[HN Gopher] 5G Skeptic
___________________________________________________________________
5G Skeptic
Author : zdw
Score : 150 points
Date : 2022-03-27 16:22 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.tbray.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.tbray.org)
| setgree wrote:
| Anecdote that Tim is asking for: I upgraded from an iPhone 2020
| SE to an iPhone 12 and suddenly it was easier to use the BlueBike
| app in New Orleans. With just LTE or whatever it's called,
| sometimes the app wouldn't connect at all and so i couldn't park
| my bike.
| darthrupert wrote:
| For me 5G has been absolutely wonderful. It made my connection at
| home about 2x faster than whatever we have at the city office.
| And about 50x faster than what I had at home before. Also much
| more stable latencies.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > For me 5G has been absolutely wonderful. It made my
| connection at home about 2x faster than whatever we have at the
| city office. And about 50x faster than what I had at home
| before. Also much more stable latencies.
|
| But why are you using 5G at home in the first place? Where are
| you that 5G actually outperforms your wired connection
| (accessed through WiFi)?
| tyrfing wrote:
| It's cheaper than fiber internet here. Costs less for the
| same bandwidth, without a contract and without data caps -
| unlike the wired option. Assuming the latency is usable,
| unlike 4G, it's starting to be a very competitive option. If
| you're stuck with 12mbps copper like some areas, it's a very
| obvious choice.
| novok wrote:
| You must have some pretty crappy wired ISPs
| darthrupert wrote:
| Perhaps. There was some indication that the wiring in our
| house caused some trouble for our previous VDSL.
|
| But even if it had worked at advertised speeds, 5G would have
| given me roughly double the speed. As it was, 5G gave us
| about 50x better and stable connection. Only fiber directly
| to our house could top that, but unfortunately that's not
| available here yet. Plus costly.
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| Interestingly (to me), I just turned 5G off on my phone
| yesterday. I've had weird connectivity issues ever since I got
| this phone, even when I see "5GUC" ("ultra capacity"). Out of
| idle curiosity I wondered if LTE might be less spotty. So far it
| mostly has been! But ironically it cut out in the course of
| writing this comment, while looking up "5GUC" to confirm I
| remembered what it meant.
| secondcoming wrote:
| I bought a 5G-capable router because I was moving house during
| covid and couldn't afford to wait potentially weeks for fibre to
| be turned on.
|
| It was only supposed to be temporary but it's so good I never
| bothered getting fibre. While latencies are worse than fibre I
| can still play Battlefield V on it, and I spend most days ssh'd
| into GCP machines in various regions.
|
| I can take the router anywhere, and use any network provider I
| want.
| ugjka wrote:
| Most of the coverage is going to be 800/700/600 Mhz stuff that
| will have the same problem of peak hours congestion as LTE. The
| 5G pipedream is based on an assumption that telcos could possibly
| afford to litter every inhabited place with shitload of HF base
| stations
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| By the way, HF _does_ stand for high frequency, but it 's
| actually the 3 to 30Mhz band.
|
| 5G mmWave would be the SHF and low EHF bands. (Super
| high/extremely high)
| giantrobot wrote:
| 5G also provides better spacial efficiency over LTE besides the
| spectral efficiency. So even without a forest of towers it'll
| provide better peak congestion performance than LTE. At the
| same time microcells/nanocells are more practical with 5G
| allowing companies to increase capacity in especially high
| traffic areas. For instance a couple high-band cells in popular
| public spaces. With LTE the only equivalent option was a lower
| _power_ microcell that affected and was affected by nearby full
| sized cells.
|
| There's plenty of marketing dreck and hype around 5G but
| there's also a lot of good engineering and real capability
| improvements over previous cellular systems.
| SkeuomorphicBee wrote:
| One thing I never understood is why it is called "5G" (and not
| just LTE++)? All the previous "Generations" were pretty big
| technological leaps in the physical layer, each G was a
| completely different beast using a completely different physical
| layer, but from what I gather, "5G" is just LTE with some added
| frequency bands, bigger QAM, more MIMO, etc (just like LTE to
| LTE+ added, nothing generational). So, just "before we used to
| divide this thing into 64 parts and now we divide into 256 so we
| have 4x the bandwith", nothing that couldn't be done into LTE++
| (or LTE+2, or whatever). The only breaking change seem to be the
| change in the orthogonality of the up-link channel modulation
| (down-link remains unchanged).
|
| So, can anyone explain to me what is the generational difference
| between LTE and 5G (not simply more frequencies and tighter
| parameters)?
| Sakos wrote:
| 5G isn't LTE. It's NR. I'm not sure what the point of
| questioning the terminology is.
| seltzered_ wrote:
| I have the same sentiment of 5G working better for tethering+zoom
| calls as
| https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2022/03/26/-big/cons... -
| it's noticeable as with my current provider/place I currently
| have to position my phone in the right area of the house to get
| 5G.
|
| I'm not on ultrawideband 5G or anything, but it's worth noting
| that I hardly did video calls before the pandemic and was fairly
| 5G skeptical before. I later realized video call's value not for
| dayjob work but for fictive kinship interest groups and study
| groups going past 'doing conversation' or 'feel-good
| conversation' but more into support and 'depth conversation'.
|
| I could get by on doing this with a wired internet connection or
| by doing zoom on the phone (where I think cellular bandwidth QoS
| prioritization comes into play and Zoom will still work over
| LTE), but staving off yet another thing to pay for has been nice.
| temptemptemp111 wrote:
| killjoywashere wrote:
| My fundamental issue with any wireless solution for home internet
| is that ... I have a home. It's not going anywhere. Even with a
| 9.x earthquake a la Fukushima, the average probability is that
| it's not moving much in the next 100 years. It's got copper, most
| of it is for power and pipes. Seems pretty trivial to run a tiny
| bit more for data. Zero probability that a common atmospheric bus
| serving the entire area (1) is going to guarantee me as much
| bandwidth as I can get over that wire. Why engineer freespace
| optics when a few pounds of circa 1950 oxygen-free copper will
| do?
|
| (1) area in this case is another definitional headache all it's
| own, driven by power and wavelength.
| erikerikson wrote:
| Reminds me of...
|
| "Who needs faster CPU cycles?"
|
| and
|
| "Who needs that many pixels?"
|
| I'd suggest the question should be something like "What does the
| lifting of those constraints enable?" or "What businesses will
| this make possible?"
| dwaite wrote:
| The author went the entire article without actually defining what
| 5G is. If he had, it would have made some of the discussion
| points more obviously moot.
|
| 4th generation has limits on total devices, power utilization,
| bandwidth, latency and coverage that 5th generation improves
| upon.
|
| Carriers are the ones who want to move to 5G - they are clubbing
| phone manufacturers to do so, and then both are marketing it so
| people buy into the new infrastructure.
|
| You'll see other groups (smart cities, autonomous vehicles and
| private IoT deployments) with technical need. In the US, we saw
| T-Mobile push for lower frequency usage at the start to improve
| their rural coverage, while their Sprint side pushed for more of
| the bandwidth-improving urban coverage. The article has several
| quotes from people who are using 5G for cheaper last mile for
| home internet - this could be a mobile hotspot or an antenna
| installation. This will provide more competition for internet
| service in areas that have had effective monopolies on broadband.
|
| The towers and frequencies are being switched over to 5G, with
| emulation for handling older technologies. I would expect as the
| networks start to go past the capabilities of LTE, there will be
| congestion controls which will give LTE customers less bandwidth
| or lower quality of service at times.
| entropie wrote:
| > The author went the entire article without actually defining
| what 5G is
|
| Iam pretty sure they actually dont know.
|
| > Is 5G a cheaper or better way to do that? I don't know, but
| it doesn't sound crazy.
|
| > The phone calls what it sees "LTE+" (I don't claim to
| understand what that means)
|
| This is a guy who asks their twitter audience and wonders why
| there is no explicit answer.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| It seems like hubris. I see it a lot in very senior
| engineers. Basically, the belief that "I have all the
| information in my head to answer any tech question". The blog
| post would have been much better if he spent 30 minutes less
| on twitter, and 30 minutes more on familiarizing himself with
| the problem space.
|
| Announcing you're a skeptic about something, and then having
| your analysis filled with knowledge gaps isn't a great look.
| superkuh wrote:
| In terms of increased thoroughput, hz for hz, compared to 4G LTE,
| 5G NR can send about 15-20% more data. That's not a huge
| improvement compared to past increases of multiple hundreds of
| percent (3G-4G). Because of this most increases in thoroughput
| have to come from using new frequency ranges. So they telcos
| pretty much stole half of the 3 GHz C-band from incumbent
| satellite operators (who were told to "just use h265"). But
| beyond this there's not much available spectrum that's even just
| decent like C-band. Most of it is crappy mm-wave.
| Ekaros wrote:
| One one hand it is annoying to lose that type of spectrum. On
| other hand terrestrial can mean smaller cell sizes thus much
| better utilization rates. Which really is needed if demand
| continues to increase.
| H8crilA wrote:
| Yup, there's only 1Mbit/sec for every 1Mhz of radio bandwidth,
| and this is shared between all users in a given cell. This is
| also why I don't understand the fascination with Starlink,
| which makes cells obnoxiously large (the size of a satellite
| coverage), even Musk himself says it's only for remote areas.
| jlokier wrote:
| > there's only 1Mbit/sec for every 1Mhz of radio bandwidth
|
| > this is shared between all users in a given cell
|
| Both statements are untrue.
|
| For example, "Wifi 7" 802.11be reaches up to 125 Mbit/s for
| each 1 MHz of radio bandwidth in perfect conditions, to a
| single user.
|
| Inside a cell area, multiple users can share the same radio
| frequencies at the same time using various spatial modulation
| techniques (typically called beamforming but it doesn't have
| to be a beam, and might involve 3 or more stations working
| together).
|
| The theoretical limits scale very differently than common
| understanding of bandwidth.
| H8crilA wrote:
| > reaches up to 125 Mbit/s for each 1 MHz of radio
| bandwidth
|
| I see. What is the theoretical limit of bits/second per
| hertz of radio bandwidth, if any?
| ac29 wrote:
| > there's only 1Mbit/sec for every 1Mhz of radio bandwidth
|
| That can't be right, cellular networks have had > 1 bps/hz
| efficiency for decades.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectral_efficiency
| Ekaros wrote:
| And why I have wondered how does the math really work out.
| Fiber and cell tower cost only so much. And outside some
| mobile cases does areas where this isn't viable have enough
| customers?
|
| Then again, USA is always an argument where telco seems to
| have really failed for various reasons. Still, I see no
| reason why same would apply to Africa or other markets they
| talk about...
| PaulHoule wrote:
| The irony is that the main case for 5G is reduced costs for
| operators.
|
| 4G blew the top off what people thought the Shannon Limit was but
| at the expense of extreme and expensive coordination between base
| stations. (If your digital front-ends are sampling at a rate of N
| Hz and a bit depth of d you need to bring all that data to one
| place!)
