Recently the 3 telcos have been saying that they have testing the new 4G technology, also known as Long Term Evolution (LTE), that allows transmission speed as high as 100Mbps.
My question to the 3 telcos is very simple. To date, are any of the 3G users making full use of the speed that 3G can offer? HSDPA+ (3.5G) is suppose to hit up to 42 MBps. Are any of the 3G users consistently hitting this speed?
I don't have the telco's statistics but based on my personal usage statistics, I can say that the 3G users are NOT hitting the promised speeds. Not only do we have serious coverage problems even for EDGE (2G) in the SMRT tunnels (yes, I had no problems with the NEL tunnels), whenever I do have 3G coverage, I need to wait for a while just to launch my Facebook app. Even if I'm taking the conservative speed of 7.2MBps for 3G, loading of the Facebook app should be instantaneous, which isn't the case. Heck, even if I try to load the Channelnewsaisa app, I have to wait for a while during peak hours (morning and night) even though it's mostly textual.
So why on earth are we going towards LTE if the telcos are still having coverage and speed issues? If 3.5G cannot hit speeds of up to even 7.2MBps, then admit it. Don't use the same network congestion excuse. No matter how fast the technology is, if you cannot resolve the 3.5G network congestion issue, what makes you think that you can resolve the 4G network congestion issue? Oh yes, and the other favourite excuse given. Too many users are logging into the network. Does 4G resolve this problem?
Resolve these fundamental problems before you should even think of going towards LTE. I do wonder if anyone is monitoring the service level of the telcos. Recently Singtel got rapped by MDA for the Mio service downtime. How about the internet service level?
2 comments:
from what i recall even the speed of 7+mbps is not available island wide, which makes it quite sad
for some telcos to proclaim that they've huge coverage.
to be honest, spots like Tanjong Pagar MRT Station is a perfect example of their coverage. right in the CBD and i've no reception to even make a phone call let alone use data :(
That seems to be the norm for SMRT tunnels. I frequently do not get any signals at all as long as I'm within the SMRT tunnel, and I include Circle Line.
The funny thing is I get no such problems in the NEL line, and I've almost tested the whole line.
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