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> This advice is pretty stale: 3G is rather old by now – 4G came out in 2009

When traveling to places with 4G or LTE coverage I'm often downgraded to 3G or edge. My parents' home has mostly 2G/edge connectivity, with some spotty 3G coverage on the second floor. They're "only" on the outskirts of a greater metropolitan area.

Just because some tech is old doesn't mean it's not very much still relevant.

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You can’t look at this without considering the context: yes, there are areas with marginal coverage (I also have relatives in that situation) but if you’re in one of them you are either not watching video over cellular because the experience is unpleasant or you’re used to it being slow and an extra second to start is a drop in the bucket. The number of people who are on very slow connections who are also highly latency sensitive just isn’t a significant percentage of users for most sites, and most sites have many areas for performance improvements before they need to tackle that problem.

I actually force my cellphone to 3G since I can watch everything in 1080p with it and I never lose connection like I do with 4G

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