Why an LTE iPhone 5 won’t be a very attractive proposition for UK consumers

For me it all depends on their data plans.

Where I live in the UK, not exactly in the middle of nowhere, I'm still waiting for the 3G revolution! And it's like that in a lot of places. Networks should be made to offer decent coverage as part of the contract or there'll never be decent speed because the networks will keep chasing the new speeds and never fill in the blanks.

Been on orange a few years now and have a few iPhone 4s's + an iPad 3 with them and must say there data and phone prices are ok so let's hope the iPhone 5 works on there LTE network because I for one will definitely be getting one, and if it doesn't guess I will still be getting one with orange because no other network has it anyway.

I think it would have bothered me if I had recently picked up a new phone as I would have to wait till I get a new phone to access 4G when it becomes available which would likely be a while since I would have just gotten a new one. Luckily my upgrade is next year and LTE was still in its early days when I got my phone with all the battery drain problems so it never bothered me that we didn't have it.

I have to agree with several comments here. Instead of talking about LTE and 4G, we should be looking at how poor even 3G coverage is in the UK. In my home city Vodafone has very poor, almost non existant, 3G coverage for instance. O2 is better in the city centre, but in many outlying areas 3G reception is patchy. Even the 2G DATA coverage can be patchy, going from quite acceptable in some places to even poorer than dial-up speeds in other places - ie you can make a call or send a text but thats about it!

In other areas I have travelled to, the situation is even worse with 2G being the norm and patches of 3G being a bonus.

I generally carry a 3 wireless router with me when on longer trips, as where there is coverage (and that is much better than it used to be) its always 3G.

So forget 4G lets have universal 3G first!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The thing is... does the speed really matter unless (US, Canada, or wherever) we get decent data caps (preferably unlimited) at reasonable prices? LTE just means one could use up most data plans that are even approaching a reasonable price in under a minute and a half! What does one do for the other 30.99 days of the month?

UK is not leading in Europes tech, Germany is! All UK operators have bad coverage and data connection speeds

I think I'll be staying with O2. I have a feeling that early Everything Everything adopters will get screwed down the line.
UK carriers embraced 3G before many nations, but they've dropped the ball with LTE.

I live in a part of the UK called the Isle of Man. We are in the middle of the Irish sea, we have our own government and are not governed by ofcom.
we only have two mobile networks over here. Manx telecom & Sure CW, both of which are in the process of upgrading their services to LTE.

I'm with 3 in the UK and while I would like to have LTE, I'm pretty happy with the 3G service I currently get, especially as it is completely uncapped, supports unlimited tethering and is pretty fast. I commute for 2.5 hours a day and stream podcasts (inc iMore) constantly. I average over 3GB per month of 3G data and it costs me £25 per month including effectively unlimited texts and voice calls and this is a rolling 1 month contract. I'll bet there are plenty of US and Canada customers who will kill for a tariff like this! If 3 had an uncapped LTE service including tethering then that would be ideal but I don't see this happening any time soon. In the meantime, dual channel HSPA+ is more than fast enough for me and I'd rather they focussed on better coverage and more consistent speeds in all areas.

Regards,
Craig. (Central Scotland)

Over the years I have been with most of the UK's mobile phone networks and each has signal black spots or areas where 3G coverage is patchy or non existant. Now a days with widespread wifi (increasing free when out and about) coverage issues are less of a problem. Wifi does have its limits though, out in the car using your iPhone for navigation you best pray for unlimited data. Or using iTunes in the cloud away from the big city relying on a stable 3G signal and loads of data. 

I thought it might be interesting to compare what www.ukmobilecoverage.co.uk comments on each of the providers coverage. 
Vodafone 

The Vodafone 2G signal covers over 99% of the UK population. Its 3G network (which provides higher mobile broadband speeds) covers around 80%.

Three 

The 3 2G signal covers over 99% of the UK population. Its 3G network covers around 93%. (Note: Uses Orange network for 2G.)

O2

The O2 2G signal covers over 99% of the UK population. Its 3G network covers around 80%.

Orange

The Orange 2G signal covers over 99% of the UK population. Its 3G network covers around 93%. (Note: Customers can use T-Mobile network, too.)

T-Mobile 

The T-Mobile 2G signal covers over 99% of the UK population. Its 3G network covers around 93%. (Note: Customers can use Orange network, too.)

It appears that T-Mobile, Orange and Three have superior 3G coverage, this of course depends on your location and what the coverage is like there. 

So finally are we at the start of a new era in UK mobile networks, will we soon be able to enjoy super fast mobile data speeds?

http://bit.ly/QnLVE6
@SimplyApple_

93% coverage sounds good, doesn't it? And yet Bristol is so badly served. To give an idea what that means to people who don't know, here's a summary from wikipedia:
It is England's sixth and the United Kingdom's eighth most populous city, one of the group of English Core Cities and the most populous city in South West England. Surely after all this time it should have effectively blanket 3G coverage?
I keep coming back to the same point but it's only when the network coverage maps are actually translated into signal bars on a phone that we can see that their figures are... optimistic.

As the frequency of a radio wave increases it is more vulnerable to being blocked by environmental factors. OFCOM's figures for 3G coverage show that only 38% of the UK landmass has 3G, the rest of it is too hilly, has too many trees or has too many radio-blocking buildings for the cell networks to economically deliver a service on the frequencies 3G operates on. (This is 87% of UK population).

Anything over 1 GHz isn't much use outside of flat, "low rise", urban environments which is why the Scottish government's been asking the cell networks to push 3G down onto 900 MHz for a while, although without much success.

Once LTE appears on 800 MHz we'll start seeing more widespread high-speed coverage from the networks that own that spectrum (mostly Vodafone & O2).

Three is to buy a part of Everything Everywhere’s 1800MHz spectrum, giving Three additional capacity to run 4G possibly as early as this year. This sale is part of the commitment given by Everything Everywhere when the European Commission approved the merger of Orange and T-Mobile earlier this year. Three's purchase of 2x15MHz in the 1800MHz spectrum will stand their network in great stead for 4G services.

http://bit.ly/QnLVE6
@SimplyApple_

I use an Lte Android phone every day. Where I live speed range from 5 up 12 down to as high as 20 up and 46 down being the highest I've seen. In the end it really doesn't mean that much. Web pages load a little faster and podcasts down
Lad faster but on a mobile phone there's only so fast the phone can render pages. The real difference comes when you are tethering to a computer. Then it's like having a broadband connection anywhere you go.

annoyed yes wtf are we not getting this it's ridicolous i've already been on them with the 3gs switched to O2 with the 4s and never looked so those speeds better make swoon to make me jump back to that wreck