01-20-2011, 06:07 PM
I read of a demo of WiMax in a large city almost 3 years ago predicting speeds of 4Mbps to 12Mbps depending on signal and tower congestion at somewhat lower prices. It was so long ago in internet time that I am having problems searching back that far to find it. Based on that review, I mentioned a few weeks later that I hoped to be able to watch TV shows on some future phone. Someone replied he thought that not only would AT&T never support the bandwidth for it, but that I had no idea how cell networks operated. Fast forward to November 2010 and I see AT&T ads that seem to imply it can be done on their current network.
I was disappointed last year when I saw the first plans for "4G" capable phones were more expensive and required a charge for a data plan on top of that. As mentioned in other threads, the US pays more, has data caps, is behind other countries for rollout of 4G, and people are going to be lucky to get data rates on the low end of early predictions with what is technically a more modern network. Did I calculate this right? If users actually got 12Mbps with LTE, they could hit a 5 GB cap in under two hours? I have a hard time understanding how someone can defend the cell companies when it seems so obvious to me that we are getting screwed.
I was disappointed last year when I saw the first plans for "4G" capable phones were more expensive and required a charge for a data plan on top of that. As mentioned in other threads, the US pays more, has data caps, is behind other countries for rollout of 4G, and people are going to be lucky to get data rates on the low end of early predictions with what is technically a more modern network. Did I calculate this right? If users actually got 12Mbps with LTE, they could hit a 5 GB cap in under two hours? I have a hard time understanding how someone can defend the cell companies when it seems so obvious to me that we are getting screwed.