Thread: N9 [Shipping]: It's finally here [for some]!
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buchanmilne is offline buchanmilne
2011-10-03 , 14:56
Posts: 196 | Thanked: 224 times | Joined on Sep 2010 @ Africa
#8231
Originally Posted by onethreealpha View Post
Here in Aus, HSDPA will provide a max theoretical download speed of 7.2Mbps
Phones like the SGS2, with HSDPA+ will support a theoretical max of 21Mbps.
In South Africa, 21Mbps is already "old", the supposed "leading" networks provide 42Mbps, the operators who are trying to get more market share with lower prices are at 21Mbps.

However, in many cases, you will see devices claiming support for HSDPA or HSPA or HSPA+, but only supporting a specific speed (e.g. I have seen dongles claiming HSDPA that only support 3.6 Mbps, or claiming HSPA+ and supporting maximum of 7.2Mbps with supposed firmware update to later increase the max transfer rate).

Both run on Telstra's "NextG" Frequency @850mhz, however makes no real difference as Telstra throttle their network to give a real download speed between 500Kbps and around 3Mbps.
Phones like the SGS2, here in Australia will never really get to utilise their theoretical maximum speeds, as the Telco's will use bandwidth throttling to maintain network redundancy (and thus save money on investing in infrastructure upgrade works)

Whilst it seems like our friends across the water like to market HSDPA+ as "4G", do the Telco's there actually support this with real maximum speeds on the Frequencies they run on?
If not, HSDPA+ may not be of much use after all.
Wikipedia lists HSPA+ as a 3.5G technology. LTE-Advanced and WiMax are the only 4G technologies they list.

But, really, how do you confuse HSPA+ with LTE?

IMHO, part of the problem is the Apple marketing machine, I mean, if they punted 'iPhone 3G' due to (finally, years late) having 3G support, they can only increase model numbers, and GSM-based standards are so new and foreign to most Americans, they must think that the 4 in iPhone4 *must* have been for '4G', after all Apple *must* be the leader, even in technologies that have been in development for 15+ years before becoming commonplace in the US!

In South Africa, the Advertising Standards Agency has ruled against operators who try and use "4G" in any marketing or advertising. For example, they ruled against Cell C (who IIRC was first to advertise 42Mbps, whereas Vodacom had a higher percentage of 42Mbps towers at the time, but weren't prepared to advertise until at least > 99% of their subscribers had 42Mbps coverage).

I really don't see much need for anything higher than 14Mbps on a handheld device at present, it's just going to bankrupt you (or kill your data bundle) sooner (until very recently, all mobile broadband products here have been capped, but there have been some 'data only' products with high caps - such as 10GB - launched recently ... one uncapped product has been annonced, but I haven't tried it.

It's bad enough with a data-only contract on 7.2Mbps, when you realise there is still some torrent running that ate up the remaining 30% of your 650MB quota :-(.
 

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