5G, 4G, sometimes I’ll be able to browse on 3G, but once I get to H or H+ nothing loads no matter how long I wait. What does H even mean? And surely it implies data is still moving, so why do browsers just give up instead of loading something slowly?
In: Technology
H is short for HSDPA, high speed downlink packet access. It’s a 3G technology that is useful where there are long distances between cell towers.
The strength of radio communications is related to distance and frequency. HSDPA uses relatively low frequency to manage longer distances without dropping the communication. The pay-off for that is limited data carrying capacity. Great if you need to make a call while in a rural area, terrible if you want a graphics heavy we page to load.
Phones give up because it just takes too long.
You can do simple things over it, but it’s really not a data transmission service – it’s retained as back up for cell technology that prioritises data (4G, 5G etc).
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