"AT&T lobbies against nationwide fiber, says 10Mbps uploads are good enough."
5 replies (most recent on top)
Last year each of the carrier's benchmarked 5G speeds on their respective networks.
I think it was something like a gigabit of throughput, with a one mile link.
Right now, enter "speed test ookla" into your iphone or android browser and try it.
You will be surprised, unless you are one of those NOT IN MY BACKYARD people putting anti-cell-company posters on the San Francisco beaches, by the (now closed) Cliff House & other SF beaches and littering other SF parks.
Honestly, I don't really need a fiber optic cable for my thermostat to send:
"78 degrees"
( Every second ).
It's like throwing a pebble in the ocean every second and expecting rising sea levels.
4G speeds are plenty enough of adequate.
Most people just never did a speed test.
- With WiFi offloading.
- With today's wan optimization at the network edge
- And compression built into the browser
90% of the network traffic is in building (with or without WiFi offloading).
Over 100 megabits per second on cellular and on WiFi offloading probably also 100 megabits per second over a company's metered modem.
Most companies don't have gigabit backhaul. Even if they have fiber. A lot of mid sized companies are still using 100 megabit router links.
Fiber is just a way to make the customer think they are getting more. They're not. They're just paying more. AT&T is right.
The thing is cellular service provider companies are right.
I looked up the article and the title is misleading. It seems like someone wants us to get unnecessarily upset at cellular companies.
In fact if 10 Mbps is an uplink speed... Then downlink speed on high bands (1900) with carrier aggregation would actually be well over 225 Mbps.
Even without carrier aggregation it would be 150 Mbps.
My Sprint bill costs me under $75 a month. Some company called me out of the blue offering fiber for $300 a month.
I know it's not good news for Commscope, but why pay more?
I could obviously take the fiber and start a wireless ISP in my neighborhood and split the cost, but why?
And even the fiber is throttled.
If you sell me a $300 dollars per month glass pipe, why can't I have the full 10 Gbps?
I'm no fool. I put some thoughts into this deal. It would actually cost me less, even if I bought three iPhones, with my Sprint plan. And they throw in the 3 phones, with their plan.
With the 3 iPhones included, I still come out with a better deal than the fiber company is offering. Even with 4...
Sorry Commscope but even working from home with COVID restrictions, I could just buy an iPhone from all 3 carriers (Att, T-Mobile, and Verizon) and still pay less. Not that I need to do that, but it does prove a point.
You need to work harder. Now, if they actually offered me 10 Gbps, I might just reconsider, but we all know that just won't happen.
Nationwide fiber is a futile effort all ISP's are working feverishly on 5G LTE and 4G home internet offerings. Those solutions are ample for regular users working from home and doing their school work.