What Are the Speeds?
MBPS with LTE technology-Facts and Myths 101
A lot of prospective buyers have asked us over the years what speeds they can expect with our unlimited hotspot plans. The response is always the same. It all depends on location to tower, land terrain (valleys, ridges, trees, etc) building structures (houses with metal roofs and apartments are the worst), time of day and frequencies used on the nearest tower. There are also other unpredictable factors that can hamper or propel data speeds, but nobody has time or patience for an engineering or physics seminar.
One major misconception is that someone thinks that because they get full bars and great voice reception on their phone, that that same level of signal will automatically transcend into great hotspot service. Not true. A separate pass through device containing a data only SIM card sending data to receiving devices is night and day from what the phone containing the SIM card which is also the receiving device will do in terms of performance. Also, talk text and data SIM cards are different than data only SIM cards.
Speed Test Apps
Yet another thing to consider in terms of speed readings, is that speed test apps are not always the barometer of good or bad performance. I remember in my days working with DSL where we would have customers who said that speedtest.net shows them getting 10mbps down and 2mbps up, but they couldn’t watch 5 seconds of video streaming without constant buffering.
I have personally been in areas where speedtest.net says our device was not even getting 1mbps down or up yet I could watch 10 minutes of youtube straight through with zero buffering. I’ve also been in areas where my phone receiving wi-fi signal from our Alicorn read 80mbps down and 40mbps up with latency at 29 ms, and that video streamed just the same. The point is that some devices and areas read speed testing apps differently, and it’s not always about the reading as much as it is about how it performs on the receiving devices. We have sold many different hotspots and all of them have very unpredictable speed readings, as some get more upload speeds than download speeds and vice versa.
The one thing they all have in common, is that when they are more than 3-4 miles from a tower they lose stability when trying to read LTE frequencies. A cell phone can be more than 5 miles from a cellular tower and likely still get both voice and data frequencies to function, but for whatever reason a hot spot type device cannot process those LTE frequencies strong enough to transmit into usable bandwidth from that far away. This is one of the reasons we do not and will not sell this plan to consumers trying to use in the ‘fair’ signal areas.
Not All Carriers Are the Same
Another fact is, not all carriers are the same in terms of networks and none of the carriers own a network or tower. AT&T and T-mobile both utilize the global GSM network or THE GLOBAL SYSTEM for MOBIL communications. Verizon and Sprint both use the CDMA network or CODE DIVISION MULTIPLE ACCESS. All 4 carriers can lease towers and put their technology on them which they do own, and then modernize their networks and they see fit in regards to ROI. This does not mean that because two carriers who share the same network will have identical coverage in terms of quality. Sometimes AT&T has more modernized technology on that tower than T-mobile, and sometimes it goes the other way.
So, thinking because you have 4 bars on your phone that runs on Verizon or AT&T means that our data plan is definitely going to work for you is a common mistake. In closing, Infinite LTE Data has been doing this long enough and has the tools at their disposal to make an informed decision on whether this could potentially solve your internet problem to where you can browse the web enjoyably, stream video and music without annoying interruption, and play online games without danger of losing your job (that’s a joke for gamers) Also, we will lose a sale before we will ever mismanage expectations or sell something we know cannot be delivered.
In Conclusion
In closing, try and look at our service as the internet that can go into hard to reach places where you forget the misnomers about how data transfer is supposed to be interpreted, but instead how is it performing compared to what you had before you voluntarily signed up for our service.