Worthless launch.

For a small island like Mauritius, it's a real miracle that the two main mobile providers are launching LTE. This is amazing! Even 75% 3G coverage is very good, considering the topography of the island. And now with BTL launching FTTH, we should really be grateful to (eventually) be able to get access to these technologies so fast.

"Just like 3G, it will only work with devices equipped with 4G LTE antennas."

Do you mean using 3G requires 4G antennas?

And about the incompatibility of the 4G in some devices, are you sure? I mean, why would the manufacturers restrict it to the American market only. Nokia, HTC and Samsung are not even American brands. They must surely have released variants of their 4G devices for the other markets. Considering Mauritius itself, isn't any organisation (ICTA I guess) responsible for ensuring the compliance of the 4G signal provided by the mobile network operators with the 4G devices already being marketed (or the other way round: ensuring the compliance of to-be-marketed devices to the signal of the MNOs).

BTW, how to figure out if a Samsung Galaxy Nexus device is the HSPA+ version or the LTE version?

I think that Carrotmadman6 has talked about these technical aspects. He's our local tech reviewer :-)

"Do you mean using 3G requires 4G antennas?"
I may have put it wrongly. What I meant was that when 3G was introduced 8 years, you needed handsets equipped with 3G antennas to use it. & same for 4G.
I'll correct that sentence.



The frequency spectrum is allocated by ICTA.
http://www.icta.mu/images/spectrum.jpg

How I know whether Mauritius is using US or EU bands?
Through the modem specs - http://www.huaweimodems.com/E398.htm
The Huawei E398 supports mainly the EU bands - 1800/2600 MHz.
700/800 MHz, which used in the US, are not supported.
Furthermore, if you look at the spectrum allocation, the 700/800 Mhz is not available for mobile. That's probably because the ICTA aligns itself with the EU standards.



Quoting Wikipedia - "In North America, 700/ 800 and 1700/ 1900 MHz are planned to be used;
800, 1800, 2600 MHz in Europe; 1800 and 2600 MHz in Asia; and 1800 MHz
in Australia."
I don't know which bands Orange/Emtel are using, but the common denominator seems to be the 1800/2600 MHz. I scoured the Internet & found only these 3 devices to be compatible with those bands.
I haven't included the HTC Titan 4G & the HTC Velocity 4G, which only work on the 1800 MHz band.



"Nokia, HTC and Samsung are not even American brands. They must surely
have released variants of their 4G devices for the other markets."
They haven't. The Lumia 900 was released with LTE in US. The international version supports only HSPA+ (21Mbps). Similar story with the Galaxy SIII, the international version is HSPA+.



"BTW, how to figure out if a Samsung Galaxy Nexus device is the HSPA+ version or the LTE version?"
You'll have to look at the specs. It must mention whether it's HSPA+ or LTE accompanied by the supported bands.

Who cares!? We can't even enjoy GPRS connectivity without thinking about the bills getting blown.

I'd be more than happy if i'd get an unlimited GPRS plan (48kbps) on the go rather than a connection speed on 10001 Mbps in which you can use for 1 minute and your pocket gets blown :@ 

4G is not everyone. It is for people who can afford getting their pockets blown - businessmen! :)

Yeah. 99.9% of the population are excited for the fortunate 1% who would be able to afford it. :-/

Wonder when a good news will come for the population :fingerscrossed: :S

Orange Mauritius is putting the cart before the horse. Their current offers themselves are not value for money. It seems that the 100 Mbps speed for the 4G package is a gimmick because it's what the technology can support and not what MT is bound to provide. For instance, the current 3G+ offer does not really provide the maximum speed which it supports. I'll be happier when they buy more bandwidth to harness the huge profit and to satisfy their growing number of subscribers.

Their 3G dongles never gave me download speeds exceeding 25KB/s. Frequent disconnections and yes, loads of frustrating calls to MT.

Which tells you that they have the bandwidth.. but still give a maximum of 4mb to homeusers at an insane price. Chez Orange, kass zot kone cocain.

Carrot do you know the bandwidth of 3G here? thanks .. 

want to know if an american variant of the SIII or Note will work here. thanks.

does the international variant for e.g. the S III I9300 4G compatible? i doubt it as most 4G are being sold with data plans.



the S1717 (american variant of the S III has 4G at 700 & 1700 mhz.

thanks 

 3G - 384kbps. 3.5G - up to 7.2Mbps (depends on the region). 4G - 100Mbps.

I don't think Samsung have launched the international SIII 4G yet.

& the American 4G variant doesn't support Mauritius 4G bands (1800Mhz).

Prix modem la mari trangler dimun c'a. tout le tmp Orange ti tire manzer Morisien. Li donn toi 1 connexion soi disan 512 K  to bizin attane 1 an avant 1 video Youtube buffer

C'est bien jolie de lancer la 4G à Maurice, de dire quelle peut aller jusqu'à 100Mbps mais quand est-il réellement ?  Il y a je pense une différence entre la théorie et la pratique. 

Moi qui est un téléphone compatible 3G+ (donc comme dit plus haut, allant jusqu'à 7,2Mbps), j'arrive que rarement à dépasser 100Kb/s avec mon téléphone portable, ayant la plupart du temps entre 30 et 60Kb/s.

Je suis donc assez septique quand au débit que fournit actuellement la 4G à Maurice ...

Ca doit tourner entre les 10-20Mbps (théoriquement). :)

En théorie oui mais dans la pratique, je doute fort qu'on atteignent réellement un tel débit.

will the samsung galaxy note 3 lte version compatible in mauritius

Was as Emtel today where thay told me that my iPhone 5S model A1533 was not compatible with Emtel's 4G network. I don't understand cause I checked on the net and it supports LTE Band 3 (1800 MHz) Can someone correct me if I'm wrong? Or approve me if I'm right?

Yeah, the 5S A1533 supports 4G here, but it's not "officially" supported by Apple on Emtel.
Basically you have to do some .plist editing to add support for Emtel....
Similar to this - http://leimobile.com/how-to-enable-lte-on-iphone-5-for-t-mobile/

So the culprit is Apple. I saw they are going to get fined for doing this in Belgium. I guess they do it all aroung the world. saw posts of people complaining. Thats horrible..make us pay a fortune for iPhones and just block network providers. What a shame Apple... dont get me wrong I love Apple products but seriously these guys not only want all the money but also all the power.. thy do immoral things at times. Thank god Google created Android to compete or they would have dominated the world. And one thing I know is that Google is more moral, they do good.