I have tried posting this before. Now, it should be a little more obvious:
Presently, and recently, AT&T now allows for a 50gb "mobile" data plan on a single phone/tablet account. The theoretical "maximum speed limit" of LTE data is 1gbps.
If you want to know how far the U.S. is in to being "beta testers" for a new technology, I will tell you this:
AT&T is moving to what looks like almost an entirely wireless infrastructure that runs 100% on Internet. The latter portion of that is not speculation.
I should stop and say that I am an AT&T employee. I do not come here to preach the virtues of AT&T service over any other carrier. Instead I come to both promote and warn you of a couple of things:
First, the LTE network is now a global standard and is going live in most nations of the world. That means that there will be a communications network that does not have to deal with incompatibilities or delays in delivery of information.
Second, I live in Kansas City, and I will tell you this:
Cerner is a major provider of medical records and IT software. They have massive corporate complexes either existing or under construction in Kansas City. Google Fiber is here and has been deployed in central locations of Kansas City. In the surrounding area we have nuclear power plants and hydro power from large lakes on the Missouri side of the state line as well as several very large coal-fired power plants. Google has an energy trading division. On top of that is home security systems that are increasingly moving to run on the internet.
AT&T is now allowing a 50gb data plan on a single mobile device, which is following the same trend that voice/text messaging plans once followed: Fairly limited use now moving towards unlimited use. The theoretical maximum speed limit of LTE is 1gbps. In other words, poor service is headed out of the debate. What was once a "shaky" mobile network is now under federal mandate to be very reliable.
Let us cut the debate about "getting good internet service to everybody", because that is now on its way in. AT&T has a 2020 deadline to have 100% of its services running on the internet (voice/data or anything else). If you check several other telecom companies or companies attached to telecom, they all have key milestone dates set for the year 2020. The U.S. military even has internet-related goals set for this date.
Flatly, the big debate is now about privacy. We need to get to this, now. Not later, and not after there has already been a problem (as we already saw with Snowden). We need to do this now, before a "problem" comes up.
For those of you hating your service right now from AT&T or any other provider, I can tell you that it looks like it will get better. Between AT&T and Verizon, something close to 1 trillion dollars has been spent on LTE build-out. That is not so that you could all be placed on capped, limited-use, expensive plans.
You may as well just cut to the chase and start discussing what happens when municipal/state/federally operated broadband and privacy issues collide. This is something for U.S. citizens to be proud of, if it works out, because you all funded it with your subscriber dollars. It's also a potential disaster if we don't get it right.
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