Why not just call it '4G' and be done with it ? It clearly is...

...bearing in mind my "broadband" at home delivers 1.4mbps...

I know I get continually confounded by the nomenclature, but does that mean at 250mbps it would download ~ 32 megabytes a second at full chat?? Whereas my broadband tops out at ~175 kilobytes a second, roughly 180 times slower* :(

That's just silly - what sort of data costs would it involve?!?!

(*yes, I know, I could've just divided the original numbers, just I prefer actual bytes down to my computer as the number I play with in my head)

..."It's about time we started offering our punters decent speeds".

A little long maybe? But, something like that would be good!

Actually, it would be better if we dumped the whole "G" thing altogether. Although it seems simple at first, the "G" level is just a description of what the network is capable of. CDMA and GSM are both "2G", but CDMA phones wont work on GSM, and vice versa (with the exception of those phones with the hardware to do both).

... calling it Super Mega 3 G?

Or SM3G for short?

"...bearing in mind my "broadband" at home delivers 1.4mbps...

I know I get continually confounded by the nomenclature, but does that mean at 250mbps it would download ~ 32 megabytes a second at full chat?? Whereas my broadband tops out at ~175 kilobytes a second, roughly 180 times slower* :(

"

Yes - that is exacactly what it means. Here in Oz we have a commercial HSPA nationwide network that gives a theoretical 7.2Mbps. real world you get between 2-6 Mbps which is 250-750KBps. Its not silly.

You know, I've been to the speedmatters.org website a few times and the more I look at it, the more I'm convinced that the US/UK governments really want us to be in the dark about ISP speeds. This would be big news, but eWeek, ComputerWorld and ZDNet have not covered this story - yet.

I would love to have attend a press conference or town hall meeting where I can bring this up in front of other people to make those executives turn red. Here, Time-Warner is just introducing 10mbs service, and Verizon has 20mbs. ATT has not caught up yet locally, but they offer the U-verse thing which could turn out to be good.

A lotta good that 1996 Telecommunications Act did. NOT!

So, some geisha's can video-romp.. and stream it live online from the phone.. thats great!

They could do it before, but the bandwidth prohibited decent resolution.

Long live pr0n! Long live the net!

On a more serious note.. wtf are they getting wireless speeds massively disproportionate to our wire speeds? If its cheaper, would that promote pirate-bay style servers being run from cellphones? lol.. classic.

(he's taking off his jacket as a sign of respect to the Japanese... :)

...improving connection speeds in the UK? The rest of the connected world have been enjoying half-decent speeds for ages, while our providers 'um' and 'ah' over what may or may not work best. 3.5G? Give me a break!

How about we call is the G spot

it will no longer necessary to store any pr0n locally what-so-ever.

SCREW YOU, BORDER CONTROL!

http://www.xkcd.com/394/

I live in Canada, where we have sub-3rd world data rates and exorbitant costs to go along with it. Rogers is the only provider in the entire country who provides GSM style cellular coverage (can you say monopoly - I knew you could) and they charge $50 + per megabyte. If you do the math, that makes it $1250 per second to download at 250mbps. F*ck me! If you dared use that for a month, the bill would be like $3.2 billion dollars (yes, the american style billion).

Four antennas and 250 Mbps? Sounds like you'd need a wheelbarrow attachment for your cell phone to carry antenna array and spare batteries. And as a side effect, it'd probably keep every cup of coffee within a mile or two pipping hot.

Come again?