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Should I make the jump to 4G if I value a reliable connection over all else?

Keskin
Good Citizen / Bon Citoyen

I'm currently on a 3G plan and recently received the $40/15GB 4G special offer which seems like a great deal.

 

I'm definitely interested in this plan considering it costs only a fraction more than I pay currently.

 

The issue however is that for my personal needs, I value connection reliability and battery life far more over speeds. I particularly need my connection to stay reliable in buildings and high rise towers which I've heard 4G can be worse at than 3G.

 

6 REPLIES 6

powerg21
Great Citizen / Super Citoyen

The 3G and 4G plans are both on the LTE network. The only difference is 3G is throttled at 3Mbits per second.  The 4G plans are much better in my opinion.  3G speed is just too slow for some of my needs.  You can force the connection to 3G only on your phone setting but the latency will be slightly slower and the speed could be slightly faster than 3Mbits/sec (sometimes as high as 10Mbits/sec). 


@Keskin wrote:

I suppose I was misguided but my understanding was that 3g could better penetrate buildings and other obstructions and therefore work in more places. If that's not the case than I guess there's no reason not to at least try the plan for a month. You also say I'd still be able to choose the more reliable network which is good.

 

While we're here, I'd ask a few more questions if that's ok. I'm not knowledgeable on this so apologies if they're dumb:

 

1. There may be no impact to reliability but how severe of an impact could it have on data usage and battery life, if any?

 

2. Would the plan still be able to connect to/and or would I be able to manually swap to 3g if needed, for example if 4g is not available in the area?


It's actually the other way around.  LTE in Canada is available on lower frequency band in some locations than the HSPA network is. That itself will lead to better in-building coverage.  There also locations that only have LTE coverage.  LTE is more capcity efficient than HSPA meaning that LTE is less prone to cell breathing, something that shrinks the coverage area when the network is being used at full capacity.  As said earlier, whether you are on a 3g or a 4g Public Mobile plan doesn't change the type of network that you can connect to. 

 

When it comes to the network used for voice service, phone calls can only be done on the 3g network.   Yes, you can manually select the 3g netowrk if you wish, but that's usually not necessary.  As for battery life, in most cases, you'll probably want to let your phone decide which network is best to connect to.

@Keskin unless you .actually changed to 3G ONLY,  you might have been using 4G network already with the phone default setting.  The speed could be 3G speed  but you might be using 4G network .  So, there is really no difference in reliability or battery life 

 

And yes, even on 4G speed plan, you can change to 3G only network if you choose to

Keskin
Good Citizen / Bon Citoyen

I suppose I was misguided but my understanding was that 3g could better penetrate buildings and other obstructions and therefore work in more places. If that's not the case than I guess there's no reason not to at least try the plan for a month. You also say I'd still be able to choose the more reliable network which is good.

 

While we're here, I'd ask a few more questions if that's ok. I'm not knowledgeable on this so apologies if they're dumb:

 

1. There may be no impact to reliability but how severe of an impact could it have on data usage and battery life, if any?

 

2. Would the plan still be able to connect to/and or would I be able to manually swap to 3g if needed, for example if 4g is not available in the area?


@dabr wrote:

@Keskin   I wasn't aware there was a difference in reliability with 3G vs 4G and doubt it would affect anything other than that you will be getting faster speeds for downloads/uploads from the current 3G speed if you make the switch.


There is no difference in reliability between the two plan types.  There is a difference in the HSPA and LTE networks, but that's no even a concern as both 3g and 4g plans give access to both.

dabr
Mayor / Maire

@Keskin   I wasn't aware there was a difference in reliability with 3G vs 4G and doubt it would affect anything other than that you will be getting faster speeds for downloads/uploads from the current 3G speed if you make the switch.

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