Deregulation isn't bad, but when the government plays favorites with the huge corporations, that's where it starts sucking. It's not all too bad, though. For my wife and I it's $100 a month for unlimited everything.
Wait, who's that? I am paying close to 200 with ATT for all unlimited. Is it T Mobile?
Absolutely. If the FCC wasn't corrupt as fuck, they could keep it in check, but alas, that's our government for you.
Ah fuck. I like ATT overall but the value proposition of T Mobile is insane. They have pretty good reception where I live though and besides, I work from home most of the time so it's usually WiFi for me all day. May consider a change down the road.
Honestly, T-Mobile's network has gotten so much better over the last few years. And they'll even give you a free cellspot for your house if you have reception issues at home. Mix that with their wifi calling and their included Netflix and their T-Mobile tuesdays; that pretty much negates any positive AT&T has. At least, in my opinion.
Yeah, it's just LTE, same speed (slower in some cases) as other providers who show "LTE" on the screen. As for how it's allowed, it really isn't, that's false advertising. And they are being sued over it by Sprint, the first real court date over it is April 22, when the judge will hear arguments for a preliminary injunction stopping AT&T from using the 5Ge logo until the court case is completed.
You're thinking about 5G. This isn't that. AT&T is using 5Ge to deceive their customers into thinking it's 5G, when in fact it's just LTE.
But, um, the government only gets to "play favourites" like this because these govt-corporation relationships are not regulated. It's literally the direct fault of deregulation
It's arbitrary because the "G" has no distinct meaning/delination between those generations. It just means an arbitrary upgrade. It's not even like something like FastEthernet(100mbps) vs GigaEthernet(1000mbps). 4g is an improvement to 3g, and 5g is an improvement to it, but without any sort of details it's kind of a meaningless designation and all those added bells and whistles to the name are just marketing ploys.
That's not how generations are determined. Marketing doesn't dictate this (which is entirely why this ATT claim of 5Ge is absurd). It's decided by the 3GPP which is the international industry body for managing and producing cellular communications technical specifications. Each generation has been massively different from a technical perspective. You can find the specifications online. They're publicly available on the 3GPP website.
Huh? There are details, 5g is a standard, created by the 3GPP organization (it's officially called "5G New Radio"). The official 5G logo/trademark cannot be used unless a company follows the standard, and if a company doesn't follow the standard, the modems in supporting phones won't work with it.
It's actually the ITU that defines the specification for each generation (and yes, there is a clear definition for what 4G etc. is), 3GPP is submitting a technology that it believes can fulfill the ITU specification. 3GPP developed UMTS and LTE, and will have a 5G technology candidate as well, but it does not specify what the definition of each generation is.
As far as I know, the ITU may define the scope of work and broad goals of each generations but the 3GPP actually puts together the specifications. 3GPP authors and publishes the Technical Specifications and Technical Reports. These are then translated into standards by the regulatory bodies of each geographic region e.g. ETSI.
They only put together the specifications for their own technology. They specify everything about how LTE works, but their goal is to make sure that it complies with ITU requirements for what 4G is (IMT-Advanced). CDMA2000 was, for example, a 3G technology directly competing with 3GPP's UMTS and WiMAX was a 4G candidate that attempted to compete with LTE but never got any traction.
Ah right. I knew about WiMax and CDMA2000 but didn't realise the role of the ITU vs 3GPP.
Actually, it's not quicker at all than their old LTE network, not even a hair, it's just a rebranding that happens when you connect to their "LTE Advanced" frequencies (which have been around for a while, and all other US providers have that).
