4G insounds wonderful, but why should deployment be so slow.

Osage4g · 4G Fledgling Joined: 08 Dec 2009 Posts: 11

Its always a bitter experience to be then last to get the benefits of new technologies. And while I live about 30 miles from the State Capital Building in Indiana, I still do not have DSL access. Nor can I even find out when my monopoly land line provider, AT&T plans to get off their dead butts to upgrade their antique phone lines.

Thankfully, Verizon just activated a cell phone tower only two miles from my house on 11/18/08. So I bit the bullet, bought my own 3G Verizon modem, and signed up with Verizon on a month by month basis. And from my own way of thinking, I took the gamble on A PROOF OF CONCEPT BASIS. And even if the price is high, the 5 GB cap is very delimiting, the speed is excellent compared to dial up, so THE PROOF OF CONCEPT has paid off.

And now all the cell phone providers are implementing 4G, that will have greater range, far faster speeds, hopefully without caps, and maybe at a lesser price than 3G. And all the major cell phone carriers have rolled out tests bed markets in a few select cities, THAT SERVES AS THAT SAME
PROOF OF CONCEPT.

And because I assume those tests have been successful, I ask why should there be a major delay in rolling 4G out the the rest of the country. After all, the major investments in terms of cell phone towers is an existing fact for almost everyone, maybe a few more towers are needed to fill in gaps, but still it costs big bucks to build towers. After that, its unclear if new transmitting antennas are needed for 4G, but I see that as no huge expense. After that the various chipsets to get 4G out to consumers may be in its infancy, but that will be unwritten on the consumer side. And we have a chipset industry with a proven ability to mass produce rapidly.

So can anyone explain to me why many are taking a target area of 2015
to get 4G rolled out to the bulk of the country? Where are the barriers and delays?

And I also point out the company that first makes the technology available in given areas will have a huge competitive advantage as they sign up droves of customers first. If the customer is happy, why should they go with some second or third latecomer unless they offer significantly better service and at a greatly reduced price?

And earth to AT&T, I hold grudges. Even if you later come with the best 4G service, given the way AT&T has treated me in the past, I never want to deal with AT&T again. For now I am forced by monopoly rules to stay with AT&T for land line phone service, but if I can get VOIP going with 3G
or 4G internet, without going over my delimiting 5GB/mo. cap, I will be thrilled to totally say onto AT&T, you are fired FOREVER.

And since I am talking mainly 3G or 4G service at a stationary location, namely my house, I am somewhat ignoring the mobile 3G or 4G user.
But why should the USA, as a nation, allow 3 or more competing standards. Face the facts, its cell phone towers that make the technology go, no one given network can cover the entire country, so chipsets should be able to utilize any network in some sort of co-operative roaming agreements.

Sorry for the rant, but can anyone tell me why the 4G rollout should be so slow?

sidsub · Posted: Mon Dec 28, 2009 2:27 pm Post subject:

I hate to say this, Osage, but if you're in a market that doesn't even have DSL, then you're in a market that these carriers don't see much profit in. In other words, you'll be one of the last to get any new innovation that the carriers come out with.

As for why 4g is taking so long, the reason is that it takes a lot to get everything together to actually do a rollout. The technology has been there for a few years, but the companies needed to have the infrastructure equipment, the customer equipment, the test equipment, the bugs fixed on all the software and hardware on all this equipment, the backhaul infrastructure to handle the additional data traffic, the financing to put it all together, the logistics of doing a rollout, the regulatory and legal agreements with local governments as well as the FCC... there's a lot to it.

It's finally ramping up, but it will take another 4-5 years to finish the rollout, I believe, and even then it'll probably never cover everybody.

wakeman91 · Posted: Tue Jan 05, 2010 6:55 pm Post subject:

I don't mean to give you false hope that your town will be getting Clear soon, but I was just talking to a friend who was in a similar situation. He's about to move to Levelland Texas (near Lubbock) for school and couldn't find any broadband service other than Clear. This is only one of many small under-served towns but I guess it shows they're interested in serving these markets. (especially with gov't incentives)

AMA · 4G User Joined: 03 Jul 2006 Posts: 34

It's all about the $bucks$. Clearwire was built upon a model of hitting the smaller, out of the way podunk markets, so as to avoid the big boys...

Well, they just happened to have the edge on getting into 4g, which attracted the attention of the big boys; so much so that Sprint locked 'em up. However, Sprint doesn't advertise that Clear 4g is a blip on the U.S. maps, so most Sprint customers are gonna be left high and dry.

That said, $billions$ are supposedly going into this thing, and with Sprint already having towers located pretty much everywhere, there's a lot less expense rolling this out vs. starting from scratch.

Sorry...

I waited almost 4 years for Sprint to upgrade their wayyy slow network to EVDO, 'any month now' crap, only to get 4g really early cuz Clear happened to be in my town.

Kinda nice to be on the front edge of things for once, instead of draggin' ass at the back of the line.

Osage4g · 4G Fledgling Joined: 08 Dec 2009 Posts: 11