

The State of LTE - cleis
http://opensignal.com/reports/state-of-lte/#

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JamesCRR
This was my first attempt at Data-visualisation using d3. I've done a few
things with GoogleVis and R, the one is awesome for the web the other is
awesome for its flexibility, D3 is awesome for both. I was also pretty much a
novice to JS and CSS, I highly recommend AlignedLeft's tutorials
<http://alignedleft.com/> if like me you start from scratch with this.

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b1tr0t
Your graphs are pretty -- and it's an interesting page, but your ping section
makes me wonder about the rest of your data.

You don't qualify what you're pinging, but if we're talking ping to the
internet gateway, ping over a strong 802.11n connection on my iPhone 5 is 2 -
5 milliseconds on my local network. The same is not true of LTE which has more
typically a 100ms latency to the carrier internet gateway.

LTE definitely brought down latency from 3G! But it's nowhere near as low
latency as a good 802.11n connection!

~~~
pavelpadovan
True, we're pinging google.com (which resolves to its local sites) over the
active data connection - whatever flavour of Wi-Fi or 3G. We could have also
broken this down by 3G types e.g. UMTS vs HSPA etc. The idea is not to show
the theoretical maximum of LTE or Wi-Fi, if we wanted to that we'd just use a
dozen phones in lab conditions. Rather, we wanted to get a feel for the
changes in user experience of the mobile web, so this data is drawn from a set
of 9m speed tests run with the OpenSignal app.

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lobster_johnson
This article leaves out a major issue if you're an iPhone user (no idea about
Android phones): LTE frequencies have not been standardized. As usual, it's
the US that is the outlier, and the rest of the world have agreed on a
standard.

Here is Apple's list of models and their compatibility:
<http://www.apple.com/iphone/LTE/>

For example, US iPhone models use GSM at 700b MHz, but won't work with
European LTE (and vice versa) which use GSM at 850/1800/2100 MHz.

(And then there's my country, Norway, where we have only two networks which
for some reason have decided on 1800/2600 MHz, which will work with _none_ of
the existing models.)

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CrazedGeek
"The LTE standard can be used with many different frequency bands. In North
America, 700/800 and 1700/1900 MHz are used; 2500 MHz in South America; 800,
900, 1800, 2600 MHz in Europe; 1800 and 2600 MHz in Asia; and 1800 MHz in
Australia."

It doesn't seem like anyone's particularly standardized on frequencies.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTE_(telecommunication)#Frequen...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTE_\(telecommunication\)#Frequency_bands)

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tedunangst
Rest of the world == Europe.

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pm90
I recently talked to an Intel engineer about why they don't have an Intel
phone out yet. And he reached into his pocket and pulled out an Intel phone!
Apparently, these phones are already available in China, but because Intel
does not make the LTE chipsets, they have been unable to get it out. I asked
him why Intel did not have LTE chipsets in their phones, Ans:"Because Qualcomm
owns all the patents and makes the latest chipsets"

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wmf
Intel/Infineon has an LTE baseband, but for whatever reason it isn't used in
any phones. One factor is that Verizon and Sprint are locked into Qualcomm for
backwards compatibility with their CDMA2000 networks and if you have to use
Qualcomm for the Verizon version of the phone you might as well use Qualcomm
for the GSM version as well.

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kristopher
HOW SPEEDS COMPARE doesn't really mean much. Japan has a higher density of
users per square kilometer, so it seems to me that there should be some sort
of normalization done to the numbers. I get better speeds in Kyoto (less
simultaneous users) than I do in Shibuya (many simultaneous users!)

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cleis
Thanks for the feedback. We aim to measure the actual user experience on LTE,
rather than the theoretical capacity. If an area has a higher density of users
then of course connections will be slower, but that is meant to be a part of
what we're recording. Obviously countrywide averages are never going to say
very much about localised area speeds, but they do give a general indication
for the purpose of international comparison.

~~~
kristopher
Also, how are you measuring speed? HTTP Download? Where are your servers
located?

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JamesCRR
Sorry we missed this one, yep HTTP download from Cloudfront - so we use those
servers. Others e.g. SpeedTest.net use the servers of the local ISPs which is
better for measuring the max possible speed a user can get, but our focus is
on the speeds users are more likely to get while actually browsing/downloading
so Cloudfront works pretty well as a lot of global traffic is served through
it - would love to see the % if anyone knows.

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aw3c2
Random feedback:

On the THE GLOBAL ROLLOUT world map, the colors are not clear. They seem to be
the same as the 2(?) pixel high lines below the labels below? Make them
bigger! Or add a legend.

On HOW SPEEDS COMPARE I had to read the rotated y label first before I had any
idea what the graph showed. Either add the unit to the numbers or add a clear
title that is read normally.

LTE PING VS OTHER TECHNOLOGIES seems completely random. What are those
numbers, how were they created? Ping to where?

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JamesCRR
Thanks for the comments, I agree we the key for the map could be clearer (yep
it's those lines!). I'm also with you on the bar chart.

