24 ms·

The rational exuberance of 5G

124 points by davidiach 10y ago

Hunnert 10y ago
"In conclusion, our analysis of past, current and future trends in technology and network evolution, suggests that the increased momentum we are seeing around 5G network deployments relative to prior eras is the result of a coincidence of prevailing winds of both technological and business (human) value, and is therefore a case of ‘rational exuberance’ about the future." I can't agree more! Awesome analysis.
JBiserkov 10y ago
Off topic, but I thought AT&T still owned Bell Labs. It seems I missed the last 20 years in that regard: In 1996, AT&T spun off Bell Laboratories, along with most of its equipment manufacturing business, into a new company named Lucent Technologies. In April 2006, Bell Laboratories' parent company, Lucent Technologies, signed a merger agreement with Alcatel. On April 15, 2015, Nokia agreed to acquire Alcatel-Lucent, the Bell Labs' parent company, in a share exchange worth $16.6 billion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_Bell_Labs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_Bell_Labs
- pbarnes_1 10y ago
  Yeah this was the most interesting part of the blog post -- knowing that Nokia owns Bell Labs! :D
prth 10y ago
I have one question regarding the statement: "the cloud infrastructure cannot be more than 100km from the end device consuming the application, due to the finite speed of light, which can only traverse ~100km (round trip) in the 1 ms that is available for the networking portion ..." Since light would traverse ~299km in 1ms, would the max distance of the cloud architecture be ~149.9km - assuming we do not take into account any additional processing and response times? Edit: The author was using the speed of light in current-day fibre-optics as an estimation (~213km in 1ms, a reduction of about 30% from vacuum). Relevant - http://www.nature.com/nphoton/journal/v7/n4/full/nphoton.2013.45.html http://www.nature.com/nphoton/journal/v7/n4/full/nphoton.201...
- cmdrfred 10y ago
  Is that not the speed of light in a vacuum? I believe its different in different mediums.
  - jarvist 10y ago
    Yes, it's about 2/3 c (speed of light) in a fibre optic (refractive index n=1.44), and about 1/3 c in a copper cable. Air barely slows it down.
    - zoren 10y ago
      Do you have a source on the 1/3 c in copper?
      - iheartmemcache 10y ago
        http://www.nature.com/nphoton/journal/v7/n4/full/nphoton.2013.45.html http://www.nature.com/nphoton/journal/v7/n4/full/nphoton.201... Here's a definitive src on .69c for an 'ideal' fibre velocity factor. Here are two sources, both of which have prop. velocities @ around .6c depending on the dialectric. Again ideal. I haven't architected any long-run infrastructure, but 1/3rd sounds pretty right to me. https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0986/4308/files/Cable-Delay-FAQ.pdf https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0986/4308/files/Cable-Dela... http://www.faculty.ece.vt.edu/swe/lwa/memo/lwa0136.pdf http://www.faculty.ece.vt.edu/swe/lwa/memo/lwa0136.pdf RG58 is your traditional coax copper you'd run with copper and SMA connectors on an above-average scope.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- overlordalex 10y ago
  Typically the speed of light in copper/fibre is about 2/3rds of lights speed in a vacuum. Hence the discrepancy.
  - 10y ago
ProxCoques 10y ago
At least in terms of its effects on network speed, latency and reliability to mobile devices, I don't expect 5G to deliver anything like the hype it's getting. Having witnessed the roll-out of 2G, 3G and 4G over the last 15 years in the UK, with each one being as disappointing, over-promised and patchy as the one before it, I'm hoping to be surprised. But I'm not holding my breath. I have a phone that has been downgraded to 3G only because my provider's 4G is actually slower.
- raesene6 10y ago
  The rollouts in the UK have been particularly dispiriting as the coverage doesn't seem to ever catch up (or indeed move at all) in rural areas. You can be pretty close in to large cities in scotland and struggle for 2G coverage let alone anything faster..
- kbart 10y ago
  UK is infamous for its overcrowded networks and sloppy telecoms, so that's not a problem of the technology itself. I have seen better Internet/cell networks in some 3rd world countries than UK.. In my country, there's a pretty big difference between 3G and 4G (and currently used 4.5G), where ~350 Mbps is an actual speed.
  - Symbiote 10y ago
    English people are infamous for grumbling... Akamai's State of the Internet, released yesterday, puts the UK in the lead for mobile data speeds with an average speed of 28Mb/s, followed by Belgium, with 19Mb/s. http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/29/12056760/uk-fastest-mobile-internet-us-lags-behind-akamai-report http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/29/12056760/uk-fastest-mobile... https://www.akamai.com/us/en/our-thinking/state-of-the-internet-report/ https://www.akamai.com/us/en/our-thinking/state-of-the-inter... (Downloading requires an email, but it wasn't verified.)
