Is there any way to know what network an iPhone is connected to (LTE vs GSM)

Question

With the release of iOS 6 and iphone 5 I'm trying to figure out how my app can know if the phone is in LTE mode vs GSM mode.

I haven't seen any updates to the Reachability API which can give whether it is connected to Wifi vs WWAN but I need to know what kind of WWAN connection it is.

Any ideas?

Mascia

Answer 1

For iO6 and below, you can not do this.

I have asked this question on the Apple developer forums, and Apple confirmed they do not yet have this functionality.

You can file a feature request bug. I have already done this (#12375460), but the more duplicates there are the more chance it will get implemented.

Also this is a duplicate of this question.

Optimistic

That's a real shame as it seems to be a common question online. I will add a feature request as well to see if I can help push Apple to implement this. – Mascia

Answer 2

As of iOS 7, you can find this out using the currentRadioAccessTechnology property of CTTelephonyNetworkInfo in the CoreTelephony framework.

#import <CoreTelephony/CTTelephonyNetworkInfo.h>

CTTelephonyNetworkInfo *networkInfo = [CTTelephonyNetworkInfo new];

if ([networkInfo.currentRadioAccessTechnology isEqualToString:CTRadioAccessTechnologyLTE]) {
    // ...
}

Pyriphlegethon

+1 Thanks for this - I did find this API in iOS7 as well. It's about time! – Mascia

Does anyone know why there is no documentation on the currentRadioAccessTechnology method? developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/… – Optimistic

Although this detects which radio access technology your device is capable of, it doesn't necessarily provide you with what it's currently using. So if I have an iPhone capable of LTE, but I happen to be in an area with 3G data only, this code still reports LTE. – Maintop