|
| 5G gets better spectral efficiency (serve more customers with
| expensive spectrum) with a simpler coordination model. (lower
| capital cost)
|
| Of course since 5G is the new shiny carriers want to charge you
| more for it but they'd save money if they got you off 4G and onto
| 5G.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| hmmm, i'm paying exactly the same rate I have been paying for
| years and even took them up on a second business line for free.
| Your theory isn't panning out for me. Also my 5g experience
| with t-mobile is that it's between 3-8x as fast as I was
| getting before on LTE in the areas that I frequent. So I'm not
| complaining. I mean I WANT my gigabit 5G but I'm okay right now
| at this pricepoint.
| zw123456 wrote:
| It most certainly did not do that, neither has 5G for that
| matter.
|
| The Shannon's Law refers to
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon%E2%80%93Hartley_theore...
| to see the actual formula
|
| the basic principle is that the Capacity C of a comm channel is
| proportional to the amount of spectrum you have B and the
| Signal to Interference and Noise ratio (SINR).
|
| So basically, if you want more throughput, you need either more
| spectrum or more cell sites in order to improve the SINR, you
| cannot simply continue to crank up the power because then you
| are increasing the co-channel interference (interfering with
| other terminals on the wireless network). This is why Spectrum
| is so expensive, the alternative is to build more cell sites,
| which is expensive.
|
| 4G LTE did come a lot closer by using OFDMA but they most
| certainly did not exceed the limit. 5G using mm-wave also did
| not, it uses phased array antennas to implement beam forming
| which created space separation, that is, each user gets their
| own beam and do not have to share it with others, but within
| that beam, they still are confined to the law C ~ B * SINR
|
| The operators did add a ton of spectrum through various
| auctions and that plus the new tech is what is driving the
| tputs up.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| 3G and prior "cellular" systems were inefficient because they
| can't reuse the same frequency in adjacent cells. See the
| diagram here
|
| https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/frequency-reuse/
|
| Here you have 7 different frequencies used in different
| groups of cells.
|
| In 4G all frequencies can be used in all the cells. If you
| are between two or three cells you are probably receiving a
| signal from (and being received by) multiple cells and they
| are sharing the RF baseband to make it possible. That plus a
| big bag of tricks let 4G achieve radically better spectral
| efficiency through "spatial diversity"
| __s wrote:
| > Here you have 7 different frequencies used in different
| groups of cells.
|
| You should only need 4 different frequencies:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_color_theorem
|
| For hexagons you can get by with 3, https://en.wikipedia.or
| g/wiki/Hexagonal_tiling#Uniform_color...
| PaulHoule wrote:
| You'd think so but practically the signal bleeds across
| to second-adjacent cells and a real channel plan needs
| more than that.
|
| Look at how the 3 WiFi channels in 2.4GHz land is nowhere
| near sufficient for good spatial diversity and it is even
| a struggle with the 5GHz channels that aren't gated to
| avoid interference with radar.
| __s wrote:
| Indeed. In fact, the link I responded to shows a pattern
| matching the 7 color 3-uniform distribution I linked to
| p_l wrote:
| That only works if you have exact edges and that each BTW
| uses only one base channel (iirc, they mix and match as
| much as possible)
| zw123456 wrote:
| Yes, each cell interferes with the next, that is call co-
| channel interference. That is a major factor that limits
| the capacity of a cellular network. There are a number of
| approaches used to manage that, carriers spend a lot of
| money and employ many engineers designing around that.
|
| SON (Self Optimizing Network) is the latest tech that is
| being deployed on 4G and 5G to help combat that.
|
| BTW, this is one of the reasons you can get much higher
| tputs with mm-wave because the beams do not propagate
| very far which makes keeping co-chan down, that's the
| good news, the bad news is it doesn't propagate well,
| which means you need way more nodes.
| kabouseng wrote:
| It's not a hard stop between cells. You don't have radio
| signals and then suddenly nothing because of reflections,
| absorbtions and the very nature of log scale of signal
| distance drop off..
| zw123456 wrote:
| 4G also reuses the frequencies in the exact same way, the
| primary difference between 3G and 4G is that 3G used CDMA
| and did not have the higher modulation desities, (capped at
| QPSK) while 4G LTE went up to 64QAM, so more bits per
| symbol.
|
| 4G did not use spatial separation, that requires
| beamforming, that is most certainly not deployed in 4G, 4G
| LTE uses MIMO. Spatial separation is deployed in 5G but
| only at the mm-wave bands due to the 1/2 wavelength
| separation required between antenna elements, hence,
| impractical with longer wavelengths.
| pizza wrote:
| I am out of my element here but I was under the impression
| that the capacity of an arbitrary wireless network was still
| an unsolved problem. (Though I presume what you are referring
| to is a case that is solvable)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_i.
| ..
| tails4e wrote:
| You need more SNR (power), more BW (spectrum) , or more
| 'channels'. 5G solves this using the last dimension,
| channels. Beamforming allows the same spectrum to be reused
| by allowing for spacial separation, i.e. use the same
| spectrum 5 times by sending 5 beams to 5 physically sperare
| locations. MIMO is layered on top of this ans uses multipath
| effects to offer more bandwidth to a single user by taking
| advantage of the fact each path is its own channel. No
| violation of the Shannon limit for sure, but very smart and
| computationally intensive techniques to skirt around the
| issues of the single isotropic or sector antenna of old.
| zw123456 wrote:
| I have 5G at my house, I am served by what the provider calls 5G
| ultra wide band, which is deployed on mm-wave band (28Ghz) and
| uses phased array technology to implement beam forming, I
| generally get about 2Gbps on speed tests, but of course through
| normal activity you can rarely get that to anything on the public
| net, but to Azure and AWS I can get peaks on certain applications
| I am working on. The latency variers because of the DRX and cDRX
| mechanisms but generally I see about 20 - 30ms on start of a flow
| and 5 - 6 ms during a flow. It will fall back to mid-band (4Ghz)
| which uses MIMO instead of beam forming due to the longer
| wavelengths PAA, is not practical, I get around 600Mbps. It will
| fall back usually on my mobile device even just moving around in
| the house but the stationary CPE device I have set up is pretty
| solid. Of course if you connect via Wifi, which I suspect most
| people would, then you are probably not going to get those speeds
| but would depend on all the usual wifi caveats. The service is
| better than the wired service (from a cableco who is run DOCIS
| 3.1) that I had before
|
| But nothing I have seen yet is in the 10Gig range.
|
| But TBH, I am not sure how most people would use it anyway, at
| least not today. Maybe there will be some future use cases but
| today I am un-convinced that some of the hyped use cases will
| ever pan out. I have read about things like "Remote Surgery" I
| cannot see any surgeon getting malpractice insurance to cover
| that. I have the same skepticism about all the various vehicle
| anti-collision ideas, it seems to be that DRC (Direct Radio Comm)
| is the only thing that would make sense, the minute you stick a
| network behind it you are adding a lot of risk of outages and too
| much latency, I just don't see where you need more computing
| power in some MEC (Mobile Edge Cloud) than could be put in a
| vehicle itself. The only that maybe needs that kind of computing
| power, throughput and low latency is the AR/VR type application
| which I think is why people seem to be putting 5G, MEC and
| Metaverse into the same sentence more often lately. My conclusion
| is that until there is a killer app, 5G will be perceived as a
| lot of hype. I do not know if Metaverse will take off or not,
| time will tell.
| giantrobot wrote:
| One of the interesting though prosaic uses of 5G is the ability
| to replace a bunch of bespoke over their air protocols for
| "smart" devices. These are boring devices like utility meters,
| SCADA stuff, and all manner of remote monitors.
|
| Since they can just be "5G" devices they can massively benefit
| from economies of scale. They can also end up _more_ secure
| than existing devices because they can more easily be on an IP-
| based VPN on top of network segmentation /encryption 5G
| provides.
|
| One of the goals of 5G was allowing low power devices to also
| have a nice low power radio that can benefit from existing
| public networks. Not having to maintain custom base stations
| and relays for some custom radio stack makes a lot more remote
| monitoring projects economically feasible.
| nickdothutton wrote:
| There are features of the 5G network that will enable carriers to
| provision certain services more efficiently and cost effectively
| than they currently can on 4G networks, regardless of whether
| those services (and business models) have any use the for the
| potential extra bandwidth available. Now whether the carriers
| will actually launch such services, and whether there will be
| take-up of them is another question.
| vmception wrote:
| Note that their goalpost can always move to "but does it justify
| the trillion dollar buildout" even in the face of incremental
| improvements or new use cases
|
| They can calcify their opinions by imagining that they know what
| a company or ISP needs to do
|
| They've already received many impressions and responses on
| twitter from their questions about whether 5g has changed
| anyone's day to day, and did a little survey when working with
| vendors, and its not likely most people did an empirical analysis
| on their own day to day to begin with. So it isn't really
| necessary to add more to that
| jmyeet wrote:
| The "Why Not?" section here starts with a disclaimer that the
| author is personally affected but doesn't actually say how. The
| points raised boil down to "I have enough speed so I don't see
| the point". Ok, but that's not a reason why not.
|
| Remember bandwidth isn't just about how much an individual can
| get but how many people can be serviced within a given area
| either in total or without subdividing into cells, which then
| require somewhere to put another tower.
|
| The author didn't raise this but I've seen others who have
| brought up the nebulous "radiation" argument against 5G. Here's a
| good litmus test: if someone can't tell you, at a minimum, what
| "ionizing radiation" is then you can safely ignore everything
| they say about "radiation".
|
| Here's another: if they can't describe the "radiation" in terms
| of the radiation exposure from eating a banana, you can also
| safely ignore them.
| alduin32 wrote:
| > The author didn't raise this but I've seen others who have
| brought up the nebulous "radiation" argument against 5G. Here's
| a good litmus test: if someone can't tell you, at a minimum,
| what "ionizing radiation" is then you can safely ignore
| everything they say about "radiation".
|
| I often use that test myself, or some variation thereof,
| However, it doesn't always work. We often regurgitate knowledge
| from people that couldn't recite precise definitions. As a
| matter of fact, I think most of the people around me, as well
| as myself and, I think, a good part of commenters here,
| wouldn't be able to properly describe ionizing radiation, but
| yet wouldn't refrain from commenting on related matters. On top
| of that, I met quite educated and convincing persons bring up
| (non-ionizing) radiation arguments about 5G, that wouldn't have
| any problem telling you what ionizing radiation is.
|
| I've got two friends that I know are more-or-less 5G skeptics,
| and heard them sharing how frustrated they are that they cannot
| even give their opinions on these subjects without being
| ridiculed, so much that they even lie when asked about it,
| depending on who's aking them, and then watch others spread
| vaguely similar conspiracy theories.
|
| That was quite terrifying to me (at the time).
|
| > Here's another: if they can't describe the "radiation" in
| terms of the radiation exposure from eating a banana, you can
| also safely ignore them.
|
| As far as I know, most people that are (seriously) bringing up
| radiation arguments about 5G are worried of non-ionizing
| radiation.
| giantrobot wrote:
| > I've got two friends that I know are more-or-less 5G
| skeptics, and heard them sharing how frustrated they are that
| they cannot even give their opinions on these subjects
| without being ridiculed
|
| There's not really much to be skeptical about with respect to
| the radio aspect. You're illuminated by far more watts of
| radiation from non-5G sources than you are 5G sources, more
| so if you're outdoors. Not only is the 5G radiation non-
| ionizing but it doesn't penetrate for shit through water (a
| major component of humans). Unless you put your face against
| a tower's antenna there's nothing about a 5G radio worth
| worrying about.
|
| As for the network part, it's a high bandwidth but low
| latency connection rivaling wired internet but wireless. It's
| no _less_ useful than high speed wired Internet. For some
| applications, mobile but bandwidth or latency sensitive, it
| 's infinitely better than wired.
| ericd wrote:
| Microwaves aren't ionizing radiation, but you still probably
| don't want too many watts to the brain.
|
| That said, I have no opinion on 5G safety, I don't know enough
| to have one. Do you know what the wattage of a microcell that
| might sit on a suburban power pole might be?
