Network | Why is the speed of 4G getting slower and slower?

Have you noticed that when you upgrade from 2G or 3G to 4G packages, the Internet speed experience is very good, but in the past two years, the 4G speed has been getting slower and slower. What is the reason? There is also a situation where the signal is full, but the 4G speed is strangely slow. Is it because the operator has limited the 4G speed in order to allow everyone to quickly switch to 5G packages?

1. Do you still remember what 4G network speed should be?

As of mid-2018, the average download speed of 4G Internet access was 20.22Mbps, 1.7 times the speed in 2016 when monitoring began, while the average download speed of fixed broadband was only 21.31Mbps. The average download speed of 4G Internet access in 2016 was 11.93Mbps, which means that the current 4G network speed is actually constantly improving.

Internationally, my country's mobile network download speed ranks 37th. How about the speed of my country's three major operators? China Unicom has the fastest network speed, with an average download speed of 23.83Mbps, followed by China Telecom at 18.32Mbps, and China Mobile at the bottom at 17.89Mbps. Both China Telecom and China Mobile are below the average.

This number seems to be very different from the 100Mbps originally claimed by the 4G network, but the slower and slower 4G network speed can actually be attributed to four factors.

2.4G base station load saturation

When we use mobile networks, whether it is 2G, 3G, 4G or the future 5G, we need to connect through base stations, which are commonly known as signal towers. China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom have now built large-scale 4G network base stations across the country, and have also begun to build 5G base stations on an overwhelming scale.

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With these base stations, we can ensure that we can connect to and use the 4G network on a daily basis. But why are so many signal towers making the 4G network speed slower and slower, and often causing 4G network interruptions?

It's very simple. 4G base stations are shared base stations. The wireless resources of base stations are limited, so the capacity is also limited. Generally speaking, a 4G base station can accommodate 1,200 users, which means that 1,200 users is the ceiling of a base station. If the number of connected users exceeds 1,200, there will be a problem of excessive demand, which is equivalent to overwhelming the base station. Naturally, the speed and signal will be affected, and you can think of it as a base station downtime.

According to the data just released by the three major operators in the first half of 2019, the number of 4G users of China Mobile is 734 million, the number of 4G users of China Unicom is 239 million, and the number of 4G users of China Telecom is 266.14 million. Although it is approaching saturation, the number of 4G users is still increasing. Just think about it, with so many users rushing to use the limited number of base stations, can the network speed be fast? Naturally, it is getting slower and slower.

It is not just the saturation of base station capacity, but also the fact that operators are gradually decommissioning 2G and 3G base stations. This is not news. Therefore, many of the original 2G and 3G base stations are gradually being transferred to 4G base stations. The 4G base stations, which are already saturated, are now carrying many more users. Under this severe pressure, the user experience of 4G users is bound to be affected.

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It can only be said that before the scale of 5G base station construction is increased, the user pressure borne by 4G base stations has always been huge, so the user experience of 4G will continue to decline.

3. User traffic data explosion

In the 3G era, people could listen to music online and send pictures or animated graphics to friends. In the 4G era, which is the era of videos and mobile games, users no longer need a WiFi environment to watch movies, TV series, or play games. As long as they can connect to 4G, they can enjoy the entertainment brought by "Honor of Kings", "Chicken Eating", Youku, iQiyi, Tencent Video, etc.

This is one of the factors that has led to the explosion of user data. The speed of 4G is equivalent to a 100MB optical fiber, so users can achieve the entertainment experience they need in any environment.

In fact, there is another factor, which is the operator's policy of increasing speed and reducing fees. In fact, many people in China directly upgraded from 2G to 4G because they happened to catch up with the implementation of the 4G speed increase and fee reduction policy. This is the case with me. 4G packages are very cheap, and buying traffic is also a completely affordable operation. In addition, there are many temptations of unlimited packages. Everyone's 4G network traffic every month is relatively high, right?

The explosion of non-traffic data will keep 4G base stations running at full capacity and provide efficient and high-speed data transmission. In addition, the number of users is very large, so the speed of each person will naturally decrease slowly, and the competition for speed is becoming more and more intense. This is the main reason why sometimes our signal is full, but the 4G speed is almost non-existent, because the base station is overloaded, so the 4G network is disconnected, and only the communication network is left.

4. Problems with the mobile phone baseband

This mainly refers to the Apple iPhone, iPhoneXs and iPhoneXsMax, which have been showing a downward trend. Previously, Apple phones have been using Qualcomm's baseband, but due to litigation and other factors, Apple broke up with Qualcomm in the iPhoneXs generation and switched to Intel's baseband, the model seems to be XMM7560.

Apple originally thought that Intel's baseband would perform better, but Apple's iPhoneXs and iPhone XsMAX have been branded with poor signals since then. I believe that friends who are using them must have experienced this. The quality of the baseband does affect the network speed of the mobile phone. For example, the Cat 12 and Cat 13 network standards have a theoretical download speed of 600Mbps and an upload speed of 150Mbps; while the Cat 4 download speed is 100Mbps and the upload speed is 50Mbps. This difference also leads to the strength of the mobile phone signal.

5. Focus on the next 5G network

Another factor is the current 5G network testing. 5G is about to enter the commercial stage, and many users are already experiencing the trial version of 5G packages.

During the testing phase of the 5G network, since many 5G base stations have not been fully built, a lot of testing work is actually completed using 4G base stations. Therefore, part of the existing 4G resources and bandwidth are now provided for 5G testing, and naturally the original 4G network will be affected.

In addition, the operators will now focus on the construction of 5G and 5G base stations, and the construction of 4G will continue to slow down or even stop temporarily. In other words, the situation of slower and slower 4G network speeds will continue to worsen and will not be improved.

In summary, the 4G network speed experienced by users is indeed getting slower and slower, but in fact, it has been accelerated at the operator level. The main factors causing this are the increase in the number of users, the increasing competition for base stations; the increase in user data volume, the increasing transmission pressure on base stations; the focus of operators is on 5G, and the improvement of 4G has slowed down or stagnated.

This year is the first year of 5G, and many 5G commercial-related work is in the initial stage, so everyone is just trying it out. Starting next year, the popularization of 5G will begin to accelerate, and the war among operators will move to a new battlefield.