3G iPhone to Handle 42Mbps Wireless Speeds

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3G iPhone to Handle 42Mbps Wireless Speeds

Source: http://blogs.pcworld.com

An executive at Australian mobile service provider, Telstra, said that the 3G iPhone will be capable of handling data at speeds up to 42Mbps on his company's network by Christmas of this year. In an interview with Channel News, the executive said the following:

"We know what is coming, we have seen the new device and it will be available on our network as soon as it is launched in the USA. By Xmas this phone will be capable of 42mb[p]s which will make it faster than a lot of broadband offerings and the fastest iPhone on any network in the world."

Many find the claim dubious at best and say the Telstra executive is full of hot air.

Will U.S. Be Stuck in free iPhone Wireless Slow Lane?

The new 3g iPhone is widely believed to be announced on June 9th at Apple's World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) and then released shortly thereafter. Telstra's high speed data network, called Next G, is currently capable of 14.4Mbps and plans are in the works to bump speeds up to 21Mbps in the near future and then bump it up again to 42Mbps by the end of 2008, the company claims.

So what does that mean for those of us here in the US? Well, for starters, Computerworld just pitted Verizon, Sprint, and AT&T's data networks against each other and found AT&T's current 3G network to be the fastest of the three. However, it was only capable of peak download speeds of 1.6Mbps. Telstra's current claims are almost ten times that amount.

Wireless Speeds Faster Than a Cable Modem

AT&T is, however, planning on upgrading its 3G data network to 20Mbps by 2009, according to recent report by Apple Insider. That will still be roughly half the speed of the Telstra network, but about double the speed of what I currently get with my Comcast high speed Internet connection here in my home, for instance.

These massive speed increases (if we are to believe companies), regardless of the network, won't matter much if providers keep these 5GB caps in place, though. AT&T and Verizon both have a 5GB limit on wireless data and Sprint's cap goes into effect in the end of July. Telstra's data plans, too, only top out at 3GB per month.

So sure, wireless data speeds will be exponentially faster, but that'll just make it that much easier to blow through your data usage earlier in the month.

What's even more unsettling, though, is that these wireless networks are about to reach speeds that would allow you to ditch your cable or DSL provider and use wireless data for your home network, with the added convenience of being able to take your data with you anywhere else in the country for close to the same, or marginally more than you're paying right now. That'll never happen, though, if you're limited to 5GB per month, so be wary of all the "we have the fastest network" pitches you'll be flooded with over the coming months for more than one reason.

Bottom line: Speed means nothing when the amount you're allowed to consume is limited. Second bottom line: Speed claims mean nothing - I'll wait for the independent test results before I get too worked up.

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