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| And don't forget the inverse square law. You will be
| irradiated much more by a cell phone pressed against your
| skin than a microcell on top of a pole, just because the
| distance is many orders of magnitude more.
| tejohnso wrote:
| While you're ignoring everything they say about radiation, you
| can also suggest they watch "All you need to know to understand
| 5G" by Sabine Hossenfelder.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBsP-bmDLOo
| [deleted]
| purplediamond wrote:
| Hi
|
| This article, like most human opinions, is selfish. It disregards
| that other people want 5G. It concerns itself with only a
| personal preference of one human being who lives in an area where
| population density is probably 5 per 100 square miles........ You
| can't even send a photo when connected to LTE at a crowded NY
| International Airport,even though the signal is strong,five bars,
| and you're connected but there are also other people connected.
| It took me 20-30 minutes to send a photo via Viber last time. Yes
| sure they could build a second tower and use 4G but 5G might
| solve that with one tower and less money, it's also
| better........ Yes 5G will probably make more money and that's
| great, if it didn't make money it wouldn't make sense, and in the
| process maybe next time I'll be able to send a message and maybe
| people who want more than 20 Mbps can have more.......... It's
| very selfish to assume the purpose of building wireless
| communications is to watch football games and Netflix, while that
| is one purpose for some people, other people use it for something
| else. There are those who hoard data, I'm not one of them but I
| do recognize, people who work from home and need lots of speed
| and reliability etc.......... I would understand if this article
| had an argument such as "5G is unhealthy" but it doesn't. This
| article's argument is "I don't know why they would need 5G as 4G
| works fine in Canada" and then it implies people shouldn't
| progress on the mere argument that the need for progress isn't
| understood by the writer. I don't claim to understand the need
| for 5G but I acknowledge that I don't possess that knowledge, the
| writer doesn't acknowledge that he does not know why those people
| are building 5G. He basically argues 4G works fine for me
| therefore all the engineers should stop working. ....... One
| shouldn't make an argument on what other people should do based
| on personal situation and own opinion disregarding what they want
| and think, unless 5G causes pollution or health hazard. Let it
| be. ....... Yes the writer might think the word sceptic might
| have masked the implications of the article, it didn't. Also word
| sceptic doesn't actually mean what it's euphemism means today. A
| sceptic is someone who thinks, and here the writer only thought
| his own thoughts, didn't think about what others need and might
| think, so not a sceptic at all, in this article at least. .......
| Opinions are great when they include other people, when they
| include only the self they're just selfish.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| I've never noticed an improvement from 5G over LTE.
|
| What I care about most is reliability of some low but usable
| amount of bandwidth, as opposed to maximum bandwidth. Both 5G and
| LTE are annoyingly unreliable for me (wandering around in Silicon
| Valley).
| 8note wrote:
| Yeah, going for a walk round Seattle on a VoIP conference call
| on either 4g or 5g, and both drop out for half the trip
| opportune wrote:
| Sufficient 5G saturation will likely result in induced demand.
| Skepticism is similar to being skeptical that anybody would ever
| need more than 64KB of memory. Right now, 5G saturation isn't
| large enough for new applications to be developed that assume 5G,
| but once 5G is everywhere, we'll look back on our pathetic tens
| of Megabits that we pay $40-80/mo as the Stone Age.
|
| Things that more bandwidth provides: wireless home internet,
| cloud gaming, 4-8K streaming on multiple devices. Things that 5G
| provides: more efficient wireless connections which should, in
| theory, eventually get passed on to consumers.
|
| Many of the 5G applications do exist currently, just in their
| early stages. Just like 5G penetration.
| yosito wrote:
| I found this article to be convincing in-favor of 5G. I think the
| real concerns about 5G are how it can be abused by providers and
| governments to spy on people, none of which was mentioned in this
| article.
| ipython wrote:
| I moved house recently and in a reasonably large suburban area
| was forced to rely exclusively on tethering with 4g/5g on my
| iPhone until the fiber could get moved to the new place.
|
| It was a miserable experience. Video calls (wfh) were impossible-
| laggy and cut out all the time. Several software updates happened
| that week - at about 1gb average for almost a dozen devices -
| personal and work MacBooks, and phones for a full family with
| kids, I burned through my tethering allotment for the month
| within a week.
|
| Latency with 5g is better than LTE but the best I've seen is in
| the neighborhood of 30ms. I can easily get sub 5ms on fiber. It
| does make a difference when doing rdp sessions for example.
|
| I get that fixed wireless may work for some but for us it's a non
| starter after being used to fast reliable fiber for almost 15
| years now.
| nabla9 wrote:
| It's strange how everything related to to mobile networks is meh
| or bad in the US.
|
| tbray and others think it's the technology they are analyzing
| when it's actually how operators adopt the technology that makes
| the difference. It must be market power issue. Operators just do
| the minimum possible coverage they can get away with.
| lkxijlewlf wrote:
| > It's strange ...
|
| Not strange at all. They're "job" is to funnel as much money to
| investors as possible. They can all get away with being awful
| because there's only 3 of them left.
|
| Yay capitalism?
| ac29 wrote:
| > It's strange how everything related to to mobile networks is
| meh or bad in the US.
|
| Hasn't been my experience. Over the past decade or two,
| coverage and speeds have increased a ton and prices have stayed
| low. Carriers are spending billions on new spectrum and an ever
| increasing build out of cell sites.
| kjellsbells wrote:
| I am with Tim Bray in that there is an enormous amount of woo woo
| spouted about 5G. Perhaps a better question to ask is what is
| possible now, in our current paradigm, and what might be possible
| if there was ubiquitous high speed coverage blanketing a complete
| society. The first is dull, and dubious: a bit more speed. Great.
| The second is the province of speculation and the source of most
| of the nonsense.
|
| However, telcos are afraid of missing out on the value chain of
| 5G like they did with 4G (all that money going to apps, and not a
| bean to telcos). So they sunk billions into 5g spectrum believing
| that was the gateway, and they they need to hold on for dear life
| until those fancy use cases come alive. That could be 1 year from
| now, ten years or perhaps never. who knows?
|
| In the meantime their investors are watching closely at the only
| metric they have which is uptake in the consumer domain. However
| this is weak beer since you don't pay off $70B of spectrum costs
| $10 at a time (ie consumer behavior along wont bring ROI).
|
| So, pivot to businesses some of which really are groping their
| way to 5G. Metal buildings, outdoor coverage, military, these are
| real cases where existing solutions are not great. The gazillion
| dollar question is whether 5G from a telco is the solution. Maybe
| its CBRS with 5G, which cuts out the operator. Maybe its wifi 6E,
| which is fundamentally different from wifi 5 and has learned a
| lot of lessons from how cellular networks are built. imho there
| is real risk that 5G vs WiFi is tbe betamax/vhs or bluray/netflix
| battle of our time.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I think this post is sort of looking for a "special reason" for
| 5G to exist that actually _doesn 't_ need to be there for 5G to
| completely alter the telecom landscape.
|
| Bray touches on this a bit, but at a personal level the biggest
| difference for me is that, at home, my T-Mobile 5G connection is
| _consistently faster and more stable_ than my AT &T UVerse
| connection. It's close to the tipping point where I'm not quite
| sure I need cable at all. That wasn't the case when I was on LTE.
|
| All the other marketing BS that carriers and equipment providers
| can dream up may just be bullshit, but switching to a world where
| many consumers could get all of their telecom _and_ TV desires
| met from their cell company instead of their cable company would
| be a _massive_ change.
| azinman2 wrote:
| All of this assumes we've reached some plateau for how the
| Internet will always be used. Historically that's never been the
| case -- as more bandwidth becomes available, new applications pop
| up to fulfill the need. Perhaps it feels like marketing fluff
| now, but generally reducing latency and increasing bandwidth has
| always historically lead to new kinds of use cases that become
| daily drivers. What would be newsworthy is if that didn't happen.
| ddingus wrote:
| The carriers themselves have an impact on this beyond physical
| layer improvements.
|
| A big one is data cost rates and caps.
|
| I've heard more than once, "5G means I will zip right through
| my data and will cost me more."
|
| LTE actually works great for me, and I do video calls and such
| over LTE fairly regularly. Now I do pay for that, and I'm
| compensated. That's what the carriers would love to see
| continue, but that also limits mass adoption too. Many people
| don't like extra charges appearing on their phone account. I
| don't, but I'm in a position to deal with them too. Annoyance.
|
| Plenty of people really feel that extra $20, $50, more
| depending on what it is they did, like drive too close to
| Canada with automatic data roaming turned on. That can be
| painful.
|
| Years ago, early 90's era, there was a magazine. Boardwatch, I
| believe it was. There were some great voices in that one, and
| all these topics we discuss today are nothing new, and most of
| us here know that.
|
| There are some constants:
|
| As mentioned, applications fill resources. Could be RAM,
| storage, throughput, bandwidth. Part of that is offering
| choice, the next one coming up.
|
| *In broadcast / streaming, where there is a defined bitrate
| possible, choice will win out over quality. Here's a little
| thought experiment that suggests why that is generally the
| case:
|
| Say you've got two streams or broadcast channels to use. One is
| boring, but exemplary quality, the other is poor quality, but
| compelling as it gets. Which one do you use? Which one do you
| believe most people will use?
|
| That leads to, "Content is king."
|
| One of the topics Boardwatch covered regularly was diversity in
| ISPs. As consolidation happened, another truism did as well,
| and that is basic economic trope at this point:
|
| More choice = more competition = buyer gets highest value for
| the dollar.
|
| Less choice = less competition = buyer gets lowest value for
| the dollar.
|
| The fight to prevent lock-in is therefore eternal. Carriers of
| all types will seek to limit choice however they can.
|
| Higher cost of change = lower choice.
|
| This is also driving the one I mentioned above. Content being
| king means making more content options available almost always
| trumps quality.