The pings are on google.com (which resolves to it's local site). And, extra
clarification, we're using cloudfront CDN for the download tests.

OK will makes some changes then. Thanks!

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Osmium
I would add a forth colour on the map too: LTE from multiple carriers or not.

e.g. in the UK we only have LTE from one carrier at present, so for practical
purposes most consumers (who are currently locked into contracts) don't have
access to LTE, and those that do might choose not to since no competition
means that currently LTE is very expensive here -- and that's if it's
available at all; presently it's only in a few select cities. Listing "UK
Broadband" as an additional LTE carrier is a bit misleading, since they're (to
my knowledge) only a wholesaler and don't actually provide a service direct to
customers.

I think a map showing which countries have multiple carriers would give an
extra way of judging how developed a country's LTE infrastructure is. Great
map otherwise though!

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kdot
MetroPCS is using a 5x5 Mhz channel in most of its markets, that is the
primary reason for low speed. This brings down the USA average. Most US
network operators have the capability to reach the 100 Mbit/s downlink target;
that requires a dedicated 20MHz channel (which no one has) and full-blown
MIMO.

~~~
spwestwood
The Japan average is also bought down a lot by one network (NTT DOCOMO). As
well as the usual factors age of the network could also be an issue here. Both
SoftBank (16.2 Mb/s), KDDI (14.8 Mb/s) are under 1 year old, presumably under
capacity waiting for people to upgrade handsets and contracts. DOCOMO (5.5
Mb/s) on the other hand launched in 2010. You see a similar effect in the US,
where AT&T's network is regularly beating the older, more congested Verizon.
We expect this to even out over time.

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chromelyke
"WI-FI" is a bit ambiguous for a comparison like this. If your intention was
to compare land lines to cellular then it should be called out as such. It
would also be important to note that the land line performance in areas with
LTE coverage may be significantly better than the national average used.

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hrrsn
It's interesting how LTE doesn't always mean fast. Here in New Zealand
carriers have only been testing LTE while upgrading their networks to 42mbps
DC-HSPA. At home I can average about 30mbps on my iPad and iPhone over 3G. For
me, I'd rather have constantly fast 3G rather than spotty LTE, especially with
the battery situation. <http://i.imgur.com/7k8LXe1.png>

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spwestwood
That's true. The fastest 3G speeds can exceed average LTE, so it's semi-
defensible for carriers to brand some HSPA+ as 4G. In our tests though, the
fastest speeds are always LTE. In the last week of the 50 fastest speeds tests
all but 2 (#39 and #40) have been LTE. (Fastest was 69812 Mb/s - Oman Mobile!)

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minimax
Great info! What are you pinging? Is it the default gateway or a specific host
on the Internet? Also how do you determine download speed? The numbers for wi-
fi are so disappointing. I wonder if you're not really measuring the speed of
the DSL connection (or whatever) that the wi-fi router is sitting on.

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jsight
If it's measuring public wifi, then I'm not surprised. I rarely see better
than 2-3Mb. My HSPA+ phone easily beats almost every public wifi that I've
seen, aside from the issue of data-caps.

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JamesCRR
Yep, it includes public Wi-Fi, though we are trying to distinguish between
public and private for the purposes of making hotspot maps, anyway could also
be cool to look at the breakdown in speeds between the two.

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hideo
You may be interested in <http://www.mobiperf.com/>. Most of their data is
available for research purposes, and there are many researchers who have used
this for their tests.

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JamesCRR
That's part of the very cool M:Lab project, other apps running M:Lab
<http://measurementlab.net/measurement-lab-tools>

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CrazedGeek
Are HSPA+/LTE speeds really that "bad" generally? My HSPA+ phone typically
gets 8-10Mbps down and roughly 50ms ping, and I've been led to believe that
LTE here (the US) is considerably faster.

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yareally
HSPA+ tends to have latency degrade far faster when you get farther from a
tower than LTE, that's the big difference between the two.

LTE speeds are quite good on Verizon[1]. I get around 2-4MB/s normally. LTE
pings for me are 50-100ms depending on where I am.

[1]Verizon uses the 700mhz LTE band.

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xixora1
I'm quite happy that this article clears up the real meaning of 4G.

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sp332
Well, that's the ITU's definition. Unfortunately they didn't acquire the
trademark for the 4G designation before carriers already had started to use it
on their "slightly better 3G" networks, so there is no regulation on the use
of the term in the market.

I think it's funny that AT&T called one of their earlier networks "4G" so now
when I have an LTE signal, it doesn't say 4G and when I don't, it does...

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cpeterso
Ex-Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein used to dismiss AT&T's "4G" network as "faux G."

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shmerl
Is T-Mobile going to have an LTE network in US?

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yareally
Eventually yes. Right now it's just imaginary mostly, like Sprint's. However,
both are supposed to have LTE soonish (they keep delaying it so can't be more
definite than that).

