Vodafone CEO Jeroen Hoencamp claims that high 4G speeds don’t necessarily matter, and that many UK customers neither know nor care what 4G is.
In recent years, Vodafone has had to play second fiddle to EE when it comes to peak 4G speeds.
In an interview with the official Vodafone blog, however, company CEO Jeroen Hoencamp claims that 4G speeds and even the very concept of 4G itself isn’t the big thing many seem to be suggesting it is.
“It’s not a race to have the highest speeds because when it comes to mobile, speed only gets you so far,” says Hoencamp.
He claims that Vodafone could easily build a network capable of 300Mbps or beyond, as EE has in recent times. It just doesn’t want to.
“The reality is that you don’t currently need anything beyond 20Mbps on a mobile device,” Hoencamp says. “Even for streaming video you only need a couple of megabits per second.”
Rather, Hoencamp draws attention to Vodafone’s unique 4G reach. “One of the things that makes us different from others is that we have our ‘low band spectrum,’” he says.
This means that Vodafone’s lower frequency 4G signal can often penetrate through walls better than rival network offerings, theoretically making for better indoor coverage.
Read More: What is Vodafone’s Carrier Aggregation?
The Vodafone CEO goes on to claim that many customers are oblivious to the whole concept of 4G. “Many customers don’t know what 4G is,” he says. “Many customers don’t care what 4G is. All customers want is consistency, so that wherever they go they have strong signal, so that they can do what they want wherever they are.”
Is Jeroen Hoencamp right? Do you care how fast your 4G connection is, as long as it’s stable?
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
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We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
