Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 21st Aug 2012 15:27 UTC
Apple Vlad Savov at The Verge: "Today's been rather a momentous day in the UK mobile arena, following local regulator Ofcom's approval of Everything Everywhere's plans to use existing spectrum to roll out LTE service early. Vodafone, O2 and Three have complained in unison against the market distortions that would result from one carrier having 4G while everyone else waits for an oft-delayed auction, but their biggest fear may yet remain unspoken: a de facto exclusive on the next iPhone."
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RE[3]: Comment by MOS6510
by zima on Wed 22nd Aug 2012 18:05 UTC in reply to "RE[2]: Comment by MOS6510"
zima
Member since:
2005-07-06

Any change is always bound to increase prices for us. LTE has a theoretical speed most if not all people will never get anyway.

It's not so simple ...I mean, the primary change is that people are using mobile data more and more. Hence, we demand for networks to be upgraded anyway - and it would be quite possibly more pricey when sticking to older tech (if there would even be enough spectrum for the required capacity).
You could probably give quite comfortable experience to everybody using just EDGE, but it'd likely take at least an order of magnitude more spectrum allocations than we use for mobile phones now (hence requiring new equipment, anyway; NVM blocking other usages, that could be costly too)

Spectrum is just an inherently scarce resource, new communication standards are our way around that...

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