Saturday, May 29, 2010

The Basics of 4G Mobile Internet

4G mobile Internet seems to be the latest and greatest thing available in the ever expanding wireless world. Tons of people are switching all of their internet needs to a 4G connection. This isn't for everyone because 4G isn't available in all areas. It seems to be mostly prevalent in the larger and more tech savvy cities. It really is a very convenient way to connect to the internet whether you are at home, in your office or on the road. Still a lot of people are not quite sure how this type of connection works and aren't sure if it is right for them.


The most important thing that factors into the equation is the network on which 4G operates. The signal gets broadcast from the nearest cell phone tower. Think of it like the router in your home network, but the signal is broadcast over a much greater distance and with more precision.


It all sounds complex and the technology is, but its the basic idea of your home network, but a lot bigger! You do have to have a special device that can receive the 4G signal and it usually plugs in via a USB port.


With mobile Internet, though, the signal is broadcast much further and much more clearly. The 'router' is actually a cell-phone-like tower, and it shoots a signal out over the breadth of an entire city. This type of technology is quite advanced, but it's still the same basic idea of the Internet that you can set up in your home. Instead of using a regular SD card for a wireless signal, though, you have to pick up this signal with a particular type of device, which normally plugs into your USB port. Look around and price everything before you make a decision on your mobile internet provider. You can usually get some kind of discount if you already use the network with a wireless device such as a mobile phone. Sprint is an excellent example of this.


Like all internet connections there are different speeds of which you can sign up for. A lot of people still use the popular 3G network, but its much slower and will most likely be surpassed by 4G fairly soon. 4G gives you up to 10mbps at best whereas 3G only goes up to about 1.6mbps. You will have to check with your provider, but you can probably get a device that is backwards compatible to the 3G network. So if you get out of range with 4G you can still use 3G. Just remember that you can only have this type of internet where you can use your phone because it uses the same towers.


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