4G in the United States is a freaking rip off.

I've been looking into Mobile 4G Broadband to replace my home internet, and its a rip off for price and speed. 30GB/month of data with Verizon is $205,and offers up to 25Mb/s down and 10Mb/s up. 30GB with sprint is about $4800/month:jaw:,and Sprint has the same download and upload speed. I then for the hell of it looked at Orange Romania to see what it is overseas,and 30GB of data is about $33/month and they have speeds of up to 75Mb/s down and 38Mb/s when your on 4G. And in 2014 it will be bumped up to 100Mb/s down and 50Mb/s. Orange Romania also doesn't count data usage against your limit for the first 7 hours of the day. And they currently have a promo to let you use as much as you want for the first 3 months on a 12 month contract and 6 months on a 24 month contract. The only good thing is if your willing to spend some money on a good phone,a external portable monitor and Bluetooth cable you can use your phone as a laptop and you can get unlimited internet use with sprint. Since sprint doesn't use the 700Mhz range they were not forced into a open access agreement with the FCC so 3rd party tethering apps can be against their TOS. But if your with Verizon and you were grandfathered in with an unlimited plan you can tether all you want.

Well the 4G is actually for 48mbps+ up to 100mbps.
3g + hedge = max 48mbps, and 4G will be actually be available at those speed in Romania in 2014.

Don't waste your time with them, full rip off.

They have 3G,3G+ H+ and 4G by orange,with 4G getting a bump up in speed next year but its still faster and cheaper then Verizon and sprint. And for the people that are grandfathered in with Verizon, you will know have to purchase future phones from Verizon at the full retail price or be forced to change your plan.

i'm using 3G in Hungary, called Telenor Hipernet @ 20 Mbps/2 Mbps
i bought an extra, so it's basically unlimited, but all together it costs $20 per month

the upper packages with an LTE modem are 4G capable, mine is the medium package, the top package is 60 Mbps/10 Mbps and it costs $40 which is also too cheap, but the medium is just enough for me

Portugal:

150Mb Download
Uncapped
25Euro A Month - Approx $30

stop whinging - where I live I get 3G if I'm in town , but it drops in and out at my house.

I have got a brand new line to the nearest phone exchange though for my standard connection, so can't complain too much. I haven't met anyone in my city with a faster home connection.

zen19 said:

Portugal:

150Mb Download
Uncapped
25Euro A Month - Approx $30

Click to expand...

Would it be considered excessive usage if a person did 500GB a month,but most of it was around 0-7am?

Roparadise said:

Would it be considered excessive usage if a person did 500GB a month,but most of it was around 0-7am?

Click to expand...

Who knows......

I just look at that package with envy given that a great many other European countries have 4g packages which are more expensive and only slightly better than their current shitty 3g offerings.

PT seems to always be ahead of the curve in these matters.

Had Sprint 4G uncapped as part of my cell phone plan for a little bit before the fuckers took it away. Quality sucked.

Check out Clear.com, their plans are about $50 with unlimited 4G.

I had them for a while, but I watch too videos all over the house, so I had to switch back to cable. Overall good service.

Understand networking and wireless? No? Here's why its so expensive:

4G requires a license in the 700mhz spectrum. Small chunks of this went for several billions of dollars.
4G requires expensive gear. Think $50k+ per dish and $20k+ per radio. For 360 coverage you need 3 of each.
Towers are expensive. To build one tall enough to get over most obstacles it needs to be around 200 feet. At this height, you got FCC rules. You also need to include wind bearing and ice loading. Each tower will cost around $150k to build (assuming they want more than just 3 antennas as well).
You need to backhaul, and that is done on tall towers with even more expensive gear since sunlight and relative humidity degrades the signal.
There is only a limited amount of bandwith that can be pushed through wireless. In a clear open area you can get 500/500 on a backhaul to a single tower. Putting multiple radios on a tower can cause interference. Depending on the engineers, tower height, noise reduction techniques... you could get maybe 2 or 3. Then you're back to wind/ice problems.
Live in a city? Expect shit signal. If everyone uses the same frequency at the same time the noise floor increases and everyones speed/quality degrades.

Romania is cheaper for 2 reasons:
1) It's size is a little over double that of New York state. The USA is 42x larger than Romania.
2) Due to #1, competition is/can be high there. The states is normally a mono/duo/triopoly. No competition = high cost + lots of restrictions.


TLDR: It's expensive for them and wireless is finite. Get FTTH/FTTN/Docsis 3.

Had good experience with virgin Broadband2go
$35/month - unlimited 4G. If you leave in the area of their coverage it's best price you can find.
For sure the speed is slower compering to AT&T LTE, but much much cheaper!