OMG 4G networks are now delivering only 3G speeds

Brits clamouring to sign new mobile contracts to get their hands on speedier networks might want to pause for thought: 4G speeds have halved in the past year just as demand rose.

Which? said:
We … found that average 4G speeds are slowing – from 19Mbps to 10.16Mbps in just under a year. The reason? It’s likely because more customers have signed up to 4G, thus increasing demand on the network and slowing speeds.

The good news is that as customers continue to sign up, we won’t necessarily see speeds fall any further [ie. they will stay at 10Mbs]. That’s because providers are hoisting more masts to cope with the extra demand.

Of course, that’s exactly what happened to 3G services [that provide up to 14Mbs], and (un)surprisingly the more expensive 4G alternative was the solution – you suckers

Is 4G really better than 3G?

So the offered service could not actually deliver what was promised once user started competing for the bandwidth. They would have know this from the outset and only catered for the initial few thousand connections.

4G suffers even more than 3G from mast density: to have full performance you need good clear access to your local mast/s, and they need to be close together (high density).

Of course this is no more than the usual story of never-actually-delivering-headline-speed: sell a product advertised as fast, whilst the small print relinquishes all guarantee of actual performance.

When did you last belive in quoted ADLS performance, for example? Or wifi speeds?

In most cases the issue is not so much of what the technology can theoretically provide but, in the case of wireless, local prevailing conditions, and most significantly, the actual ability of the company’s infrastructure to deliver the promised capacity – this is what’s happening in the above survey. I have certainly seen ADSL being affected like this too – look what happens to download speeds at busy times, and why ‘bandwidth management’ (throttling) is used.

To get any chance of full throughput you pretty much need a proper network cable connection. Internally, that’s Cat 5/6 and for broadband something like Virgin Media cable service (not the ADSL offering) or possibly ADSL/Fibre (I have no data on performance).