• Brkdncr@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    68
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    10 months ago

    This shit started with 3g. None of the carriers were even close to supporting 3g, which was designed to support 100mbps.

    Tmo and vzw had a modest improvement from 2g even though it was still slow as shit but AT&T simple did nothing and started calling theirs 3g.

    • aStonedSanta@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      21
      ·
      edit-2
      10 months ago

      Doesn’t it stand for generation? Like 3rd generation and 5th generation? This is referencing a wifi router is it not?

      • crimsonpoodle@pawb.social
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        22
        ·
        10 months ago

        So sort of: the 3g is part of a standard for data rates, but the difficulty, comes in that networks are not homogeneous. Similarly to how you might be familiar with 5Ghz and 2.4Ghz WiFi signals. As a general rule of thumb the higher the frequency the more data you can send but with more attenuation so the signal can be blocked more easily and cannot travel as far, whereas the inverse is true for lower frequencies. So while the generations did make some changes in terms of protocols— it also came with higher frequency emitters which can theoretically carry more data. Other changes include MIMO antennas which do beam forming to make more of the energy go in the direction of a user using constructive and destructive interference from an array of antennas to accomplish this. However marketing people are always very eager to adopt technical terms and inflate them into oblivion. However some of this can be attributed to honest misunderstanding within a company.

    • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      20
      arrow-down
      4
      ·
      10 months ago

      One hundred millibits per second? That means it takes ten whole seconds to send a single bit! That’s outrageous.

    • Ultraviolet@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      14
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      10 months ago

      4G LTE was the point of no return. It was supposed to mean “it’s not 4G yet but we have an upgrade plan to get there”, but when they finally did, marketing found out that to the average person, going from 4G LTE to 4G sounded like a downgrade, so they rebranded it to 5G.