Depending on where you live, your carrier’s performance can vary quite a bit. Where one carrier is a slam dunk, another is a pokey dolt. And don’t get us started about how much large public events make calling/sharing information a major pain due to an overabundance of traffic and not enough bandwidth. More often than not, AT&T is often the butt of such jokes. But it is that very carrier who is beginning to experiment with new types of antennas, specifically, multi-beam antennas.

Their current “next-gen” antenna of sorts uses a 5-way beam that, according to AT&T, allows up to 5x the traffic of standard single-beam antennas by splitting traffic up into 5 parts. Even more forward looking is the company’s “super multi-beam” antenna which uses a 2-by-9 array of multiple beams to theoretically allow for 18x the data traffic of your standard single-beam antenna.

The 5-way antenna mentioned above is already being used for large events such as football games, consumer electronics shows, etc.

On paper it sounds great. And in real life, the added bandwidth can mean the difference between sharing a photo with a friend (albeit a bit slowly) and not being able to send said photo at all.

More of a visual person? Don’t sweat it. There’s a video below just for you.

Via: Engadget

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