PeterKellner.net

I just got back from CES and have been honestly quite confused about all the different claims for 4G verses 3G.  Somehow, my T-Mobile phone I trialed (The Google G2) seemed to get pretty impressive download speeds, even though it was still not 4G (sometimes, up to 5MBs).  Then, my AT&T phone running Windows Phone 7 would get close to the same running AT&T’s 3G.  They both seem to call their networks HSPA+ I think, and somehow, that means 3G but faster (whatever the hec that means).  Now, I have a Sprint phone again (the HTC Slide running Android) with the real 4G.  Hmm. a big confusing.

At anyrate, Jason Hiner just a really good article that sorts all this out.  My biggest takeaway is that the “real” 4G networks (Sprint (WIMAX) and Verizon (LTE)) have significantly reduced latency time which does make a big difference for how the web feels when you are doing interactive stuff.  Below is a post to the article:

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/how-at-t-and-t-mobile-conjured-4g-networks-out-of-thin-air/43577?tag=nl.e539

Hope this helps you as it did me.

Yesterday, I went to the CLEAR 4G WiMax Conference at the San Jose Convention Center.  It’s the second conference like this I’ve been to.  The first one was last October and was hosted by Sprint called the Sprint 2009 Open Developers Conference.

My take away is that fast broadband is coming, it’s coming fast (meant as a pun) and us developers need to make sure we are building apps to take advantage of it!

As usual, Newton Chan (Professor Foothill College) sniffed out the perfect place to be to get free stuff.  CLEAR gave away 20 4G devices and lucky for me I was second on line.  The devices they gave us covered 3 areas not to far from where I live so I drove this morning to one of those areas and tested my new card. OMG!!! Check out the speed!  I could get really use to this.  1.99Mbps Down, 1.01 Mbps up.  That’s about 7 times faster than I normally get with 3G.

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