https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2022/03/26/Is-5G-BS 5G Skeptic Search [ ] When I was working at AWS, around 2017 we started getting excited pitches from companies who wanted to be part of the 5G build-out, saying that obviously there'd be lots of opportunities for public-cloud providers. But I never walked away convinced. Either I didn't believe the supposed customers really needed what 5G offered, or I didn't believe the opportunity was anywhere near big enough to justify the trillion-dollar build-out investment. Six years later, I still don't. This is a report on a little online survey I ran, looking for actual real-world 5G impact to see if I was wrong. [Note: When I say "G" or "M" I'm talking about Gbits or Mbits/ second.] Why 5G? * Here's why the 5G vendors say we need their product: 1. Faster connections -- there is talk of 10G! 2. More bandwidth, so you can provide data in crowded places like sports stadiums. 3. Lower latency, because you can put servers in base stations, which in particular could be useful for self-driven vehicles. AWS offers infrastructure: see AWS Wavelength. Why not? * Disclosure: I'm affected by my personal experience. My home office is on our boat, anchored in central Vancouver. I pay my mobile provider more for extra data and do all my work via a hotspot on my aging Pixel 4. The phone calls what it sees "LTE+" (I don't claim to understand what that means) which de facto gives me lots of tens of Mbits/sec, plenty enough for heavy Internet geeking with streamed background music, and watching ball games (remember, I'm semi-retired). Interestingly, the Marina also provides a WiFi signal which is pathetically slow and unreliable compared to the 4G data; the notion that WiFi is the gold standard for wireless Internet is pretty well over. Our family has a cabin an hour's boat-ride from Vancouver on the shores of Howe Sound. We have "Smart Hub Rural Internet", which delivers a solid 15-25M down and 10+ up. Plenty enough for four people. So, I'm having trouble seeing what problem I have that 5G will solve. Speed? * Granteed: Like many people, at home we have "fiber" Internet which offers hundreds of M so that our family of four can all stream and game at the same time, no problem. Question: How often do you need more than the 50M or so LTE offers in a situation where it's cheaper to provide it with 5G than with a wired connection? Bandwidth * This is one that I can sort of believe in. In a football stadium or a big conference keynote, it is possible to provide decent WiFi coverage (I've experienced it). Is 5G a cheaper or better way to do that? I don't know, but it doesn't sound crazy. Latency * Obviously, this would be a big deal for online PvP gaming, although rollback netcode is producing remarkably good results these days. And then there's the autonomous-vehicle space. So, once again, doesn't sound crazy. The gaming angle sounds more plausible than self-driving, which (I think) would need reliable 5G along the whole route -- nobody wants a self-driving feature that randomly cuts in and out as you zip down the road. The whole low-latency thing is based on co-locating compute in the (many, many) 5G base stations. Note the reference to AWS Wavelength above; having a public-cloud provider run the compute makes all sorts of sense to me. But still, I do wonder about the economics; all that compute is going to add up. The real question * 5G started rolling out in the spring of 2019, so it's had three years to make a difference. I don't personally know anyone whose life has been changed by 5G. Yes, family members with newer phones occasionally report that the status bar says "5G", but I don't hear that they're having a different experience. But I don't know that many people. So I asked the Internet. Asking Twitter about 5G Last time I checked that tweet had around 44,000 impressions, people who had a chance to pipe up and relate their personal or professional experience of 5G. Lots did, so I'll use a few of the more clueful responses to support this narrative. Also, note that my readership includes a whole lot of professional software developers. So, let's see what they say about new kinds of applications and services that 5G has brought to the table. Theme: 5G vs wired * Does it make sense to replace your existing wired Internet with 5G? As always, the answer is "it depends" but one common theme emerges: If your wired connection is lousy, 5G might be a win. Or maybe 5G is just better? On/Off on 5G Others disagree, but point out that fiber may not be an option. Chris Hinson on 5G * * * Simon Bisson on 5G * * * apenwarr 5G I wonder about the economics of deploying 5G vs fiber. It's worth considering that 5G replaces the last mile and reduces the on-prem installation work to zero. On/Off on 5g Theme: Better coverage * Some report generally better coverage on 5G. Seems a little strange given the early stage of the build-out, but here they are. Michael Ayres on 5g * * * Brad Jones on 5G Theme: Hotspotting * Here are claims that hotspotting is better on 5G. Lewis Ellis on 5G * * * Ned Letcher on 5G Not everyone agrees. Dave Taht on 5G The link in his tweet goes here. I'm dubious too, probably because I live (and wrote this essay, including gathering and editing all the screenshots) on a 4G hotspot. Theme: Rural coverage * As a special case, I got multiple reports of better rural