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by Dylan16807
589 days ago
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> It was 4G that would have partial coverage, not 3G. By the time 4/5G are built out well, I'd expect 3G to win some and lose some, becoming more of the latter every year. Unless the plan was to switch all the 3G equipment over to 4/5G simultaneously, making 4/5G become reliable overnight? > due to its superior ability to penetrate through buildings That's a feature of low frequencies. I don't think 3G does better anywhere if you compare the same frequency. And a bunch of the frequencies are exclusive to newer protocols, aren't they? |
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Not necessarily, it depends on how the network operators laid out their bands. In theory I suppose it could free up adjacent bands for more network capacity.
> a bunch of the frequencies are exclusive to newer protocols
Depends on where you are in the world. In the US the FCC has been growing out the number of available cellular bands. Cellular technologies can work on just about any frequency, given the handset supports the appropriate bands.
2G/3G tend to be a little bit more power efficient than more modern technologies as _generally_ they require less processing overhead on the handsets. However, LTE/5G do better with error correction and lower signal strength. You also get higher capacity. Stuff like GSM uses a round robin time sharing mechanism which can quickly get saturated in dense environments.
2G is _mostly_ there for legacy applications. The reason why it breaks down for this case is because a lot of older handsets negotiate 2G first before switching over to LTE, and then 5G.