
Finnish Carrier Sets New World Record for 4G Download Speeds - bemmu
http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/wireless/finnish-carrier-sets-new-world-record-for-4g-download-speeds
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vmp
> The standard mobile phone plan in Finland comes with unlimited data, and
> carriers differentiate their services based on speed.

Meanwhile in Germany, providers ask ~8 euros per month for a 14.4-50 Mbit/s
"flatrate" with 1Gb traffic limit... they do provide "unlimited" traffic as
advertised but once you consume more than that you are restricted to ISDN
speeds (about 64kbit/s). The marketing guys came up with the word "high-speed
volume" so they don't need to refer to this as a "limit".

Really scummy practices if you ask me. :( Although the average person may be
content with 1Gb of data per month, what use could 64kbit/s have in 2016
(other than texts and narrowband voip ("Call your friends like its 1999™")?

~~~
Gracana
Same in the US. It amazes me that it's legal, it doesn't match any reasonable
interpretation of the word.

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martinko
> And the rest of the world could soon behave a lot more like the Finns do.

The core issue here is the lack of fiber-connected base stations. The vast
majority of them globally are connected with microwave connections that will
not be able to handle 1gbps speeds for multiple users at once.

This is a rather significant issue, as laying fiber from the backhaul
(sometimes even backbone) network requires a lot of earthwork, the fiber needs
to be laid underground and active infrastructure also needs to be deployed. I
don't see this happening anytime soon.

~~~
dogma1138
Also the population density of Finland isn't exactly staggering and it's not
like this service is available everywhere across Finland.

Having a small population and only a few highly populated metropolitan areas
make it easy.

Providing 1gbps cellular connection in NYC isn't really possible, Helsinki on
the other hand is doable. As for the rural areas they aren't covered in
Finland and even if a few are the size of the country also plays a role
because good luck getting 1gig cell towers across Nebraska.

~~~
kalleboo
> Also the population density of Finland isn't exactly staggering

Except the excuse you hear from Americans in every single thread about mobile
tech is "Oh but the US has such a low population density! Obviously our
service must be crap and cost a shitload!"

~~~
dogma1138
Population density is misleading because it's usually calculated based on
total land area, total private land area, total resdential build up etc.

Overall the US is in an odd position where tha large cities are too populated
and the suburban metropolitan areas tend to be considerably less dense due to
primarily single family housing over fairly large land plots. Combine that
with NIMBY mentality and the overall geographic scale and you don't get the
best environment for rapidly deploying infrastructure.

~~~
kalleboo
The problem is all regulatory. You have other countries with really insane
population distributions like Australia, but they have some vague semblance of
competition (I'm definitely not claiming the Australian market is sane by any
stretch) so people who need rural coverage get the expensive but very high
quality Telstra network, but people who never leave the cities can get
unlimited data on more focused carriers. The US get the worst of all worlds.

~~~
rayiner
Most reports I've seen put Australia's broadband speeds way behind the US.
Australia's primary broadband technology is DSL.

~~~
SturgeonsLaw
Yeah our wired network is lousy, we had commenced a rollout of nationwide
100MBit FTTP but that was crippled for political reasons, however we have some
very high performing cellular networks.

[http://www.smh.com.au/digital-
life/mobiles/australias-4g-net...](http://www.smh.com.au/digital-
life/mobiles/australias-4g-networks-the-fastest-in-the-
world-20140220-3350n.html)

------
davidf18
A few minutes ago I just ran a Speediest on my iPhone 6s+ in Manhattan near a
busy intersection on the Upper West Side.

 _47.6 Mbps download / 23 Mbps upload_

I use Verizon, which has deployed LTE-Advanced which allows for the carrier
aggregation of different data streams on different spectrums.

My phone uses the Qualcomm MDM 9635 modem:
[https://www.qualcomm.com/products/snapdragon/modems/x7](https://www.qualcomm.com/products/snapdragon/modems/x7)

The Samsung Galaxy S7 uses the more advanced 9645 modem:
[https://www.qualcomm.com/products/snapdragon/modems/x12](https://www.qualcomm.com/products/snapdragon/modems/x12)

Honestly, I don't know why I need > 45 Mbits/ sec download and 23 Mbits/sec
upload. I don't seem to have problems at all with Verizon, even with the tall
buildings.

What I do have problems with is the high cost of the service which does much
to explain why people don't use more bandwidth on Verizon and use more on
WiFi.

I would much prefer lower costs for Verizon data usage than higher download
speeds.

