Does 4G signal strength affect data usage?

[haplorrhine]

Does 4G signal strength affect data usage? How is it calculated?
If your antenna is further away or weaker, transmitting that information should require more electricity either as stronger signal or longer connection time. Right?

I'm sorry. I looked everywhere.

[grahammechanical]

What are you being charged for? The amount of data downloaded? Or the amount of time connected?

I do not have a mobile phone so I am ignorant of the methods used by service providers to make money out of people. The faster the download rate the less time spent downloading. 4G must be faster than 3G, right? So, I think that service providers charge by the amount of data downloaded. Otherwise they would make less money out of people when they introduce a faster service. And that would never do.

A weak signal might cause some data packets to be dropped but there should be a system in place that forces the re-sending of data until all the required data packets are received. That might result in more data being transmitted and received.

If the device does not provided a means of boosting transmitter power then I do not see how a weak signal would use more electricity than a strong signal.

Regards.

[user1397]

grahammechanical is correct. You get charged by the amount of data being transmitted, so the signal speed does not matter. It's the same thing if you're using a wireless-b router versus a wireless-n, when you download an ubuntu iso, you're going to download the same file size on either connection, but it would be faster on a wireless-n router (given your isp does not bottleneck you :))

[haplorrhine]

grahammechanical is correct. You get charged by the amount of data being transmitted, so the signal speed does not matter. It's the same thing if you're using a wireless-b router versus a wireless-n, when you download an ubuntu iso, you're going to download the same file size on either connection, but it would be faster on a wireless-n router (given your isp does not bottleneck you :))

Technically the signal isn't slower, but rather, the antenna doesn't have enough resolving power to see the signal. I think grahammechanical may be onto something with packets being dropped and retransmitted, but I need a real world test. Thank you both for the responses.