4G / Helsinki

[Urmas]

My operator began to dish out "freebie" 4G connections (no data caps, max speed 100 Mbit/s instead of the "old" 21 Mbit/s 3G freebie I've had) to their new cable clients. Now... because they would not like to pi** off their esteemed old clients like me, they offered to upgrade my 3G to 4G, no charge. Not bad.

Here is the 4G wifi & USB (Sierra) modem:

Here is the "not bad" bit (at home, indoors, no external antenna):

Urmas is a satisfied client. :up:

 

[Ian]

Very nice indeed !

They've just rolled out 4G in to my area, but I can only imagine how much an unlimited data package would cost .

Does your ping remain quite low all the time, or do you find it spikes at all? At 35ms it looks very usable for gaming!

 

[V_R]

Yeah EE's 4G pricing is a joke, its cheapest package is £21 (SIM Only) and that only gets you 500mb data....! lol!

http://shop.ee.co.uk/mobile-tariffs/pay-monthly/

I'm waiting to see what the others offer. At the moment I'm with Vodafone, but their speeds are pretty crap at the moment. Even on 3G and HSPA, GPRS and Edge are unusable for data.

Thinking about moving to 3. I only do sim only plans and their offerings are quite tempting.

 

[Urmas]

Ian,

I did ten Speedtest "runs" (changing the location of the modem @Casa Urmas), and this was the worst ping result (outta ten; all others were under 40 ms):

As for "how much an unlimited data package would cost", here, it does not cost me anything, because I am a cable client. But an unlimited 4G data package (without cable, mustard and mayo) costs €14.90/month (£ 13/mo) here.

 

[V_R]

As for "how much an unlimited data package would cost", here, it does not cost me anything, because I am a cable client. But an unlimited 4G data package (without cable, mustard and mayo) costs €14.90/month (£ 13/mo) here.

Rub salt into the wound why dont ya!

 

[Urmas]

Rub salt into the wound why dont ya!

Hey, at least I am able to do it quickly... stings less.





(Actually, I am looking forward to a mutiny... telecoms here are making hefty profits with unlimited data packages and reasonable prices... so why not elsewhere as well?)

 

[Ian]

That's a phenomenal price! I wonder why there's such a huge price difference compared to the UK - even on a 3G mobile data contract I can't see anything cheaper than £15/month for 15GB data.

 

[Urmas]

Finland has the highest level of wireless connectivity in the OECD with 106.5 wireless broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants.

And... three "major" operators competing.

When 4G networks were opened, Sonera (the Finnish "arm" of TeliaSonera) tried to do in Finland what they are doing in Sweden and Norway, namely using data caps — they capped their Finnish 4G subscriptions @50 Gbit/month... and wondered why they were not getting any customers. They had to move back to unlimited data.

 

[Ian]

You guys don't do things by half - good on you . Perhaps we'll catch up one day .

 

[Urmas]

There is a... um... ahem... historical aspect in this as well. Finland (and other Nordic countries) were WAY ahead of the rest of the world with mobile telephony. "State" telephone companies of the 1970's and early 1980's (Tele in Finland and Telia in Sweden) were able to "waste" money on creating comprehensive NMT networks first and get revenue "only" later on. This "folly" was extremely beneficial for networks & telephone manufacturers like Nokia and Ericsson. Nordic area was similarly ahead of other corners of the world with GSM.

My first car phone (1984) — Mobira (later Nokia) Senator

 

[Urmas]

Disclaimer: The material below clearly falls into TL;DR category — i.e. for tough guys & cool chicks (or the other way around) only.

Ofcom (Office of Communications): Communications Market Report 2012 [PDF]

FICORA (Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority): Communications Sector Review 2012 [PDF]