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AT&T The Internet Businesses Cellphones Communications Network Software Wireless Networking News Technology

AT&T Says LTE Can Still Offer Speeds Up To 1 Gbps (dslreports.com) 51

Posted by BeauHD from the still-in-the-race dept.
An anonymous reader writes from a report via DSL Reports: ATT CTO Andre Fuetsch said at a telecom conference last week that the company's existing LTE network should be able to reach speeds of 1 Gbps before the standard ultimately gets overshadowed by faster 5G tech. The new 5G technology isn't expected to arrive until 2020 at the earliest, so LTE has a lot of time left as the predominant wireless connectivity. "There's a lot of focus on 5G -- but don't discount LTE," Fuetsch said. "LTE is still here. And LTE will be around for a long time. And LTE has also enormous potential in that, you'll be capable of supporting 1 gigabit speeds as well." 5G will help move past 1 Gbps speeds, while also providing significantly lower latency. "You'll see us sharing more about the trial activity we're doing," said Fuetsch. "Everything that's being [tested] right now is not standard, it's all sort of proprietary. But this is an important process to go through because this is how you learn and how it helps define standards."
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AT&T Says LTE Can Still Offer Speeds Up To 1 Gbps More

AT&T Says LTE Can Still Offer Speeds Up To 1 Gbps

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  • So now, they can start throttling even sooner!

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by dgatwood ( 11270 )

      With a 3 GB data plan, gigabit data is good for what... 24 seconds? Awesome!

      • Assuming that your phone's hardware could keep up with it and that it could be delivered to you that fast by the sending end's infrastructure and everything in between... yes.

    • Throttling speed is worse than throttling bandwidth. Let's say you have 1TB of data you need transferred.

      Your ISP might throttle your speed to 10mbps for $30/month.
      1MB/s * 60s/min * 60min/hr * 24hr/day * 30days/month = 2.5TB/Month cap but you have to wait a month to transfer that 2.5TB.

      If you have 2.5TB to transfer it's far better from a user standpoint to have a 1000mbps connection where the transfer is completed in 8 hours overnight.

      Both are effectively 2.5TB caps, one objectively though is superior sinc

      • this sound nice in theory, but doesnt exist in reality
        Do you know ANY network with data caps that has a cap close to 2.5TB? Its usually something pathetic like 300GB. This is why people prefer 10MBit with no caps.

    • So now, they can start throttling even sooner!

      Yes, but they'll sell you additional blocks of 18 seconds at $20 per... so that's a win for everyone! Except the consumer, of course.

    • The wireless companies are really dropping the ball. Perhaps they are still trying to regain some of their wired business?
      But if we can get quality unlimited and unmetered speed at a good price. We would drop our cable isp for the more convenient wireless.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by stdarg ( 456557 )

        Google Fiber is thinking about trying a wireless last mile approach in some cities so you may get your wish.

  • The speeds are good enough! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sims 2 ( 994794 ) on Monday August 22, 2016 @04:26PM (#52751361)

    Now we just need to work on the price per GB.

  • Imaginary 5g (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I like how they are talking about 5g like it is a technology instead of just a marketing moniker...

    • Hey... it didn't stop AT&T from calling their old HSPA+ network "4G" before they finally upgraded their towers to LTE.

      I guess that we can expect them to start promoting their "5G" "LTE+" network the next time they upgrade the backhaul on a few of their existing towers.

  • Fast enough that it's highly usable for more than mobile "data light", so it has inherent value to data consumers, allowing both the carriers to charge for it and for consumers to consume it fast enough that they will pay high fees for large consumption tiers, fat overages when they exhaust their allocation or both.

    If 5G pans out anything like the hype, carriers will have to change their pricing strategies. As most Slashdot posters note, you'd burn through current allocations ridiculously fast.

    But as much

  • They *can* (Score:4)

    by jxander ( 2605655 ) on Monday August 22, 2016 @05:50PM (#52751921)

    ATT can offer speeds up to 1Gbps.

    They won't, obviously... but they can

  • but I'm pretty sure I saw it drop from the bull. What is LTE, you may ask? A marketing term. Stands for Long Term Evolution. Nothing technical about it. There is no RFC defining LTE. Tweak your protocol to get an extra 2% throughput? That's LTE. Come up with a completely different protocol only your network supports? That's LTE.
  • Thanks for admitting 4G, 5G, nG is all marketing hype and people are not getting the super fast speeds you claim.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by guruevi ( 827432 )

      There is a standard that has set the speeds for 2G/3G/4G/5G. What providers in the US sell is really (still) 3G (20Mbps) and when your phone says 3G it's really 2G. 4G should give you ultimately 1G down/500M up.

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