An unexpected result: Chip, a popular computer magazine in Germany, noticed when doing their yearly cellular network measurement campaign, that LTE coverage from one of the leading network operators was present on 95% of their route all across Germany. For the details see here (sorry, in German, but Google can help with the translation…). And for comparison, here are last year's results.
And two other especially noteworthy data points:
- Call setup success rates >99%, drop rates of ongoing calls <2%. Values customers in other countries can only dream of…
- Wireless Internet connectivity of the leading operators is still as good or even slightly better than last year. The number of smartphones and data usage is rising but the numbers show that even without LTE taken into the equation, well designed networks are capable of dealing with the load.
In other words: It can be done, don't let those who can't, make you believe otherwise!
P.S.: Always looking for links to similar tests done in other countries!
It’s a very interesting survey. I’m looking forward for the next report with details on LTE data rates. Those two testers might have had a great time walking around cities, although they had to carry heavy backpacks. Luckily, they didn’t stick in Hofbrauhaus as Aloisius did :-).
The report made me wonder what data speeds a real LTE network can deliver, so I browsed the net and found this report http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2405596,00.asp
It shows what data speeds the testing team measured in the main US cities. In some places data rates are pretty impressive – up to 50-60 Mbps. I also noticed that Americans prefer “4G” over “LTE”, even if 3G sometimes faster than 4G. What kind of 4G is it if it’s slower than 3G? I looked again at the report about LTE in Germany and noticed that there was no mention of 4G, only LTE. Hmm. Very interesting. It looks like American operators really like to make hype about digits. It would be very interesting to observe how humble LTE networks in Europe can fare with Super Fast High-Speed Beyond 4G networks in USA and Canada.
Comment on Sergey:
Whereas 3G is a worldwide accepted synonym for UMTS, 4G is not. In Germany evolutions of UMTS, i.e. HSDPA, HSUPA, HSPA+ are also handled below the 3G terminology, even there is a real big difference in user experience now (e.g. Dual carrier 42 Mbps vs 384 kbps). But as the development of higher data rates happend rather smoothly over some years and also population coverage, I guess non of the marketing guys here wanted to push it that time already as a complete new generation.
The official next generation mobile network here is LTE that will not be named as 4G due to the described different use in other countries.