Originally Posted by
joshwex90
They do have dead spots. That doesn't change the fact they have the best service nationally. They have a stronger signal in large cities than any of the other major carriers. They have any signal in more areas of the country than any other country.
Another Verizon fanboy drinking the Kool-aid...
Incorrect. Verizon made a conscious decision to use separate bandwidths for calls and 3G. The reason is that when everything uses the same bandwidth, it throttles internet speeds and leads to more congestion on the bandwidth, dropping more calls. By using separate bandwidths, speeds can be faster, and there will be fewer dropped calls. However, once in call, you cannot connect the phone to a different bandwidth, because the antenna is connected to the phone call signal.
4G uses a separate antenna to connect to LTE, allowing you to speak and use the internet at the same time. The ThunderBolt has an additional antenna to connect to 3G, so even when connected to 3G, you can connect to both.
This may be true, but it's not the reason that Verizon's 3G service doesn't support simultaneous voice and data. EVDO Rev. A, which is the standard Verizon uses for its 3G network, does not support simultaneous voice and data. It was designed as a data-only standard, and requires a fallback to 1xRTT voice when a call is received/placed during a data session. See
this chart on Wikipedia, the box on the far right on the bottom row for EV-DO.
There
is a CDMA 3G standard called SV-DO (Simultaneous Voice-Data Operation), which is how the HTC Thunderbolt supports voice and data over 3G. But apparently its real-world performance leaves something to be desired, and it's unclear how much Verizon will support it.
Link
Verizon's 4G technology, LTE (which is technically not 4G but 3.5G), does support simultaneous voice and data. This is not because of multiple antennae, however, but because the underlying data transmission standard allows for the simultaneous encoding of voice and data. Remember that all these 3G and 4G standards are essentially ways of encoding and transmitting a bit stream. Whether they are voice bits or internet bits, a bit is a bit.
Hope this clears things up some. We now return you to your regularly scheduled thread, already in progress.