|
| I do have a small nit to pick:
|
| To me, the word "bandwidth" isn't quite right. Yes, it speaks
| to the maximum information possible, but throughput is the more
| accurate word, in my view, when it comes to the impact moving
| more bits per second at lower latencies has on society overall.
| Another quick thought exercise:
|
| Say you have a choice of a very fast connection, but latency is
| all over the place, and or there are random slowdowns vs. one
| that isn't as fast, but is super consistent. Which do you use?
| Which one do you believe other people will use? I prefer the
| latter most of the time given the constancy metrics match up
| with my use cases.
|
| My point here is the carriers have a huge impact today! We've
| consolidated down to a point where many truisms about the
| Internet are not so true in the wireless realm. Back in the
| 90's, when most of us were on wires most of the time, all that
| discussion about carriers, ISPs (when they were two different
| things often enough to make that distinction), and the up and
| coming "cloud" computing being equated to how things were in
| the late 60's and 70's, has played out fairly accurately.
|
| Kudos to the people with vision back then. Too bad it didn't
| have a bigger impact on public policy overall.
| raghavtoshniwal wrote:
| > Historically that's never been the case
|
| We overestimate how old history is here. There is a case to be
| made about how we've enjoyed exponential growth in cosumer
| technology over the last few decades but that could slow down
| on a few fronts. For ex- display resolution has reached "good
| enough" fidelity for a while.
|
| I certainly hope you're right and we find cool, novel use cases
| but I wouldn't be certain. I personally have not thought about
| bandwidth for a few years now. Meanwhile I remember the speed
| bumps being exciting earlier. Diminishing utility is real.
| ddingus wrote:
| I still think about throughput and bandwidth from time to
| time. In my case, I am mobile enough to encounter the fast
| but high latency case and fast, but only in little bursts,
| too few to gloss over, cases. There is room for more here,
| and it might lead to something new, that scales.
|
| That said, I do agree with you.
|
| In my view, what the carriers do matters more.
|
| They are still wanting to gatekeep to a much higher degree
| than they currently are.
|
| Nothing pays like creating problems and then selling
| solutions does. Massive consolidation opens the door for the
| threat of artificial value to walk right through and into our
| wallets.
|
| Take the truisms in my other comment:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30822400
|
| That quality vs choice problem can be made to go away for
| what could be called a nominal charge each month. Think all
| the ugly FastPass was for Disney, applied to our mobile
| experiences. It's very ripe fruit, sadly.
| NavinF wrote:
| > display resolution has reached "good enough" fidelity
|
| Ehhh it was only a couple of years ago that 4K became
| affordable at 120hz. I would absolutely buy a 5K display if
| one with decent input lag and no DP compression existed.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > Historically that's never been the case -- as more bandwidth
| becomes available, new applications pop up to fulfill the need.
|
| You're writing this on HN of all things, where your comment
| would take up no more bandwidth today than in the glory days of
| dialup, and only a bit more than serving it via a BBS or UUCP.
| causality0 wrote:
| 5G might be great for some people. My experience with it is that
| in the places where I used to have poor or no connection I still
| have no connection. The places where I used to only have a 3G
| connection I now have no connection at all. The places where I
| get a 5G connection my phones swaps back and forth between a fast
| 4G connection and a pathetically slow 5G connection which
| repeatedly interrupts my data. I modified my settings and turned
| 5G off entirely. Good riddance.
| sparker72678 wrote:
| Another anecdote -- at my house, on Verizon Wireless:
|
| LTE: Consistently 5-20Mbps down. In the first couple of months
| after LTE went online here (5ish? years ago), I could get more
| like 90-100. It dropped into the 20-ish range and never went back
| up.
|
| 5G: I have UltraWideband coverage at my house, and I can get
| 200-500Mbps download speeds.
|
| Will 5G just drop down over time (as usage goes up) like LTE did?
| I dunno, maybe. But, for now at least, 5G(UW) has been much, much
| faster for me.
| zw123456 wrote:
| Hi, another 5G UW user here, I am getting pretty consistently
| 1.8Gbps to 2.1Gbps on mine. But I played around with the CPE
| placement quite a bit. I don't know if you are able to try
| that. UW will drop you down to lower speeds or a lower band if
| the mm-wave signal is not good. mm-wave is really touchy dues
| to the small beam size.
| pkulak wrote:
| Well, that's almost entirely due to Verizon's C-Band being
| pretty empty right now (5G phones are only a couple years old)
| and it being 2-5x the frequency and bandwidth of the bands they
| put 4g on. If they had put 4g on C-band, you'd probably be
| seeing the exact same performance.
|
| So, I guess what I'm saying is, if by "5g", you mean "the giant
| new swaths of high-frequency spectrum that carriers are
| building out", then 5g is amazing. Otherwise, it's nothing to
| even bother noticing, as a consumer.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Definitely the biggest boon of 5g is the high frequency
| spectrum.
| sparker72678 wrote:
| I guess that's kinda my point -- for me, "giant new swaths of
| spectrum" _is_ my 5G experience. (Just a part of how muddy
| the waters of this topic are.)
| pkulak wrote:
| Yeah, for me too. I'm excited about mobile again for the
| first time since LTE got turned on.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Agreed. We have a limited backend that appears to be expanding
| at a snails pace.
|
| There's a stretch of driving I've regularly done which goes
| through an unpopulated stretch of the US. I've watched the tech
| tick up from 2g, 3g, 4g, LTE, and now 5g. Yet the download
| speed remains at sub 1Mbps speeds.
|
| My assumption is they are still running the same copper/fiber
| that was buried to the tower 20 years ago while updating the
| receivers.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| If they are running 20 year old copper that will slow things
| down, and your only solution is to replace it.
|
| 20 year old fiber? Upgrade the optics on both ends for a
| couple grand and you are up to date again.
| russellbeattie wrote:
| There's some classic Tim curmudgeonry right there! Is he
| complaining about the hype or the tech?
|
| There's a continuum between "5G is an unneeded upgrade pushed by
| [insert conspiracy theory here]" and "5G is an essential new
| invention that will significantly improve our lives." The truth
| is somewhere in the middle, and in my opinion, leans much more
| towards the latter.
|
| I was pitching Vodafone business customers in Spain on the power
| of the coming 3G revolution back in 2001. The stuff we were
| selling as "coming next year" wouldn't be commercial products
| until over a decade later, and required the invention of the
| iPhone in between.
|
| That's just how it has worked for decades now. This isn't a
| surprise.
| tedk-42 wrote:
| The author lives on a boat.
|
| Imagine going back thousands of years and hearing people that
| lived on land saying "there's no need to live on the ocean, the
| land is perfectly safe and there's just no good reason for it".
|
| My stomach turns when people are against technology for reasons
| other than ethical ones.
| timbray wrote:
| Um I use our boat as an office, bicycle down to it most days.
| Ain't spacious or luxurious, but it's waterfront. I live in an
| ordinary house with decent (~300M) wired connection.
| trothamel wrote:
| 5G is weird, since it's being sold as a big deal, when it really
| isn't.
|
| It has some nice improvements, with the big ones being that it
| makes more efficient use of the spectrum. I'm not really an
| expert on this, so if someone is, feel free to correct me, but my
| understanding is that some of the big changes with 5G NR are
| making better use of good signals via higher-order modulation,
| allowing less resources to be allocated to low-bandwidth users,
| and decreasing latency by allowing communications to start more
| often.
|
| That doesn't really help any one phone, at least ones that are
| working well now. What it does do is to make the network better,
| in the same way going from 3G to LTE did.
| bumblebritches5 wrote:
| smitty1e wrote:
| One of the big arguments I've heard from an AT&T PM who is
| supposedly In The Know is that 5G lets First Responders have
| privileged bandwidth in a saturated area.
| ac29 wrote:
| First responders already have their own band with 20MHz of
| spectrum: FirstNet
|
| In fact, its run by AT&T. Its not a 5G specific thing.
| zw123456 wrote:
| One of the primary reasons that carriers are interested in 5G is
| because for the last decade they have been swapping spit (trading
| customers between each other, carrier A lowers the prices and
| take customers from carrier B, who responds in kind and takes
| from carrier C who responds with a marketing campaign with some
| deal on a phone etc. and etc.)
|
| What they all are craving is new revenue. Once everyone who wants
| a cell phone, has one, it becomes a commodity item and service
| and that means, if anything, one price war after another. This is
| why they are interested in 5G and MEC (Mobile Edge Cloud) they
| are looking for new revenue. Right now, as part of the 5G push is
| the idea of wireless home internet, which is basically just a
| wifi AP that connects to the internet via the wireless network.
| To do that of course, you need a lot more capacity, 5G offers
| that to some extent, but realistically you need a ton more
| spectrum, which is why you have seen a spate of auctions lately.
|
| Make no mistake here, 5G Home internet is most certainly not a
| cost savings approach for the carriers, they are literally
| spending billions on it, in hopes of luring customers away from
| the cable cos and telcos or other wired providers. Will it work?
| Perhaps. Time will tell. But to be sure, in my view, this is very
| good for the consumer of internet services, it will almost
| assuredly provide the customer with a lower cost per Mbps due to
| increased competition particularly with all the LEOS (Low Earth
| Orbit Sats) also in the mix.
| bsder wrote:
| > But to be sure, in my view, this is very good for the
| consumer of internet services, it will almost assuredly provide
| the customer with a lower cost per Mbps due to increased
| competition particularly with all the LEOS (Low Earth Orbit
| Sats) also in the mix.
|
| The problem is that all these services improve download--which
| doesn't matter all that much.
|
| Technology, however, is driven by _upload_. Every time upload
| speeds jumped by an order of magnitude, we saw a whole bunch of
| new computers applications.
|
| Sadly, computers have been knecapped by a maximum 10M upload
| speed for almost 20 years now. NAT was just an extra gunshot
| wound to add to the misery.
| mdasen wrote:
| > But to be sure, in my view, this is very good for the
| consumer of internet services
|
| This is one of the things I'm excited about. Even if 5G home
| internet won't lure you away from your wired connection, it
| will lure enough customers away that your ISP will need to
| treat you better (for fear that you might be lured away).
|
| Lots of people with Verizon and AT&T would say that they would
| never switch to T-Mobile in the 2013-2020 time-range. Still,
| T-Mobile lured enough customers away that Verizon and AT&T
| started treating their customers a lot better.
| zw123456 wrote:
| Yes, Tmo is catching up with ATT and VZ on quality, the main
| reason they bought Sprint (remember them) is because Sprint
| had a shit ton of spectrum but they weren't building it out
| because they were capital starved (for a bunch of reasons).
| So now, TMo has the most low and medium band spectrum and
| they are catching up on build out. Vz has the most spectrum
| if you include the mm-wave, but it's difficult to build out.
|
| All the bandwidth competition is a good thing for the
| consumer and hopefully some cool stuff gets developed to take
| advantage of it.
| [deleted]
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > it will lure enough customers away that your ISP will need
| to treat you better (for fear that you might be lured away).
|
| I'm worried that the end-game is that you'll still be stuck
| with equally-shitty providers, just that instead of having to
| take one turd you'll be able to pick between two equally-
| smelly ones.
|
| It's not like Comcast support or billing is any better in
| areas where they have competition, and outside of rare areas
| where there are _local_ competitors (municipal broadband,
| etc), Comcast 's competition in the form of
| Verizon/Cox/Spectrum isn't any better and has exactly the
| same flaws.
|
| The only thing they can potentially compete on is price, but
| my understanding is that price is never really the problem,
| it's all the hidden costs such as surcharges/billing issues,
| technical issues where tech support is horrible and you end
| up with no internet for days/weeks, etc - something you can't
| predict in advance when choosing a provider.
|
| As someone who's dealt with a number of providers across
| multiple countries, my takeaway is that the entire telecoms
| industry is rotten and the only solution is to expect them to
| be shit, plan in advance for when they screw you over (such
| as maintaining a backup connection) and not give them any
| leverage (no long-term contracts) so that you can just walk
| away when they become a problem.