    - kbart 10y ago
      Somewhat strange methodology is used there: "speeds can be altered by mobile networks' use of proxies, meaning that the speeds recorded will be between those proxies and Akamai's servers, rather than between the servers and the actual mobile devices themselves." For users end mile usually matters the most and this table doesn't count for that, so it doesn't reflect the actual user experience. Sounds more like PR stuff than an actual test.
Qantourisc 10y ago
Yep speeds on Cellphones can be crazy fast, I was testing a WIFI connection speed with a cellphone. Data was quite consistent ... until I noticed I was on 4G. Only to get lower results when I turned 4G off (the WIFI there is slower).
- ksec 10y ago
  Same experience as well, 4G has consistently been better then my WiFi connection. And even if i had perfect WiFi Connection i was still limited by Internet connection speed. Which most WiFi Connection spot, even at home, are slower then 4G.
  - dingo_bat 10y ago
    I must say I have had the opposite experience. My home wifi provides a consistent ~100Mbps unless I go to the other end of my apartment. 4G, where the signal is good, goes up to ~20Mbps.
- mrlinx 10y ago
  I'd say the problem is latency/routing. Any data on data?
SCdF 10y ago
I'm going to do that lazy contribution thing you do on HN, where you ignore the thrust of the piece and instead complain about the web experience. https://imgur.com/kfbbZo2 https://imgur.com/kfbbZo2 Bell labs are you for real?
- nefitty 10y ago
  Try it on mobile...
- jeroen 10y ago
  There seems to be a growing movement of web designers/developers who think that their header is interesting enough to fill half the screen on mobile (in landscape).
- Olap84 10y ago
  Firefox reader mode. It fixes the web, and it makes me slightly sad.
  - franciscop 10y ago
    I am seriously thinking of making a small web that parses HN and shows the links in a decent way and when clicking something it opens it with automatic styles like Firefox reader mode. The % of decent (as in readable) articles / articles in HN is too low, and Firefox reader mode fixes them all (so far 100% correct for me after years).
    - CoolGuySteve 10y ago
      Someone already beat you to it: https://hn.premii.com https://hn.premii.com
      - franciscop 10y ago
        That is... awesome! thank you so much
JumpCrisscross 10y ago
Could Musk et al's satellite Internet plans [1] ever compete with terrestrial Internet? [1] http://motherboard.vice.com/read/elon-musk-admits-satellite-internet-plan-could-over-extend-spacex http://motherboard.vice.com/read/elon-musk-admits-satellite-...
- kozak 10y ago
  Latency will always be inferior in satellite links.
  - jewel 10y ago
    You're thinking of traditional large satellites in geosynchronous orbit, which is 35 km above the surface (ping time of about 250 ms). SpaceX's plan is to put 4,000 small satellites in low-earth orbit, 625 km up. That gives a ping time of about 4 ms to the satellite. SpaceX can do this far cheaper than others because they can launch the satellites for "free" as part of launches that are happening anyway.
    - vardump 10y ago
      > which is 35 km above the surface (ping time of about 250 ms) Surely you mean 35000 km?
      - larrypress 10y ago
        Actually, they are planning on a low-Earth orbit at around 1100 km, which will require a constellation of satellites to maintain ubiquitous coverage. That will cut latency -- particularly on long routes since it will cut the number hops between hosts, see: http://cis471.blogspot.com/2014/11/elon-musk-and-greg-wylers-plan-for.html http://cis471.blogspot.com/2014/11/elon-musk-and-greg-wylers...
- nabla9 10y ago
  Satellites can't provide enough bandwidth. We are talking about 1 Tb/s/km² for cities.
TorKlingberg 10y ago
Still missing: any kind of technical protocol spec for 5G. It is still just a mad scramble to claim the name.
- iheartmemcache 10y ago
  3GPP (not to be confused with the old tech 3G, this is a consortium sort of like the W3C for the web or the ISO for ...tons of stuff) are the defacto group who meets up and agrees on what gets done. They meet up and agree upon standards every so often as described here[1] (release 8 and 9 delineating LTE, LTE-A, and the transitional 3G -> LTE stuff, along with tons of other stuff). Releases 13 and 14 standardized 5G[2] earlier this year. Here's the set of documents that I'm pretty sure shouldn't be public (you typically have to be a member to get access). Bad sysadmins, disable DirectoryIndexes ! The R13 and R14 zips have quite a bit of descriptive content. Here's the marketing mumbojumbo stuff, for completeness[3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTE_(telecommunication) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTE_(telecommunication) [2] http://www.3gpp.org/ftp/Information/WORK_PLAN/Description_Releases/ http://www.3gpp.org/ftp/Information/WORK_PLAN/Description_Re... [3] http://www.4gamericas.org/files/3714/4224/8256/Executive_Summary_3GPP_Release_13_final.pdf http://www.4gamericas.org/files/3714/4224/8256/Executive_Sum...
