Originally Posted by david16:
“Absolutely.
150mbps is not a necessity as far as I'm concerned as I'm more than happy with the H+ and my phone doesn't need to be replaced right now. 4G will be a necessity when 3G is no longer the industry standard and it's all 4G phones on sale in the stores but even then not the 150mbps.
It's a bit of fallacy for people say "It needs to be at least 150mbps with all 4 bars lit up at the top of the screen the whole time, plus a very low ping to be a good internet connection"
All but one or 2 radio station transmit at less than 200kbps on tunein (none of them transmit anywhere near 1mbps, well short of the 150mbps some people apparently demand of 4G) and your smartphone handles several Google Play Store updates/downloads one at a time albeit in a batch whether it's a 3G or 4G smartphone. It's not exactly painfully slow downloading Google Playstore updates on a 3G phone, unless people only think 12 google play store updates all done in less than a minute as being the only acceptable which even then is impossible on a 4G smartphone.
So indeed there's no necessity for 150mpbs internet speed on a smartphone sim card.”
Three problems:
1 - people do more on a phone than just stream internet radio or download Android apps - like actual work, downloading large files, etc
2 - It's not about raw speed, it's about capacity. If you're getting 2Mbps that implies that your cell site is a bit congested so the speed is likely to drop further if demand from other users increases. If you can get 150Mbps, that leaves a hell of a lot of headroom if other users want to use the cell tower too. 4G is the way the network operators are increasing capacity, and people want it. It is also lower latency than 3G, making it more suitable for mobile broadband use and things like VoIP or online gaming
3 - the issue for some is the fact that 3 have lied about their rollout plan and haven't apologised for it or provided any information as to why they've had to change their strategy, rather than the lack of 4G itself. I'd be a lot happier if 3 said something like "sorry, we had to remove these towns, this is why and we're working to overcome these issues"
Currently for some people, EE represents the opposite - they've got a much stronger 4G network, a typically less congested 3G network, and it's looking more likely that EE is going to give them 4G before 3 plan to