~~~
icelancer
I get 50/20 on Tmo in the Seattle/Bellevue area which is to be expected, given
their corporate structure is largely based here (for US operations). But I
agree; the speeds are largely irrelevant considering I am only getting 5
GB/month at those speeds and EDGE/2G speeds otherwise.

Would vastly prefer 10/5 or 10/2 or something with near-unlimited data.

~~~
davidf18
Just curious. What is your handset? Wondering which modem you have.

~~~
icelancer
The new Huawei Nexus 6P. Switched from an iPhone 6+ but I had similar speeds
on both devices.

~~~
davidf18
I think that uses the Snapdragon 810 which has a better modem than the iPhone
6s/6s+ which has a Category 6 modem. Your phone, the 6P has a Category 9:
[https://www.qualcomm.com/products/snapdragon/processors/810](https://www.qualcomm.com/products/snapdragon/processors/810)

~~~
icelancer
Ah. I've not noticed better signal, I don't think. But I do enjoy the phone
regardless.

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TorKlingberg
I have worked in the field, so I may be able to answer some questions. As
always, real-world speed will no be this high any time soon. This is a lab
demo which is very different from reality.

They do specify the techniques they used:

* Five-carrier aggregation: Each LTE carrier uses up to 20 MHz, so this uses 100 MHz of bandwidth dedicated to a single user. Bandwidth in the air is scarce and many carriers do not have that much in total. LTE is expanding into higher frequencies (towards 5GHz) where there is more BW available, but the range is shorter.

* 256 QAM: This requires very good receivers and extremely low background noise and interference.

* 4x4 MIMO: MIMO is quite magic and unpredictable, even more so than radio signal propagation in general. For 4x4 to work the phone needs to have four separate antennas, and they need to be separated enough to receive different combinations of signals from the four transmitter antennas. 2x2 MIMO is common and works if you are close enough to the base station and get lucky with the angles and signal reflections.

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elipsey
Great, now I can burn through my data cap in 8.42 seconds

~~~
finspin
Not really an issue in Finland since the standard mobile phone plan comes with
unlimited data.

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jpalomaki
This same carrier just some days ago issued a statement on average their
mobile data customer used 13GB of traffic in August.

[http://corporate.elisa.com/press-
releases/bulletin/?id=41240...](http://corporate.elisa.com/press-
releases/bulletin/?id=41240826956117&tag=corporate.elisa.com%3Apress)

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imaginenore
Here (in one of the EU countries) we have a strange situation when 4G is 20+
Mbps, but out home DSL maxes out at 2.5 Mbps. We're thinking of switching over
to 4G, but it's only unlimited at night.

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dboreham
Rule of thumb: carriers actually deliver, once users are up and running on the
service (not the first day after deployment), around 1/10 of whatever speed
they mention in press releases.

~~~
nordify
You are sorely mistaken with regards to Finland.

Regulation in Finland defines what broadband speeds are acceptable. This
includes mobile broadband. Acceptable speeds are a minimum of 50% of top
speeds using a 4 hour average or a minimum of 40% of top speeds at any time.

And this regulation is enforced.

~~~
mnarayan01

      Acceptable speeds are a minimum of 50% of top speeds [...]
    

I assume that's _advertised_ top speeds?

~~~
nordify
Yes.

