Right now the biggest benefit about 4G is that it’s 10 times faster than current 3G network speeds. The obvious benefit is it’s significantly a faster data connection and most importantly what you can do with the fast Internet access.
4G offers much better data services and therefore all the kind of things you can get on broadband at home or in your office and that you aspire to do through your smartphone or tablet computer and so forth.
Early this year, MTN Uganda was giving an opportunity to all their 3G subscribers join up the 4G in order to get better broadband which came hand in hand with 1GB of free data and the chance to win a Power Bank.
Quoting one of our articles, in a recent interview with Steven Kirenga, the Enterprise Marketing Manager of MTN Uganda, said the adoption of 4G has been impressive so far;
“The market has responded well to the call of upgrading to the fastest and widest 4G network. It’s clear our customers want more than fast speed, they want the fastest speed available in Uganda and we are happy that they resonated well with our message and joined our LTE.”
First of all, why go with 4G instead of 3G or 2G
Unlike 3G and other previous generations, with 4G, we’re able to stream videos, upload, download and essentially do anything on the web using our phones, tablets or laptops almost as fast as if we were at home on a broadband connection. This standard isn’t just focused on improving download speed, but has been designed to improve upload speed, too.
According to some sources, 4G supports a theoretical peak upload limit of more than 50 Mbps, orders of magnitude faster than what we can get from 3G.
We give you some of the things you can do much better on 4G;
Streaming videos
Using 4G, video streaming is a much better experience than older generations. This makes using apps like BBC iPlayer, NetFlix, Ustream, YouTube, Broadcaster a much more pleasant experience. Most if not all video streaming services use adaptive picture technologies, which means that the picture quality differs depending on the strength and speed of the internet connection.
Multiplayer online gaming
3G are lousy for multiplayer gaming, however, 4G improves gaming experiences on your smartphones, having the ability to upload & download scores, download game updates, buy & earn more coins, and more. The lower latency 4G offers means that multiple online games are more feasible. Many live multiplayer games won’t even let you play against others on 3G.
Downloading
Sometimes we’ve often needed to download large files, an application or two, videos, games. Previously, large applications could take tens of minutes to download or in most cases only be downloaded over a Wi-Fi connection and while some phones restrict downloads to a maximum amount over a mobile connection, in order to preserve user data limits, they will often still allow downloads, to say… an estimation of around 100Mbs, which will take over two minutes using a 3G. However, the same 100Mb file will take less than a minute using a 4G connections.
Uploading videos and photos
Another benefit of 4G is that you can upload higher resolution photos and videos to popular social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, SnapChat or sync them to the Cloud (backing up) in real time in their full higher resolution.
Tethering
4G also offers the ability to create a high speed mobile hotspot from your smartphone to other devices such as laptops by tethering your smartphone via a cable or Bluetooth and in that way, you’ll be in position to use your smartphone’s internet connection directly onto your laptop, as you will be getting almost a home broadband.
Internet (Video) Calls
4G networks are fast and consistent enough to support cheap voice-over-IP services and unlimited free voice calls over apps like FaceTime, Tango, Skype, WhatsApp, Viber, Line, Google Duo, WeChat to name a few, which could make video calling on a mobile phone finally feasible.
