> I wonder if that's due to congestion at the phone-to-tower level, congestion at the tower-to-internet level, or due to newer wireless tech just having higher

> I wonder if that's due to congestion at the phone-to-tower level, congestion at the tower-to-internet level, or due to newer wireless tech just having higher peak performance at optimal physical conditions (e.g. line of sight) that are becoming increasingly hard to actually accomplish in practice? I believe this is entirely configurable by the carrier. As others have pointed out, the primary driver of each successive generation is to support more clients. Increasing individual client bandwidth is a secondary motivation.