LTE Advanced Cat 4 & Cat 6 [Expert needed]

[M.Rizk]

Hello all!

My carrier just launched 4G+ today which is LTE Cat6 promising LTE speeds of up to 300 MBPS down, 50 MBPS up. I know that the iPhone 6 doesn't support LTE-A Cat6, only Cat4 but that's not my topic.

My carrier launched 4G LTE-A Cat4 last year, and it was always offering extremely high speeds of up to 120 Mbps down, 40 Mbps up where I live. Things changed when the iPhone 6 got released as my carrier was bundling it with free 12 months of true unlimited LTE-A Cat4 data which has really congested the network dropping the average speed to under 30 Mbps down, and about 12 Mbps up.

I am afraid that my carrier wouldn't really focus on the LTE-A Cat4 network as before and would focus mostly on making a rigid solid Cat6 coverage for next year devices lineup. So I wanted to ask a question

I heard that Cat6 is nothing but a software upgrade on the carrier side as it would allow a Cat6 supported device to connect to two LTE bands the same time getting the maximum data speeds from both bands the same time offering a maximum theoretical speed of 300 Mbps.

My carrier said the two bands used would be 1800 and 2600 which are both supported by the iPhone 6 as Cat4 but not Cat6.

Since it's just a software side does that mean any improvements they do to offer maximum speeds on Cat6 will also reflect on Cat4 but of course with the 150 Mbps limitations, or Cat6 has its own bands, and transmitters that will never have any effect on Cat4.

 

[kch50428]

Cat4 & Cat6 are wired networking standards...the only comparison one can make is the data transfer speeds to wireless technologies (4g vs. LTE, etc...) and the terms should not be used interchangeably.

 

[M.Rizk]

Cat4 & Cat6 are wired networking standards...the only comparison one can make is the data transfer speeds to wireless technologies (4g vs. LTE, etc...) and the terms should not be used interchangeably.

So does that mean once Cat6 is available in my area the LTE-A Cat4 my phone supports will see a huge boost in the speed again?

 

[Baschti86]

"So does that mean once Cat6 is available in my area the LTE-A Cat4 my phone supports will see a huge boost in the speed again"

LTE Advanced needed 4x4 MIMO technology. Only a software update isn't enough. There are few appliances which support LTE Advanced. The iphone 6 or ipad air 2 support only LTE Cat4, LTE up to 150Mbit...

Cat 4 & Cat 6 not only wired LAN speeds. The categories describe which LTE standard is supported.