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| I prefer my fiber connection to a 5G connection. My fear is
| that they will do the math and find they can't compete (I
| don't know if this is actually the case). It could be the end
| of physical connections.
| Osiris wrote:
| My neighborhood is less than 15 years old and CenturyLink
| has no plans to run fiber to my neighborhood. New
| subdivisions being built are including fiber.
|
| The 5G home internet options can be good for people in
| older homes or neighborhoods or even rural area which have
| garbage internet.
| zw123456 wrote:
| Me too, nothing beats fiber if you can get it. I used to
| have Fios where I used to live and nothing beats it, but
| where I live now, you cannot get any fiber to the home, but
| I can get the mm-wave 5G and that is a pretty close second,
| the speed on my mm-wave is actually faster than the Fios I
| had before but now there is NGPON2 which is the new tech
| behind it and that can actually get you to 10Gbps. Fiber
| will always be faster most likely.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| The key difference is that wireless is completely federally
| regulated, and the FCC doesn't hold them to the same rules
| as wired providers. They don't have the same net neutrality
| requirements and can and do rate limit based on a variety
| of factors.
|
| For 5G, home wireless is bottom of the line and gets de-
| prioritized behind phone customers.
|
| The playbook is pretty obvious based on Verizon's behavior.
| They've halted most fiber deployments in urban areas in
| favor of mm-wave 5G. The FCC declared mm-wave a national
| defense priority and it is not subject to any local
| regulation.
|
| Spectrum and Comcast suck, but they are the lesser evil
| compared to telcos imo.
| zw123456 wrote:
| Both wired and wireless are regulated by the FCC, neither
| have net neutrality restrictions anymore, the went bye
| bye in the U.S. at least, a couple years ago and I
| seriously doubt it will come back ever.
|
| > The FCC declared mm-wave a national defense priority
| and it is not subject to any local regulation.
|
| I am not sure where you are getting that but mm-wave is
| absolutely still regulated locally just like anything
| else. The main difference is the size of the radios for
| mm-wave are small and go on poles and the FCC did set a
| price ceiling on what utilities can charge for pole
| space. But there are also low and mid-band small cells
| that go on poles as well. But the wireless companies
| absolutely still have to get local permits to install any
| wireless system on poles or pretty much anything.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| A lot of people don't have fiber options to begin with
| (especially rural users). I wonder if 5G/NR will give them
| better service than 4G/LTE.
|
| I doubt wireless carriers will ever be able to seriously
| compete with built out fiber in the long run. Once it is
| there, the costs have been paid and the provider is mainly
| just raking in residuals while keeping the lights on.
| TreeInBuxton wrote:
| Rural user here - yes, 5G is an absolute godsend, 4G was
| over congested and had extremely unreliable ping (the
| other option was 2mbit ADSL), I now have a fairly stable
| 250/100 Internet connection, with much lower latency
| kingcharles wrote:
| Not just rural. I'm in downtown Chicago and the cheapest
| wired connection I can get to my home is $71,000 install
| and $800/month from Comcast.
|
| Finally got T-Mobile Home Internet (5G). Shipped the
| access point overnight to me. Plugged in. 600Mbps peak.
| Never seen a slowdown that affects my heavyweight Net use
| (e.g. streaming HD).
| [deleted]
| selectodude wrote:
| lol what part of downtown Chicago is that per chance?
| Comcast is required by law to serve every household in
| their franchise area so I'm extremely curious.
| [deleted]
| shagie wrote:
| > A lot of people don't have fiber options to begin with
| (especially rural users). I wonder if 5G/NR will give
| them better service than 4G/LTE.
|
| The flip side to that is the "many rural users are at the
| edges of existing coverage networks".
|
| A 4G network can reach about 10 miles (16km) - a 5G
| network is about 1000 feet or 0.2 miles (about 300
| meters).
|
| Unless the providers are placing these on every other
| power pole, most rural users aren't likely to see 5G
| coverage. For what it's worth, my parents' house is about
| 0.1 miles from the road and 0.5 miles from the next
| nearest neighbor.
|
| I believe that it is unlikely that wireless 5G will get
| out there (they don't have 4G service either - they're in
| a valley and use a femtocell for home phone use).
|
| They don't have cable or fiber either and switched from a
| load balanced pair of DSL lines to Starlink.
| Osiris wrote:
| I thought 5G in that 600mhz band has much better
| coverage. Isn't it only ultra wideband that's that low?
| shagie wrote:
| (searching) - yes it can...
|
| https://venturebeat.com/2019/12/10/the-definitive-guide-
| to-5...
|
| > One low band (600-700MHz) tower can cover hundreds of
| square miles with 5G service that ranges in speed from 30
| to 250 megabits per second (Mbps).
|
| Though... I'm still going to be skeptical with the "there
| are still some significant areas that lack 4g coverage"
|
| https://fcc.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?
| id=...
|
| Look at the "how many areas only have one provider" or
| that you can see the topography and valleys in the
| coverage map.
| selectodude wrote:
| I can't speak for anywhere else, but in Chicago Verizon
| is literally placing 5G UWB bases on every other light
| pole.
| shagie wrote:
| What will the coverage be like outside of Freeport, IL
| though?
|
| Its this type of poles that I'm more interested in - http
| s://www.google.com/maps/@42.2639251,-89.787017,3a,75y,65.
| ..
| buu700 wrote:
| So in short, 5G isn't particularly better than 4G all else
| being equal, but it is a prerequisite to expanding and
| improving service in ways that matter.
|
| Does that sound right?
| zw123456 wrote:
| Basically, 5G introduces some new technology that increases
| the so called spectral efficiency (bps/hz) that is how much
| tput you can deliver over the allocated spectrum. 5G
| introduces things like mm-wave tech using phased array
| antennas, better massive MIMO etc.
|
| But even with the tech, it's probably not enough to handle
| the demand they are hoping for, hence they spectrum buying
| spree they have been on lately.
|
| It goes back to the Shannon law talked about here, you either
| have to build more cells to make the signal better (better
| signal lets you pack more bps per hz, or you need more
| spectrum. Both are expensive, and most of them are doing
| both.
| youngtaff wrote:
| My 5G connection is better (faster, more reliable) than my
| fixed line connection
|
| and only PS20/month more for 10x download, 10x upload speed
| of the fixed line connnextion
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Genuinely, how's the ping, could you play FPS games? Are
| you including the overhead of paying the line rental?
| youngtaff wrote:
| VSDL2 -- Plusnet PS35/month 39mbps down, 8mbps up,
| 30-300ms RTT (it can be very variable depending on time
| of day)
|
| 5G -- Vodafone PS50/month ex VAT, 350-390mbps down,
| 40mbps up, 30ms RTT (and stable)
|
| Cell tower occasionally goes offline but in general the
| Vodafone connection is way better than the fixed line one
| celsoazevedo wrote:
| Have you tried EE's 5G? Their unlimited business plan
| costs PS30/month and at least in London they usually have
| better speeds and coverage.
|
| I'm currently testing Smarty (Three sub brand).
| PS16/month, unlimited data, 30 days contract. Just
| outside my front door: https://www.celsoazevedo.com/files
| /random/Screenshot_2022032...
|
| But I live in the basement of an old building... signal
| sucks inside, so I'm stuck with a 65/15Mbps FTTC
| connection (also with PlusNet).
| petercooper wrote:
| I don't know the details of why but ping times on
| residential connections in the UK seem to run somewhat
| higher than those I've experienced in the US. I have a
| cable connection of over 500Mbps and the ping time is
| ~20ms to both my nearest speed test location (about 50
| miles away) and 8.8.8.8. 3ms is within my home network.
| 15ms is to my first hop at my ISP(!!).. then 2-3ms is the
| rest. My DSL connection is somewhat worse but with a
| similar profile.
| tomxor wrote:
| > [...] in hopes of luring customers away from the cable cos
| and telcos or other wired providers.
|
| For some, like me it's not a mere lure but a liberation - out
| of sheer bad luck, the fixed line internet speed at the last 3
| places I've moved in a UK city have gotten slower each time,
| ending up at <2Mbit in the centre. There is no fiber, if you
| have fiber know that you are merely lucky, for everyone else
| it's a question of how noisy your copper twisted pair is, which
| will only get worse.
|
| LTE internet is my only practical option, and it's not simply
| competitive, it completely obliterates the fixed line
| competition in my area providing me with 30-100Mbit (depends on
| time of day), for PS35/mo no contract.
|
| I know this is different in the US, but right now in the UK
| there are 3 major LTE providers which _all_ have unlimited data
| plans! - even better, 2 of them have unlimited plans without a
| contract, which IMO is vital because you _must test out
| reception_. LTE definitely beats ADSL in this country, only
| fiber can compete, but availability is very patchy.
| celsoazevedo wrote:
| > PS35/mo
|
| And you can find cheaper. For example, Smarty (Three sub
| brand), PS16/month, unlimited data, 30 days contract. When on
| 5G (their 4G sucks), I get up to 800Mbps up and 100Mbps down:
| https://www.celsoazevedo.com/files/random/Screenshot_2022032.
| ..