coverage. Which, once again, is surprising -- I thought 5G's sweet spot was short-range applications. Jordan Sissel on 5G * * * Fariborz Tavakkolian on 5G Theme: Crowded places * There is personal experience of Internet-in-a-crowded-place. There was another, mentioning rugby, but I seem to have lost it. Doggzilla on 5G Theme: Skeptics * Some people share my general skepticism. Lenne Fiat on 50M being enough * * * Soren on 5G * * * Glen Ross on 5G * * * Umair Qayyum on 5G Now the developers * My online following isn't huge, but it contains quite a few senior software developers, people who build high-impact applications and services for Big Tech corporations and who work on foundational open-source projects. So, let's hear about what they're building that's enabled by 5G technology. Exactly one such developer weighed in on the subject. 5G ATSSS I had to go look up what "ATSSS" is. Here you go: "3GPP has started to standardize the Access Traffic Steering, Switching & Splitting (ATSSS) function to enable 5G devices to use different types of access networks, including Wi-Fi. The ATSSS service leverages the Multipath TCP protocol to enable 5G devices to simultaneously utilize different access networks." Doesn't sound terrible. Life-changing? Your call. Um, any other developers out there working on things that will move the needle? Then there's this * John Gruber links to and expands on a WSJ report on how 5G burns your mobile's battery faster than LTE, and offers advice for how to disable it, because: There is nothing I do with my iPhone -- nothing -- where I find LTE even just a little bit "too slow". Me too. What I think * Well, they built 4G and it worked pretty well. So they had to build 5G, didn't they? It's perfectly possible that, ten years from now, we'll look in the rear-view and say "That was a good investment." I wouldn't bet on it, but it's possible. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Updated: 2022/03/27 --------------------------------------------------------------------- Contributions Comment feed for ongoing:Comments feed From: Andrew Reilly (Mar 26 2022, at 23:38) I'm not on 5G yet, myself. Came close, recently, but in the end the HFC modem supply resumed and was able to get a pretty decent connection that way. I was surprised by the cost of the 5G offer: about the same as wired, although capped vs uncapped data limit. Glad that HFC became available in time because at about the same time the Telco admitted that although the address was nominally in a 5G footprint, our actual house didn't have good enough reception to meet their standards and so they wouldn't supply it. As you say, that sort of thing is likely to improve as the rollout progresses. Personally, I think that the low-latency claim is extremely unlikely to be a thing, even for gamers. Speed of light/cable/switches says that unless all participants are using the same base station, there won't be a difference. Mobile IP is carrier-NATed through a backbone switch, so even same-city connections are going to have the same 10ms ping as every other mechanism. Need to do anything that crosses the Pacific, then hello 170ms my old friend. One thing that could be holding 5G back at the moment is that apparently most telcos are deploying it in a 4G-compatible way, which prevents some of the special 5G goodness from working. (I watched a presentation that said that, but I didn't follow it all.) It could be that existing 5G will get better as/if the Telcos put in the investment to fully separate the networks. Makes you wonder how enthusiastic the venture capital money behind the on-going "6G" project is. I'd be nervous, if I were them. [link] From: Chris Swan (Mar 26 2022, at 23:58) Since the first presentation I saw about 5G it's all been about China for me. China took the lead in developing the standards, China has the dense urban environment with buildings and planning regulations that facilitate conformal tiled antennae arrays, and China treats bandwidth as a public good underlying services that will propel the rest of the economy. The point of 5G is the make the mobile internet work well in Chinese cities. Like every G before it, there's no killer app, just bandwidth, the internet, and everything that enables. The flip side of the coin is that I've always expected Western implementations to be faux 5G. There just aren't many places where the full tech stack makes sense and can be deployed as intended. So we get 5G in name only, and perhaps some extra battery drain to go with that. Of course if you get a shiny new 5G mast in what was previously a 'notspot' then that's a leap forward. [link] From: Yannis (Mar 27 2022, at 00:22) My first introduction to this hype was from a business rather than technical angle. In fact, I really haven't seen technical people excited about 5G at all, aside from YouTube smartphone reviewers saying it's a good feature to have. That introduction was on BBC Radio 4's bottom line (not sure if you can access outside of Britain): https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/ b0b48yxs The title is 'Will 5G Revolutionise Our Lives', which sets the tone you expect. The podcast gives a good sense of the hype businesspeople have been exposed to since that's its focus, and Evan Davis, the host, is notoriously non-technical. He is a very forthright and sceptical interviewer though, and he asks point-blank how this innovation