
 4G Performance Silliness - wglb
http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2011/09/19/4G-performance
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leif
Speed is easy to engineer, easy to market. Reliability is hard to engineer,
hard to market (they've been trying, after all). I'd love a network that's
reliable and _fast enough_ , but I don't see it coming.

 _[I have no idea how hard it is to engineer speed on a cell network, but I'm
willing to bet it's easier than reliability. It almost always is.]_

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bradleyland
The terms _n_ G and _n_ mbps are the new _n_ GHz. Expect more silliness until
mom & pop buy enough phones to figure out it doesn't make a difference.

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kokey
I think the problem is going to be similar with other consumer services like
home broadband: It will be a numbers contest.

People compare their cameras based on megapixels, where for practical purposes
your photos are going to end up limited by your LCD screen resolution. People
own cars that has significantly higher top speeds than they can practically
use, and ISPs advertise connections quoting the highest burst speed for the
lowest amount of monthly subscription.

For mobile, in particular, I will also rather support a maximum cap on
throughput if that guarantees reliability. That said, never underestimate the
growth in demand to utilise whatever is being supplied, people will find
useful things to do with 35Mbit/sec while being mobile.