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| > but realistically you need a ton more spectrum, which is why
| you have seen a spate of auctions lately.
|
| There are huge amount of spectrums in the mmWave bands...
| instead of pulling FTTH to huge apartment buildings, just set a
| few fiber-connected towers, and tell customers to put the APs
| on windowsils pointing towards the tower.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| > Right now, as part of the 5G push is the idea of wireless
| home internet, which is basically just a wifi AP that connects
| to the internet via the wireless network, [...] in hopes of
| luring customers away from the cable cos and telcos or other
| wired providers.
|
| I'm not saying they're not trying to create new demand, but
| this particular argument may be dependent on local context.
|
| Over here in France, there's also a strong campaign for 5G. But
| in the consumer market, wired internet providers are the same
| companies that provide cell phone service. This may help in
| low-density areas, although there's also a big push from
| government to deploy fiber even in rural areas.
| zw123456 wrote:
| You make an interesting point because here Verizon and ATT
| are local telcos as well so they can potentially cannibalize
| some of their own customer based in their serving areas, but
| both have had wired broadband service options in their
| serving areas which as stalled in terms of growth over the
| past few years. So I think they are looking at wireless,
| which is a cash cow for them, and probably figure they may
| win more customers from the cableco in their serving areas
| with a wireless option that does not require any installation
| or retrofit work at their homes. Bringing fiber into the home
| can be expensive, and DSL (copper) will not get you the
| speeds people are looking for these days for broadband
| service.
|
| You are right, this is all a very U.S. skewed view of things.
| I do not know the European market but my guess is those
| providers are probably also looking for some revenue boost
| from 5G.
| synergy20 wrote:
| 5G is just a larger wifi basically, you trade high speed for
| short distance, it is useful for hot area(populated places,
| campus, factories, stadiums, etc), but it does not make much
| sense for wide spread locations, for those 4G is enough and much
| much cheaper with a much cooler radios(and in much less
| quantities) on cellar towers.
|
| IMO, 4G is already an optimized tech considering its price,
| distance, speed,etc. in the future, it's more likely 4G will
| still be dominant while 5G can used in those hot zones where 4G
| speed is not enough(again, the crowed areas as mentioned above).
| whatshisface wrote:
| Why is 5G being treated like a big public decision that we're
| supposed to have an opinion on, when in reality it's coordination
| between chipset manufacturers and cell tower operators that
| hardly involves us at all? It doesn't even seem like it's worth
| marketing to me, I'm not going to go out and buy a cell tower.
| Even selling me on 5G so I'll buy a new phone is unnecessary, the
| phone manufacturers could sell me on the improved performance
| directly.
| RyanShook wrote:
| The costs to carriers will be going up and by marketing they
| are subtly letting us know the cost of our service plan will be
| going up.
| JauntyHatAngle wrote:
| Don't think it's the whole story, but 3g, 4g and now 5g were
| used as big selling points for new phones and plans to
| consumers.
|
| If people start buying things based on the name, they'll form
| opinions on it.
|
| Most consumers purchase based on buzz words like 4g and 5g.
| They barely pay attention to bandwidth.
| analyte123 wrote:
| Microcell deployment, regardless of whatever protocols they're
| using, is part of the "5G" push. If carriers suddenly put one
| in your front yard [1] what are you going to do, be against
| technology and progress?
|
| [1] https://abc13.com/houston-homes-seeing-5g-boxes-placed-
| witho...
| Sebguer wrote:
| Not to mention the ecological impacts of the density
| required.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| Looks fine to me. Doesn't really stand out among similar
| utility boxes you find around for electric or gas. I'd love
| to have a 5g tower by my house and not need my repeater.
| rexf wrote:
| Carriers & phone makers need something to talk about for
| marketing. The iPhone 12 was unremarkable, so they had to lean
| on 5G as a reason to upgrade. 5G in my experience (latest
| iPhone 13 Pro on one of the largest US carriers) is
| broken/underwhelming, so I've turned it off.
|
| I agree that there is a lot of bikeshedding regarding 5G and
| countless other topics (microservices vs monolith, electron vs
| native, etc). There are lots of topics that drive heavy user
| engagement while never answering an actual question.
| ecf wrote:
| ~~Couriers~~ Carriers shouldn't be in the business of selling
| phones at all, but that's a different discussion entirely.
| hackernewds wrote:
| With net neutrality gone, once the dust settles they will
| also be in the B2B business of selling internet speeds to
| corps such as Netflix etc. There are already are so called
| fast/slow lanes
| jimmaswell wrote:
| > broken/underwhelming
|
| Really? It's been great for me. Tested it the other day and
| got 30 megs down.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| I get flat out insane speeds on 5G. Must faster than any
| home internet I have ever even had the option to subscribe
| to. When it works.
|
| When it doesn't work, my battery life goes to shit & I
| cannot check my email because no data seems to get through.
| I disabled it about 3 days after buying a 5G capable phone.
| I've never turned it back on.
| omegalulw wrote:
| 30mbps or 30MB/s? You can do 100mbps+ on LTE...
| jimmaswell wrote:
| MB/s
| hackernewds wrote:
| I get 300 MBPs download speeds on 5G - that might be a
| San Francisco thing?
| peteradio wrote:
| Can't wait till its beamformed right into my eyebrain. If
| you are ever bored just look at the nearest tower and
| donate your wasted brain cycle towards SETI while you
| stand motionless drooling at the sky.
| gotaquestion wrote:
| Will it still be 30MB/s when 100,000+ people in your 5G
| cell are using it though? I don't understand the tech. 100k
| people in San Fran pulling 30MB/s would require 3 TB/s of
| spectrum bandwidth. Isn't that a lot, or am I just way out
| of the loop and still thinking in 1990's units. :)
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Spectrum allocation in licensed bands _is_ a public decision.
| The public literally decides what use those chunks of spectrum
| should be put to. Only the free bands (like 2.4GHz) are a pure
| matter of cooperation among users and hardware manufacturers.
| whatshisface wrote:
| I thought it was decided by an auction?
| ac29 wrote:
| Who gets specific assignments is often done by auction, but
| how the overall spectrum is allocated is by the FCC. In
| theory they're responsible to the public.
| hackernewds wrote:
| That implies 1) the FCC listens to the public and 2) the
| public understands the technology and 3) the public will
| vote for what's good for themselves in the networks
| domain. Arguably 2 and 3 are false, and 1 we know to be
| false depending on the admin (see: net neutrality)
| pessimizer wrote:
| I don't think it implies any of those things. If
| something is regulated by the FCC, it's regulated by a
| public agency, even if that agency disregards public
| opinion or public interests. If an anti-5G sentiment
| caught fire, the FCC could be directed by an
| administration or Congress to move in a different
| direction.
|
| Anti-5G sentiment shares a lot of DNA and membership with
| antivax sentiment which seemed like a vocal fringe
| minority 20 years ago, but may end up being a majority of
| voters in the next election cycle. It's not completely
| out of the realm of possibility that you could see major
| anti-5G political candidates and/or notable incidents of
| anti-5G violence and terrorism.
| gotaquestion wrote:
| I'm having deja vu, didn't Ajit Pai ignore all that
| public input from the web forms (blaming it on prank
| submissions)?
| ep103 wrote:
| Because Chinese companies developed 5G before American
| companies did. American telecarriers not only didn't initially
| research the technology, they refused to even agree to a
| standard definition. IIRC, AT&T marketed their 4G network as 5G
| for a while. As a result, Chinese companies had an opportunity
| to enter western markets with superior, government funded
| technology. They started making sales, notably in Canada, IIRC,
| before Western pushback started. From the private sector,
| telecoms pushed on the government to ban the Chinese
| technology, to buy them time to play catch-up with China.
| Politically, the need to protect the inadequate technology
| (not) developed by the private market, from a government funded
| program doesn't fit with the current US ideological model, so a
| different excuse was found. The legitimate reason:
| "Telecommunications infrastructure is a national security
| priority, and Chinese technology in this arena, due to its ties
| to the CCP, is a national security threat" was used. Again, a
| legitimate reason. It even has the bonus that it implies the
| current western ideology that governments should not direct
| private research. But this sort of market protectionism makes
| 5G a public policy and national security interest matter. So in
| order to ensure there is public support for such a policy, one
| of the easiest things to do, is convince the bottom-information
| tiers of society with conspiratorial, xenophobic, nonsense.
| Which is where the 5G conspiracy theories come from. You will
| note that the 5G conspiracy theories can be generalized into
| the statement "5G is evil, and is used for mind control /
| cancer", which really, is a dumbed-down game of telephone (pun)
| away from the original source material: [5G is evil] <-- The
| CCP is bad / national security and we must reject their tainted
| technology; [It is used for mind control] <-- CCP = big
| brother, Chinese 5G = surveillance, national security; [Cancer]
| <-- more tangible than 'mind control'.
| fsiefken wrote:
| I remember there was a EU report that was suggesting Russia
| was spreading anti 5G conspiracy theories to slow 5G adoption
| so they could get ahead sooner. I searched for it a while ago
| but couldn't find it quickly.
| p_l wrote:
| A lot of 5G conspiracy theories might also correlate with
| incumbent ISPs (especially cable ones) who can block new
| wired ISPs but they can't block mobile phones - so a lot of
| the conspiracy theories included things like "wifi connected
| by cable to internet is fine" :V
|
| And 5G includes technologies that allow for much denser mesh,
| higher throughput, lower latency, and more clients per cell
| enjoying good service. So it could start supplanting wired
| broadband services.
| jolux wrote:
| I think expecting that most laypeople connect the Huawei ban
| to 5G as a technology is really strange. The conspiracy
| theories about 5G all relate it to wealthy Westerners like
| Bill Gates, not meddling by China.
| dylan604 wrote:
| It seems there are multiple consipiracies about it though.
| The Gov't is pushing that CCP will use it to infiltrate.
| This is more of a polictical paranoia consipiracy. That is
| quite different than the oridinary wacko crazy conspiracies
| being pushed by whomever is pushing them to say things like
| Bill Gates is going to do whatever for whatever reasons.
| missedthecue wrote:
| There still isn't a standard for what 5G is. Unlike 2G, 3G,
| and 4G LTE, which all have very specific technological
| definitions, 5G could be edge computing, MIMO, small cell,
| beamforming, and so forth. No one has actually created
| guidelines about what it is.
|
| At present, it seems any kind of 5G service you can actually
| buy is at best just new frequency spectrums that the
| government auctioned off in recent years.
| cesarb wrote:
| > There still isn't a standard for what 5G is. Unlike 2G,
| 3G, and 4G LTE, which all have very specific technological
| definitions
|
| In common usage, these "generations" always match a change
| in the low-level protocol used by the radios. For 1G it was
| analog, for 2G it was GSM, for 3G it was W-CDMA, for 4G it
| was LTE, and for 5G it's NR. So distinguishing between 4G
| and 5G is simple: if you're using LTE, it's 4G; if you're
| using NR, it's 5G.
| matthewmacleod wrote:
| This is not really true - "5G" is pretty universally
| accepted to refer to 3GPP Release 15, defining 5G New Radio
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5G_NR).
| ng55QPSK wrote:
| actually there is, ITU-R recommendation IMT2020 is 5G and
| only 3GPP Rel15 and following release satisfy this.
| ng55QPSK wrote:
| "Because Chinese companies developed 5G before American
| companies did" - just No.
|
| 5G as deployed today is a 3GPP (== driven by Europe) standard
| and yes, Chinese, American, Australian, Asian etc. companies
| contributed to system architecture and RAN (radio access
| network) which is a domain of the old-schoolers: Nokia,
| Ericsson, Qualcomm, Samsung and since a few years also
| Huawei-EUROPE (not Huawei China).
| cromwellian wrote:
| The majority of the core 5G patents came from Qualcomm,
| Samsung, Ericsson, etc. Huawei filed a metric ton of land
| grab incremental patents on non essential details which is
| why they get less than 1% of 5G patent revenue.