will help the end-user. After a pause, the network executive at the other side of the table *genuinely* replies 'I will never have to go to the doctor in person again'. And I'm just thinking - Evan is taking this at face value because he doesn't know that telehealth has been around for years and years! Anyway, it will give a nice picture of the woo laypeople and businesspeople especially have been exposed to. [link] From: Mike Loukides (Mar 27 2022, at 05:57) I'm largely in agreement with you. I'm a 5G skeptic; I don't think it changes much. It might be a viable replacement for wired home networking. I get a solid non-fiber 50Mb from COMCAST. I used a Pixel 2 with LTE as a wireless hub for several days when COMCAST was out; it worked flawlessly. I'd like COMCAST to have some viable competition, but that's not going to change my world. I can see 5G having a role in large-scale (e.g. factory) automation/ edge computing, which you don't address (thousands of chatty devices), though this requires solving a different set of problems. I'm more skeptical than you about latency. Nobody cares about latency between the device and the cell tower; end-to-end application latency has much more to do with routing than with RF protocols. If you can put all of AWS and Google into every cell, you would have something. That won't happen. [link] From: Ian McKellar (Mar 27 2022, at 11:13) In the US (and maybe Canada) lack of local loop unbundling makes 5G appealing for the last mile, but the way spectrum is managed means it's still in the hands of a small cartel. It's really all about the spectrum. Unlicensed bands (60, 5.2, 2.4) are unlicensed because they're not that valuable. They're absorbed by water - useful in a microwave oven, not when you're trying to provide internet in a rainstorm. It would have been nice to see the spectrum given to 5G licensed liberally so that we could see what evolved rather than it being used just by another iteration of GSM. Copper & fiber are always going to be better when it's practical because they're point to point where each pair of peers have their own medium rather than everyone sharing a medium. (Disclaimer: I dropped out of EE but have had the chance to work near smart people in the ensuing 25yrs) [link] From: Dustin Quasar Sacks (Mar 27 2022, at 11:27) Thanks for polling the net about this. It's definitely interesting to hear the responses. Seems like a lot of people are unhappy with their wired options, and 5G provides a new option. Is another option ever bad? I guess it's a matter of whether the build out cost is worth it or not. It would be cool if there was a carrier that ignored 5G and doubled down on their 4G service with a lower cost. Hard to make it work long term as the low cost option tho, I can understand carriers desire to try and differentiate with better/faster service, even if i's mostly for marketing speak. [link] From: Nelson (Mar 27 2022, at 12:49) The best I can get at home on a wired connection is 45Mbps. There's 4 of us, we all watch video content (1080-1440p YouTube, Twitch, etc), not to mention the system and app updates, video calls, etc, which may all happen at the same time. I also have to download heavy (5-20GB) files multiple times a week for work. My carrier is a bit behind on 5G deployment, so I got a SIM card from another provider (rolling 30 day contract, unlimited traffic). I'm using it on a phone + wifi hotspot, so it's not as good as a dedicated 5G modem/router, but it's cheaper than my wired connection, averages 300Mbps during peak hours and maxes out at 600-700Mbps. The only downside is latency... it's fine most of the times, but it's not as stable as my wired connection. Now, do I need 500Mbps+ all the time? No, but it's very useful when I need to download something. Do I need those speeds on a phone? No, but I also use my phone as hotspot at lot and in that case, it can be useful. I'm aware that LTE is capable of reaching the same speeds, but I've never seen that in the real world. 5G has been an improvement for me, but I've been using it as my main internet connection. I'm also in Europe where plans and prices are a bit different from North America, and use a lot of data (around 800GB last month for 4 people). There's a lot of BS around 5G, but I'm not going to blame the tech for what some CEO or click bait news sites claim it can do. [link] From: Jay Goldberg (Mar 27 2022, at 13:38) 100% agree The main benefit of 5G is for operators there is very little in the standard for consumers to care about. Given all the people talking about 5G networks and big spend on deploying then - ask those people what applications they are going to use all that 5G for - very few people have a good answer. In the operators' core network there are some big gains - but only in a way that makes their networks look a lot more like the way everyone else has been building networks for a decade+ (virtualization, containers, hardware abstraction). Important for the operators, essentially meaningless for users. [link] ongoing What this is * Subscribe to ongoing Truth * Biz * Tech author * Dad * software * colophon * rights --------------------------------------------------------------------- March 26, 2022 * Technology (88 more) By Tim Bray. The opinions expressed here are my own, and no other party necessarily agrees with them. A full disclosure of my professional interests is on the author page.