

Super duper uber amazing ultrafast 4G LTE Advanced

To add to the previous list, There are some mi-fi's that support cat 6 as well as the korean versions of Samsung flagships and LG G3.

[jonmorris]

Huawei announced its Cat 6 MiFi at MWC this year. Not sure if it's shipping yet though.

Bit of a beast, mind. My memory fails me now, but when I saw it I think it was the size of a medium sized estate car...

[japaul]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jabbamk1

Super duper uber amazing ultrafast 4G LTE Advanced

So the same as they used for 3G and 4G then.

[japaul]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jonmorris

Huawei announced its Cat 6 MiFi at MWC this year. Not sure if it's shipping yet though.

Bit of a beast, mind. My memory fails me now, but when I saw it I think it was the size of a medium sized estate car...

I forgot about MiFi. I don't know about here but I know SingTel in Singapore were selling a Huawei MiFi for use with their 300 Mb/s network a couple of months ago. Probably the same one.

[Gigabit]

There's a Galaxy S4 variant (i9506) with LTE-A.

[japaul]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gigabit

There's a Galaxy S4 variant (i9506) with LTE-A.

Not Cat 6 though so no point. The list appears to be very short at the moment.

[uno]

Everybody needs to remember that as long as you have a device that supports both 800mhz and 2600mhz you will all see an increase in speed.

I know it was during testing but have seen 80mb speeds down and 30mb upload , I understand it will go even faster once in use subject to cell load and backhaul capacity.

[enapace]

I think it's a safe bet to think the new flagships in March/April are going to be to LTE-Cat 6. Imagine by that point Qualcomm will have either solved there yield problem or have made enough to get by.

[jabbamk1]

Data caps is still an issue in the UK.

Plans with 100GB+ are available worldwide.
Then again the UK is actually quite good when it comes to data allowances compared to the world on average. Still need higher data caps though!

[japaul]

Quote:

Originally Posted by uno

Everybody needs to remember that as long as you have a device that supports both 800mhz and 2600mhz you will all see an increase in speed.

I know it was during testing but have seen 80mb speeds down and 30mb upload , I understand it will go even faster once in use subject to cell load and backhaul capacity.

That's right and I posted some tests using just 2600 a few weeks ago which were good but to get the full effect you do need a Cat 6 device which can aggregate the bands.

[uno]

Japaul- Can the Cat4 devices like S4 and Iphones not do carrier aggregation at all ? I thought i had read an article that they could but would not get the full speed benefit that is offered by linking the two frequencies together.

[jchamier]

Quote:

Originally Posted by uno

Japaul- Can the Cat4 devices like S4 and Iphones not do carrier aggregation at all ? I thought i had read an article that they could but would not get the full speed benefit that is offered by linking the two frequencies together.

I'm not japaul but the cat4 devices with aggregation (iPhone 6 - not sure about S4) can only use 20mhz max. So if you have two 10mhz carriers the iPhone can bond them to get 20mhz and thus 150mbps top theoretical speed.

Its likely both Voda and EE will have more than 20mhz in each carrier so its unclear what the phone/modem will decide to use.

iPhone 6 and 6+ uses qualcomm MDM 9x25 - but the S4 uses the older version 9x15 same as the iPhone 5 and 5s.

[japaul]

Yes that's pretty much it.

Cat 4 devices that can do carrier aggregation like the iPhone 6 are helpful to a lot of networks around the world who don't have the maximum 20MHz wide carriers as they allow you to put two 10MHz carriers together to get up to 20MHz but as EE and Vodafone have 20MHz wide carriers without the need for aggregation a Cat 4 handset with CA offers no benefit over a Cat 4 handset without CA so you need Cat 6 to go beyond this.

In the UK, I think the only one who could potentially benefit from Cat 4 CA is Three and then it's unlikely to happen. Until next October they have 10MHz at 1800 and 5 MHz at 800. If Three were to aggregate these then something like an iPhone 6 could put these together to make 15MHz where as a non CA phone is stuck on a maximum of 10MHz. Once they get the extra 5MHz of 1800 next year then again there would be no benefit as both types of phone could use a maximum of 15MHz.

Oddly for Three when they have their full spectrum allocation next year if they aggregate this (15+5) you'll need to use a Cat 6 phone to do Cat 4!

[jabbamk1]

I should be getting a cat6 phone and contract very soon.

I'll post some speed tests.