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/1237450/global-ip-
| revenu...
|
| What you're doing is running with this nationalist rhetoric
| on the Chinese internet that China "invented 5G". Sorry, but
| 5G was not invented by Huawei. It's fair to safe they rushed
| how a huge deployment of the technology, but mmWave is
| economically inefficient and most of the 5G benefit for China
| was increased subscriber density.
|
| The reality is, the US doesn't have the subscriber density
| problem China does, we are far more spread out and mmWave is
| much more useless to us, so one of the core bragging rights
| of Huawei is not relevant for our use case. The other 5G
| bands <6Ghz are much better for the US.
| jotm wrote:
| Age of social media. Everyone discusses topics they have zero
| control over to hell and back.
|
| "Hey look, we're doing Democracy with thousands of people and
| everyone agrees/disagrees" - it really tricks the brain into
| thinking it's _doing_ something.
|
| Everyone's busy talking and believing they're doing something,
| we all feel good about it, there's no real need to actually
| _do_ something.
| [deleted]
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| "Even selling me on 5G so I'll buy a new phone is unnecessary,
| the phone manufacturers could sell me on the improved
| performance directly."
|
| If 5G makes it cheaper for the carrier, they could make plans
| cheaper for folks whose handsets support 5G, i.e. penalize
| people who don't upgrade.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Wait, did you just suggest a carrier would make something
| cheaper, voluntarily?
|
| I seriously doubt that. Even if it does lower their operating
| costs, why would they lower their potential profit padding?
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Competition.
|
| Why do Visible and Mint offer cheaper plans than the
| Verizon and AT&T brands?
|
| To attract customers from other carriers.
| otterley wrote:
| The top line metric that the financial markets care about
| for the major postpaid carriers is ARPU (average revenue
| per user). As soon as this number goes down, so does the
| company's market cap. The C suite really cares about
| making sure this number continues to go up.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| The easiest way to improve ARPU is to raise all existing
| customers' prices to current ARPU, and hope they either
| accept it or churn. Either way ARPU goes up, whilst
| revenue and profits go down.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Do either of Visible, Mint, etc install their own
| infrastructure or buy bandwidth from ATT and/or Verizon?
|
| Also, their services are spotty at best compared to other
| providers. There's a reason for their prices being lower
| similar to how Spirit Airlines is cheaper than other
| carriers.
| otterley wrote:
| Mint uses T-mobile as its underlying carrier.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Wait, did you just suggest a carrier would make something
| cheaper, voluntarily?
|
| _Comparatively_ cheaper. You can do that by raising the
| price on the alternatives.
| ac29 wrote:
| Adjusted for inflation, mobile internet has been decreasing
| in cost - I pay the same price I did a decade ago and have
| much better coverage and much better speeds.
| paxys wrote:
| Carriers are marketing 5G as a public facing feature so they
| can charge more for it.
| sydthrowaway wrote:
| Whoever did the dsp behind 4g is a genius
| jolux wrote:
| I used my iPhone 12 as a 5G modem while working from home for a
| couple weeks after I moved last year before I had my gigabit RCN
| service setup. It was remarkably performant and stable. I could
| probably use it full time if it weren't for the higher cost.
| hanklazard wrote:
| Agree with author on the last part ... I don't need this. Bought
| an iPhone 13 mini recently and one of the first things I did was
| set the cellular from "5G Auto" to "LTE" to save battery life.
|
| My suspicion has been that this tech isn't for me, but actually
| more for the companies that are deploying it. For those who know
| the tech behind this better than me (ie, most of you), does 5G
| make it possible to turn my phone into a signal booster for my
| neighbor? Am I now a piece of the network infrastructure with 5G
| in a way that I'm not with LTE?
| imdsm wrote:
| I found this hard to follow so stopped reading.
|
| > [Note: When I say "G" or "M" I'm talking about Gbits or
| Mbits/second.]
|
| > Why 5G? Faster connections -- there is talk of 10G!
|
| Wait, does he think 4G = 4 Gbit/s, and 5G = 5 Gbit/s? If there's
| talk of 10G well, what about 6/7/8/9G? G is generation.
| Additionally:
|
| > The phone calls what it sees "LTE+" (I don't claim to
| understand what that means)
|
| It isn't hard to find out information. A quick search leads to
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTE_Advanced.
| timbray wrote:
| Oops haha you're right, "G" has two different meanings in the
| article. Couple proofreaders missed that too. I think most
| readers are smart enough to figure out which is meant most
| times?
| throwusawayus wrote:
| author invented xml. while i haven't any love for xml i assume
| he is on solid technical footing and just worded poorly ?
| [deleted]
| cogman10 wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| This was a hard to understand article because of that note. The
| author appeared to switch between G as in Gbps and G as in
| generation multiple times without clarification.
|
| Would have been way more clear if they just used Gbits instead
| of G when they meant Gbits. (or Gen instead of G).
| Mo3 wrote:
| Ugh, that's just super opinionated and short sighted. I have
| countrywide 5G here, and the difference in latency on voice or
| video calls is super notable and nice.
|
| Obviously it doesn't make sense to run on 5G permanently because
| energy consumption is still comparably higher, just like it was
| the case with 4G in its beginning, but the automatic switching
| does a somewhat good job at it.
|
| 5G also has a ton of other benefits such as being able to support
| a multitude more clients and being able to prioritize traffic
| (like for emergency services) and handle slicing/QoS much better.
|
| Not to mention stuff like e.g. active beamforming capabilities
| reducing power consumption and lowering emission levels for the
| general environment SIGNIFICANTLY.
|
| All of the amazon internals and obvious marketing/hype around 5G
| aside: Author is a good example of naysaying - Saying no to
| obviously better technology because it doesnt fit their reality
| and/or knowledge.
| acdha wrote:
| What kind of latency are you seeing? I see 4G latency around
| 30+-10ms so I could believe that's an area for improvement but
| also one which wouldn't be transformative for many
| applications.
|
| From my perspective, the big change we need in the U.S. is
| getting away from tiny data plans -- most of the interesting 5G
| applications also use a ton of data and when 1GB is concerned a
| princely amount it's hard to care much about video calls.
| Mo3 wrote:
| I get +-40-60ms on 4G legacy and +-5-10ms on 5G. Which no
| matter what people try to claim here is a great and very
| notable improvement in latency on voice calls.
|
| Another benefit I have noticed is that latency seems to be
| much more stable in all kinds of conditions - stationary, in
| trains, in the car. I believe this is one of the key factors
| in what makes the experience so much nicer.
|
| I have no idea about US cell plans, here in NL it's included
| in afaik all new contracts. I have unlimited data + 5G for
| 40EUR/month
| acdha wrote:
| That does sound like a nice improvement. We're held back by
| the pricing model so most people I know have treated 5G as
| something they'll get eventually but won't really change
| what they do.
| seattle_spring wrote:
| Reminds me of the folks on my neighborhood's Nextdoor that
| claim that their Hughes Net connection (1s+ ping, tiny data
| caps) is just as good as Wave cable (xxms ping, relatively huge
| data caps, lower price).
| [deleted]
| Animats wrote:
| _being able to prioritize traffic for emergency services etc._
|
| Emergency priority been in every mobile system since AMPS.
|
| 5G has a few use cases. In very high user density areas, such
| as stadiums, it's possible to have a huge number of short range
| connections in the 24-40GHz band. This allows people at the
| game to watch the game on their phones. Many major stadiums
| installed this back in 2020.
|
| If you want huge bandwidth, you're going to need near line of
| sight to the base station. The high band won't go through much.
| Stadiums and entertainment venues are the ideal case, because
| they're designed to let a large number of people have line of
| sight to something. So they were done first.
|
| Worst case is a subway or complex building interior. Samsung
| has little brick-sized beam-forming units.[1] It takes a base
| station every 150-200m or so to provide good coverage in the
| high bands. AT&T is integrating them into street lights.[2] Not
| clear how they backhaul.
|
| [1]
| https://www.samsung.com/global/business/networks/products/ra...
|
| [2] https://5ginsider.com/carriers/att-rolling-out-5g-powered-
| st...
| jthrowsitaway wrote:
| > This allows people at the game to watch the game on their
| phones.
|
| I'm not a sports person, but I'm having a difficult time
| understanding why someone would want to do this. Even with
| the very best e2e latency, there's probably going to be one
| or two seconds of latency between real life and what's on
| your phone. Sports is very much a real time experience, and
| that sounds lame.
| techsupporter wrote:
| I am a baseball fan, so maybe other sports are different,
| but from my perspective: When I go to the stadium, I have a
| single vantage point. Oftentimes I'll have a low resolution
| stream going of the game where a few-second delay is
| optimal because I'll get to see a replay of something that
| happened out of my view or that I just missed. Plus, for
| all but the biggest plays, a replay of a close call isn't
| usually shown on the scoreboard.
| Mo3 wrote:
| This is not conclusively true. 5G also uses sub-1GHz bands
| for long-range connections and these will also support a
| multitude more connections per tower and provide lower
| latency.
|
| Please refer to [1] to understand how much more advanced
| traffic prioritization is implemented in this protocol.
|
| [1] https://nms.kcl.ac.uk/toktam.mahmoodi/files/EW16.pdf
| markdown wrote:
| > Obviously it doesn't make sense to run on 5G permanently
|
| I've never used 5G (it isn't available in my country) so this
| isn't obvious at all. Care to explain that doesn't make sense?
| Mo3 wrote:
| If your phone is just sitting on your desk with its screen
| off there is little to zero benefit to having it run on 5G, I
| mean. As of right now, 5G is still somewhat more energy
| consuming than 4G, just like 4G consumed more energy in its
| early stages.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| Foivos wrote:
| The product you are talking about is called "fixed wireless
| access" and at least in Norway is a huge success. It makes sense
| because Norway is sparsely populated and this product can serve
| communities that are hard to reach by fiber at comparable speeds.
| At the same time it is both better and cheaper than satellite
| internet, including the spacex offerings. Spacex would make sense
| for even more isolated communities.
|
| Also, 5G, at least at this point, does not offer consumers
| anything different compared to a good 4G. But it makes a huge
| difference for commercial usecases. For example, Norway wants to
| stop using tetra. Tetra is a network used by police, firefighters
| etc, which offers robust communication but at a big cost and with
| very limited services. With 5G they will be able to use the much
| cheaper public network, with modern services (e.g. video calls),
| while maintaining robustness and traffic isolation.
| hellotomyrars wrote:
| My takeaway from this is pretty simple and perhaps the most
| boring answer but: it depends.
|
| The biggest thing the author seems to say is that what we already
| have is "good enough" which might be true for them but isn't
| applicable to many other people or applications.
|
| The technology works better or worse depending on how it's
| deployed. Not a huge shocker. Deriding the marinas Wifi doesn't
| inherently mean it's bad or good as a technology.
|
| 5G certainly oversold as revolutionary but it's fine And has a
| higher upper bound for obvious reasons as a technology.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >although rollback netcode is producing remarkably good results
| these days.
|
| Tell me you are not an online gamer without telling me you are
| not an online gamer. Rollback netcode makes about sub 100ms ping
| _playable_. Having a low ping is still better than having a high
| ping. LAN is still the definitive experience since latency is
| minimized. There are online competitions that are west coast or
| east coast only because the experience just is not good enough
| even with rollback netcode to handle latencies that are so high.
|
| When I tried tethering to my phone on 4G I was getting like 150ms
| ping and it was really spiky. You are not going to have a good
| time with that much latency.
|
| Also in the gaming context related to low latency is cloud gaming
| which also includes VR / AR rendering which needs to have an
| accurate location of where your head is to render the frame
| correctly.
