LTE Service Now in Craig - P.O.W. Report

Tuesday, March 5, 2019

LTE Service Now in Craig


Or is it?


Johnny Rice writes:

AT&T LTE is finally live in Craig today, but the download speed is wayyyy below 1/2mb. Should be closer to 20. Hopefully it's slow because they're still fine tuning things?



What is LTE?


The most notable differences between LTE and its predecessors are the changes in frequency and bandwidth usage. There are many 4G LTE bands, the usage of which will vary depending on your country and even your specific carrier’s technology. [...]

LTE uses two different radio links for downlink and uplink — from tower to device and vice versa. For the downlink, LTE uses an OFDMA (orthogonal frequency division multiple access), which requires MIMO. MIMO, which stands for Multiple Input, Multiple Output, uses two or more antennas to reduce latency significantly and boost speeds within a given channel. Standard LTE can accommodate up to a 4×4 arrangement (the first digit is the number of transmit antennas, and the second, the number of receive antennas). [...]

Now that we’ve outlined what LTE is, how fast is it? the major benefit for consumers with 4G LTE is faster download speeds. Although the quality and speed for your connection will clearly vary based on the number of users and the strength of the signal, most LTE networks provide between 10 and 20 Mbps download speeds, according to the latest OpenSignal research. The fastest 4G LTE countries boast up to 50 Mbps download speeds, although in reality these top out somewhere around 35 Mbps.

For comparison, older 3G networks can vary quite widely in their actual results. HSPA networks can peak at around 14 Mbps download and 6 Mbps upload, but rarely come close to this. Typically, a good LTE network is at least 3 to 5 times faster than the best 3G coverage. [Source]

Basically, according to Johnny's test Craig doesn't even have 3G peak coverage:


Though to be fair, the speeds vary during the day.

And to be honest, low interwebz speeds are the sacrifices we make by living on Prince of Wales Island. Thanks to Johnny for the update and to AT&T for making efforts to improve service, also here is a comment from Wanda worth highlighting:









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