I remember when 3G mobile connectivity under the UMTS standard was rolled out on a large scale in the 2000s. It caused a massive hype, phone companies were paying billions for frequency allocations, and it made mobile data usage feel lightning fast compared to previous technology.
Nowadays, when signal is bad and 4G or 5G is unavailable, I’m still sometimes stuck with 3G, and it feels unbearably slow. Websites will take forever to load or time out altogether. Why is a 3G connection so much worse nowadays than it was twenty years ago? Perhaps it’s because websites have become heavier in terms of data size; but then again, there were websites loaded with pictures and graphics back then too. I’ve also considered the possibility that it’s simply that my memory is hazy and 3G was always as slow as it is are now, only I’m now used to the higher speeds of more recent technology and compare 3G against that. Then again, I really don’t remember 3G loading times back then being as long as they are now. Could it be that bandwidth under the standard is objectively lower now than it was twenty years ago, perhaps because phone companies are reallocating resources to the other standards?
If your service provider is not allocating resources to 3G, then of course your connection will be worse or non-existent. Many networks are recycling UMTS spectrum in favor of 4G etc., sometimes even while still maintaining a 2G network.
Sure. My point is that sometimes I do have 3G connectivity (at least that’s what my phone says), so the service must still be there; it just feels much slower than I remember it.
you are definitely looking back through rose colored lenses.
3G is what you get when you do not have 4G or 5G. It seems 3G gets better coverage with marginal reception. This means that when the 3G icon appears you have a really crappy connection.
When you have a solid 3G connection most likely better options are available.
Your phone is using far more data (especially in the background) than it did in the 3G era. T-Mobile’s “unlimited” plan was throttled after 10MB of data in 2003. The 2014 Android Facebook app download was 29 MB. It’s now 131 MB (but according to my phone it is occupying 450 MB even after clearing the cache).
3G is absolutely fine, IF the website or service you’re attempting is designed for it.
But a modern website with heavy graphics and tons of ads demanding to be loaded? Oh hell no.
Back when I was a T-Mobile Rep, one of the tests I would do is have someone go to lite.cnn.com as a test. It’s specifically built as a low bandwidth text only site which is especially helpful (for example) in a disaster area. If it loaded, then I knew they actually had a connection, but the speed wasn’t enough. [ total aside, I use it myself on most mobile platforms regardless, as I want text based news, no video autoplay and talking heads!]
For that matter, a lot of modern browsers will flat out time-out if they don’t get a response in the timeframe they expect - which is based on an assumption of typical 4G speeds. Which can help under most circumstances, but bites you hard when speeds are less than ideal.
This. In the dial up age of the dinosaurs, my Internet Service Provider was ISP.COM. They folded their tent and left long ago. When enough people complained, they would add more dial up numbers and bandwidth. Things would be good for three months, then they would slow down, complaints would come anew, and ISP would add another dial up number and more bandwidth.
In the heyday of 3G websites were designed for much lower data usage. With faster connections, websites have become more data intensive and don’t always have the ability to throttle their data based on connection speed.
You aren’t getting the same radio bandwidth as you did then. I mean this in the frequency allocation sense–how many megahertz are assigned to the connection? But frequency allocation and data rate are strongly related.
You may be on a frequency allocation with worse characteristics. For instance, 3G could be on 850 MHz or 1900 MHz bands. 850 MHz tends to have better propagation, but they might have decided to use that for 4G, while the 3G fallback gets the worse 1900 MHz band.
If you’re in a fallback situation where 4G and 5G don’t work, the 3G connection is probably also marginal. Note that the signal strength meter rarely tells the whole picture and you can have a bad connection even with full bars.
As mentioned, web pages and such are much bigger now. As DPRK says, try a speed test to see how things are actually performing.
Which makes me wonder what the use cases for 3G before the iPhone were. I distinctly remember the 3G hype of 2000; the German government held an auction of UMTS frequency blocks among phone providers that raised a total of 51 billion euros, which people found unbelievable at the time. Surely there must have been applications for 3G in those eight years before the first iPhone came out; I just don’t remember what they were.
In the US, the first 3G networks were launched in late 2002 using the CDMA2000 standard. Dunno about the iPhone but Nokia had at least one bar phone that was compatible at launch.