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| It also depends on the game. Rollback netcode is for games
| where your client fully simulates the game. This doesn't happen
| on a majority of games because of hidden information.
|
| I don't even know if it scales beyond a fighting game, where
| you'll see rollback most commonly used. Part of the rollback is
| to go back to a saved gamestate a few seconds ago, and
| resimulate the entire game with the new (correct) input.
| Meaning to rollback 100ms, you would need to be able to
| resimulate that 100ms of gameplay in say 1 frame or 16ms.
| D13Fd wrote:
| For me the problem is that you often can't even tell if you are
| _really_ on 5G. Some carriers label certain types of 4G as 5G,
| and my understanding is that even if you have "real" 5G, it
| probably isn't mmWave 5G in most areas. So even if you are
| sitting there with a good connection on a mobile device that says
| "5G" in the corner, it's hard to say that 5G is really making a
| difference.
|
| For example, I'm sitting here in my car far away from Wi-Fi. I
| just did a speed test with 5G on and off. On 5G, I got 63mbps
| up/16 down. With 5G off, I got 100mbps/25mbps (much faster).
| mdasen wrote:
| I think the issue is that 5G was initially rolled out with hand-
| waving and marketing. The initial 5G rollouts in the US have been
| on low-band spectrum (below 1GHz) with companies using 5-15MHz
| channels (or in the case of Verizon, not even giving dedicated
| channels to 5G and using inefficient dynamic spectrum sharing
| with LTE) and most of the bandwidth that users get is actually
| coming from the LTE channels on the network via carrier
| aggregation. So, out of the 40-50MHz of downlink capacity your
| phone is using, most of it isn't 5G and low-band 5G's efficiency
| improvements over LTE are a bit minimal (probably 20-30%).
|
| Mid-band 5G is another story. With better MIMO and such, the
| efficiency improvements seem to be more like 50-80%. Not only
| that, a lot of new spectrum is being added to networks and it's
| TDD (time-division duplexing) rather than FDD (frequency-division
| duplexing). T-Mobile and Verizon have launched their 2.5GHz and
| 3.5GHz networks with 60MHz of spectrum and people are usually
| seeing speeds around 300-400Mbps which is significantly faster
| than LTE (and significantly faster than the average home
| broadband connection). A lot more mid-band spectrum will be
| coming over the next couple years.
|
| Likewise, initial rollouts of 5G were in non-standalone mode.
| That means that LTE is running the show and the 5G is providing
| its bandwidth. That also means that ping times are driven by the
| ping times of the LTE network. 5G standalone networks drive down
| ping times a lot. Network and handset support is a bit iffy right
| now, but it'll come along.
|
| I think it's also easy to forget how LTE was a minimal upgrade
| over HSPA+ when it initially came out. Why not just use dual-
| carrier HSPA+? Even in mid 2013 (2.5 years after Verizon's LTE
| launch), they were averaging 10.25Mbps while T-Mobile's HSPA was
| 7.66Mbps (via PC Magazine). Only a third faster? Why bother,
| right? Of course, that hides the fact that LTE drove ping times
| down a lot from 3G networks which meant a much better experience
| for users. It also hides the fact that LTE had a lot of room to
| improve over the years and now we see LTE speeds 4x higher than
| 2013. When you're comparing a newly launched product to the last
| generation that you've spent years working on, the new product
| can often seem like a minimal upgrade (even if it has a lot more
| runway).
|
| T-Mobile's mid-band network is the most deployed in the US and
| their average speed has risen to 91Mbps (via Ookla/Spedtest.net,
| as of 3-6 months ago) - not their average 5G speed, their average
| speed. That's with less than half their network usage going over
| 5G and even within that 5G usage, a lot of it is probably over
| the low-band 5G network (which is more like LTE++). Their average
| 5G speed is 187Mbps and that's averaging in both the low-band LTE
| network and mid-band LTE network (again via Ookla, as of 3-6
| months ago). I think that going from 40Mbps to 190Mbps is a
| pretty big difference.
|
| Not only that, it's a better real world experience. Ookla found
| that 13-20% of the time (depending on carrier), LTE was below
| 5Mbps down and 1Mbps up for people. T-Mobile's 5G speeds were at
| least 25Mbps down and 5Mbps up 82% of the time. So with LTE,
| you're going to get at least 5Mbps 80% of the time and with 5G,
| you're going to get at least 25Mbps 80% of the time. Plus, 5Mbps
| up means a nice video call compared to 1Mbps. 5G is offering
| better stuff in the real-world and this will get better as the
| networks mature - carriers are still upgrading towers.
|
| Now, if you're on AT&T, they have almost no mid-band 5G. If
| you're on Verizon, they've just launched a decent amount of mid-
| band 5G (30% of Americans covered, although people are reporting
| that their maps are hugely over-estimated), but it's limited
| compared to T-Mobile and only available on their premium plans.
| It might not seem like a big deal if you aren't seeing mid-band
| 5G.
|
| I think 5G is also starting to put pressure on home internet
| providers. T-Mobile gained more home broadband customers in Q4
| 2021 than anyone (wired or wireless). A lot of rural customers
| are getting real broadband for the first time and upgrading from
| things like HugesNet with restrictive data allotments. Starlink
| "isn't a big deal" if you already have good broadband. If you
| live in an area without it, Starlink gives you a modern internet
| connection. Likewise, wireless home internet will offer new
| options to many rural customers as well as put competitive
| pressure on broadband monopolies.
|
| I think part of Tim Bray's skepticism is: do we need more speed
| on mobile? In some ways, I share that skepticism. However, I'd
| also add: do you need gigabit fiber? He notes that he has fiber
| at home. We often don't know what we'll use speed for until we
| have it. Mobile data was around for a long time before the iPhone
| and while some people had found some uses for it, most of us
| didn't see utility. Then Apple releases the iPhone and all of a
| sudden the world starts reorienting around data. It can take time
| for someone to make a killer-app for a capability.
|
| T-Mobile just launched a 5G innovation center to help people
| figure out what to do with 5G. Sometimes technological
| capabilities precede someone figuring out what people will want
| to do with it. I mean, we had broadband connections capable of
| 1080p video for years before Netflix started streaming. Today,
| streaming is a way of life.
|
| Bray also says that "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." A big part of
| that is that carriers rolled out 5G before most 5G capabilities
| were really there. If you're on a low-band 5G non-standalone
| network, it can be hard for it to feel any different. Heck, my
| device often performs better with 5G off if there's network
| congestion (since so many people are using 5G in my area and my
| carrier isn't really good). But that's because every carrier
| wanted 5G to pop up on your phone even before 5G's capabilities
| were really in your hands. Carriers pushed things out a bit
| quickly in part because they wanted phones to start supporting 5G
| (for when the real capabilities of 5G got deployed) and because
| it offered useful marketing.
|
| Bray also says that 5G started in Spring 2019. That's not wrong,
| but it can be misleading. Verizon launched a small amount of
| millimeter-wave 5G in Spring 2019. Millimeter-wave spectrum
| typically has a range of 100-200ft and is blocked by almost
| anything in its path. T-Mobile launched low-band 5G in December
| 2019, but again low-band 5G in non-standalone deployment isn't
| really that different. T-Mobile really started launching mid-band
| 5G in Summer 2020 with Verizon following 1.5 years later in
| January 2022. However, it takes a while to upgrade a network. If
| you have 60,000-80,000 towers that you're upgrading and you're
| upgrading 1,000-1,500 per month, it's going to take a while. For
| T-Mobile, we know that it's going to be around 3.5-3.7 years to
| get to 90% of Americans covered. Verizon started deploying mid-
| band ahead of their launch (since they knew the spectrum they'd
| have before they were allowed to use it), but they're staying
| it'll still be 3 years to get to 75% of Americans covered (and
| given that they started deploying 6-9 months before their launch,
| we can say 3.5-3.7 years to get to 75% of Americans covered).
| Basically, we're starting to see some great capabilities some of
| the time, but we probably have another year or two before it
| becomes really common and gives people more "wow" moments.
|
| So I think if one is skeptical of 5G, one needs to talk to people
| that have been using "real" 5G (rather than 5G pushed out for
| marketing reasons) and one might need to wait a few years as
| networks get deployed. However, there are already so many people
| that 5G is making a difference for and that number will grow over
| time.
| lstamour wrote:
| That's a really good point. The first LTE cellphones I had were
| much faster to connect than 3G when loading webpages, but they
| weren't as fast as they got a few years later, as LTE-Advanced
| started deploying, etc. Although part of the speed difference
| was probably also due to faster storage and more new LTE bands.
|
| I'd also point out that Canada had one of the fastest LTE
| networks and still does. Presumably part of the difference is
| having only a couple dense metro areas to cover. A monopoly on
| high prices with few independent MVNOs also doesn't hurt.
| BostonEnginerd wrote:
| T-Mobile's 5G network has been able to get me off of Comcast
| and onto their home internet service. Speeds in my neighborhood
| have been great, typically 300Mbps download / 70Mbps upload.
|
| I'm thankful that this has created competition in the home
| internet market in my area.
| binkHN wrote:
| That upload speed is tremendous compared to Comcast's regular
| offerings. How is your latency compared to Comcast? How is
| your overall experience compared to Comcast during periods of
| likely congestion?
| BostonEnginerd wrote:
| Ping times are higher for sure. I'll try to check what they
| are when I get home.
|
| Comcast worked quite well in my neighborhood. I always
| received the speed I was being charged for. The TMobile
| service isn't quite as reliable, but it's still quite good.
| I spend a lot of time on video calls and never have any
| issues even during high usage times.
| binkHN wrote:
| Excellent detailed write up; thank you very much for this.
|
| >...my device often performs better with 5G off...
|
| Unfortunately, I experience this as well and it's rather
| annoying. I'm a T-Mobile subscriber and, oftentimes, my
| experience is better using LTE versus 5G.
| borski wrote:
| This misses the fact that the increased bandwidth allows for
| improved applications that _couldn't_ have existed without it.
|
| Without broadband, we'd have fewer applications that could use
| it. With widespread 5G, we now have the infrastructure (or soon
| will) for a slew of applications that we haven't thought of yet
| but couldn't have existed without the additional speed.
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