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Comment by kalleboo | Hacker News Reader

This comment thread makes me feel spoiled - I used to live in Sweden where my operator (Three) didn't have a 2G network, now I live in Japan where all the 2G networks are long-gone. Right now I'm visiting Australia where by far the best coverage is on Telstra's NextG 3G network (I'm 80 km away from the nearest supermarket yet am getting 6 MBit down on NextG with an antenna on the roof).

I haven't seen 2G in a LONG time

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New Zealand is similar, one carrier is 3G/4G only, one of them is 2G/3G/4G, and the newest one only operates their own network in major cities on 2G/3G/4G and roams onto the second largest outside of it. I frequently get 3G in very rural areas and I haven't been in a 2G only area for months.

Three in the UK is 3G/4G only - but is noticeably patchier than other providers, since if you 'go rural' it will just drop out rather than fall back on GSM.

Three in Sweden got a big boost in coverage after the original legacy GSM licenses ran out and the frequencies got redistributed so that they got a slice of low-frequency spectrum to put 3G on.

Minor point but I'm fairly certain Telstra NextG is a 4G network.

NextG is their 850 MHz 3G HSDPA network. Their 4G network is just branded "Telstra 4G" and "Telstra 4GX" for 700 MHz.

I thought it was kinda funny when telstra had "NextG" in their marketing, because now it's essentially "PreviousG"

Same with how the Hutchinson networks around the world (UK, Hong Kong, Sweden, etc) are branded "Three" even now that they have 4G networks running.

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