Mobile Networks Are Beating Wi-Fi for Speed around the World

Megalith

Megalith

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New data from wireless coverage mapping company OpenSignal is showing that mobile networks are beating out Wi-Fi networks for speed in at least 33 countries, including “Australia, where cellular is 13Mbit/s faster than Wi-Fi, to France, where its 2.5Mbit/s faster.” Some industry experts believe this marks the beginning of Wi-Fi’s irrelevance, especially in light of advanced mobile technologies such as 5G.

Ian Fogg, VP of Analysis at OpenSignal, urged mobile networks and smartphone platforms to rethink some basic assumptions. Currently a phone gloms onto a Wi-Fi network whenever it can, assuming this provides the user with a superior internet connection. But increasingly, this not the case. All things being equal, more phones will be pushing more users to a worse experience.
 
Alternately, they could improve their home service and the complete dogshit equipment they supply AND charge a monthly fee for which is giving slower results than the antenna a half mile away.
 
Data plans for everyone in the office vs a couple WiFi access points?
I don't think so.
Maybe if the wireless plans were free with unlimited data, but I don't think that's going to happen.

Same at home.
Why would I pay for a wireless plan for every device, when we can just share the existing broadband connection using a simple WiFi router?

I use WiFi on my cell both at home and at the office. Lets me get by with T-Mobile's 2GB plan.
 
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Interesting that in the US, WiFi is still shown as faster. But faster isn't always better. WiFi is basically free for the phone vs metered when on a limited data plan. And WiFi is often better inside buildings where there is some kind of RF shielding in the construction. Metal siding, wire mesh lathe, etc.

Plus for businesses, WiFi allows there to be a hardware firewall between the devices and the wilds of the Internet, where with Cell service, the ever popular spy-o'matic apps have free reign.
 
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Well, that's certainly not the case in my house :p

upload_2018-11-24_19-50-32.png
 
Sure in 3 world countries, not even my ridiculous UL speed of 70 mbit do my phone beat, but i can only get 300 of the 1000 mbit on download assuming it is limited by my phone.

BUT ! i normally don't use wifi as i see it as pollution at best, personally i feel ( opinion ) people addicted to / using wifi are sick or lazy at best.
 
Hah. Everything after the 'but' was flat Earth level crazy.

As for the topic, wireless 4g/5g is going to have much more latency, be susceptible to mitm attacks via stingray, and add magic cookies to your traffic, and gives you less control over network security since you would not have a central firewall.

That is if we go with the idea that it replaces the wireless lan. If we keep the lan and whatever networking tech it uses and just used 4g/5g for connecting the last mile, you still will have most of those points to consider
 
Pay $20 a gigabyte, sheeple, it's a whole 2.5mbit faster (while both can do 300mbit).
You'll really notice it, trust us! It's far faster!

The absolute state of lobbying today..
 
N4CR said:
Pay $20 a gigabyte, sheeple, it's a whole 2.5mbit faster (while both can do 300mbit).
You'll really notice it, trust us! It's far faster!

The absolute state of lobbying today..
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Not sure where you live, but I visited the EU last month and 1 month of service with 10GB of data was at most 20 bucks (and I’ve seen cheaper, but I’m not going to fret over 3-6 bucks)
 
Oldmodder said:
Sure in 3 world countries, not even my ridiculous UL speed of 70 mbit do my phone beat, but i can only get 300 of the 1000 mbit on download assuming it is limited by my phone.

BUT ! i normally don't use wifi as i see it as pollution at best, personally i feel ( opinion ) people addicted to / using wifi are sick or lazy at best.
Click to expand...

I would like to know more. Were you drunk at 3 in the morning?
 
The fastest WiFi I've ever encountered is near the Minneapolis airport. It's something like 250 down and 100 up.
 
nilepez said:
Not sure where you live, but I visited the EU last month and 1 month of service with 10GB of data was at most 20 bucks (and I’ve seen cheaper, but I’m not going to fret over 3-6 bucks)
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It's about 13USD/gb where I live lol.
Europe is cheaper than I expected by sounds of that... interesting. Here is a shitty island with 3 main providers and they collude to price fix, they don't really compete in any meaningful way at all.
 
I might have to buy a home and acreage even farther out in the countryside now to escape 5g.
 
nilepez said:
Not sure where you live, but I visited the EU last month and 1 month of service with 10GB of data was at most 20 bucks (and I’ve seen cheaper, but I’m not going to fret over 3-6 bucks)
Click to expand...

Went to Southeast asia this year, $.30-.50 per gigabyte on 4G. Ridiculously cheap compared to US. I pay 40 per line for the 10 lines I have in my family on Tmobile.
 
Not a very good comparison, as this is fully dependent on the persons internet package, home HW and distance/coverage of that HW. Or what public WiFi they are using, which often cases have heavy QoS settings restricting speeds. I have seen first hand how old some HW is, and how backwards some of it is setup. The average might be higher for mobile, but that is not a limit of WiFi it self, but service and HW selected, come to my place and run this test.
 
I'm on a fixed LTE connection at home for Internet service (on T-Mobile network, through a partnership with our local power coop). Works just fine, consistent 25Mbps, as I have good line of site to the tower, and am in a low population area. Not sure how well it would work if I had urban levels of competition for that bandwidth from mobile users.
 
N4CR said:
It's about 13USD/gb where I live lol.
Europe is cheaper than I expected by sounds of that... interesting. Here is a shitty island with 3 main providers and they collude to price fix, they don't really compete in any meaningful way at all.
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I thought it’d be more too (and there are lots of post pay plans that are more, but I got this sim in 2017 and I just keep using it whenever I go back. When i was in AUS/NZ, it was more, but it wasn’t awful for 2 weeks, but I don’t typically stream a lot of video unless I’m on WiFi. I only used 2.5gb of my 10GB over 2 weeks in Europe.

But honestly I normally opt for WiFi over cell.
 
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I don't get more than 20Mbit/s on LTE, and I"ve hit 150Mbit/s on Wifi. It's not even close.
 
toast0 said:
LTE latency ranges from not too bad to actually pretty good. Zarathura's speed test is 42 ms ping which is sadly competitive with my current home internet. I'm guessing 5g will be even less latency.
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I would have been happy with 30-45ms ping in the early to mid 2000's, but wired ISP's have improved greatly since.

I don't do much online gaming anymore, but these days I expect speed test pings to always be less than 10ms and in game pings to never exceed 25ms.

That 5ms in my wifi test is actually a little bit on the high side for me, probably because we are talking wifi, not wired lan.
 
/dev/null said:
I don't get more than 20Mbit/s on LTE, and I"ve hit 150Mbit/s on Wifi. It's not even close.
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I've seen sprint (back in 2015 when I did tests in DFW) hit 50-60 Mbps, but it was in very limited areas(e.g. central market on Greenville) and where I lived it was awful (thus I used WiFi 100% of the time at home, even for calls).
 
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