petra 10y ago
I don't buy this hype about so much demand and applications. Why ? 1. It won't really reduce costs. Why? Because 3-5ghz 5G offer similar spectrum efficiency to current methods while on the other hand mmWave(20+ghz), which do offer tons of spectrum, don't penetrate building, and attenuate rapidly in air, so you'll need more base stations. 2. Users have shown they aren't willing to pay more wireless. And for most things consumers do like VR and 360 video etc, wifi is fine and cheaper. 3.There are other good methods for the internet of things, and 5G is too late for that anyway. So that leaves the realistic use cases as cars(but isn't it too early? ). and maybe VR(although we're very far from appealing VR services which users will pay $60+/month for, and we probably need for wifi confined AR to be a thing first ). And on top of that the question remains - could we improve 4G enough, without needing to deploy all new hardware?
- forrestthewoods 10y ago
  Could it replaced Comcast? That would certainly excite people!
- zanny 10y ago
  On top of all of that 4G is still so data-restricted you cannot do anything with it that the speed was meant for. The cost of streaming a blu-ray quality film over 4G on many carriers can cost you tens of dollars alone. I agree, and would rather see ubiquitous and cheap 4G before anyone talks about 5G. I think 4G already has the potential to eliminate the vast majority of wired to the home cable Internet service given its rates, the only downside is the extreme spectrum crunch and the lack of viable open bands to use to provide Internet to everyone.
  - rayiner 10y ago
    But who is streaming Blu-Ray over their cellular connection? There is still a lot of room to grow with existing use cases. E.g. when I upload photos or videos of my toddler on Facebook, the picture quality is still potato. It could be better even without breaking my bandwidth budget.
    - 10y ago
mtgx 10y ago
If only 5G brought end-to-end encrypted calls and texts, too. We're going to live through another decade of poorly encrypted wireless communications.
- selectodude 10y ago
  Seeing as 5G (and 4G before it) are both packet switched networks, you can encrypt the things you do however you want.
  - doctorshady 10y ago
    Seeing as we've been encrypting calls with circuit switched technologies for years, it wouldn't really matter one way or the other.
nfriedly 10y ago
4G is fast enough for me right now. My problem is the ridiculous pricing of wireless data. In ideal circumstances, I can hit nearly 75mb/s over LTE... but that just means that I could burn up my entire 3GB allotment in under 6 minutes. At $15 for the next 3 gigs, my marginal cost is nearly $1/minute for full-speed 4G data.
- mkane848 10y ago
  Even between wifi at home and work, streaming Spotify while driving and miscellaneous app usage off wifi gets me to basically 4GB a month. I can keep downloading more songs since I'm on Premium, but I think even with that I still actively have to watch my data usage and make a conscious effort to conserve data. I dunno, it's just nuts to try to do anything online without breaking your data cap in the world of 1080p and high quality audio streams
  - bogomipz 10y ago
    Your carrier might be "zero-rating" your music streaming provider. A lot of them do now.
- pkaye 10y ago
  I doubt wireless data will get really cheap give than wireless bandwidth has a physical limit. There is only so much capacity and the infrastructure is not cheap so providers need enough customer to subscribe to pay for it. That means oversubscribing customers or throttling in some manner. Ask yourself if you would prefer 75mb/s for burst use vs 75kb/s sustained use?
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    All bandwidth has a physical limit. Without seeing the books on capacity planning for your average wireless provider it is impossible to know what the current situation really is but with what I know of telcos if they can get away with billing for 'air' they definitely will. Note how it is just about impossible to get any usage statistics other than 'per person' from the various providers. See also: 'roaming charges' and 'air time'.
tmaly 10y ago
I would like to see more 4G build out first. As others have mentioned, some carriers still have data caps at the 4G level. So we are not really seeing the full potential of 4G at this point.
Aelinsaar 10y ago
Great, now there will be an even faster standard to not use because of the price. A price set by thieving, skiving, miserable, lying monopolists.
qq66 10y ago
I have a 22.5 GB data plan and I burn through the whole thing every month on LTE, without really watching movies or anything over wireless data (I don't turn on WiFi at any time, because my LTE latency and bandwidth is better than my home and work WiFi). The speed of the network isn't my constraint.
cwe 10y ago
As someone still only dreaming of gigabit speeds, I'm having a hard time conceptualizing what that kind of speed can enable. Higher resolution video/VR, sure, but is there more? Is there a game changing use case that opens up when that kind of speed is available everywhere?
- vardump 10y ago
  When you have connectivity at home you can keep all of your data at your fingertips at all time. Even if it's more than you can feasibly store in consumer cloud services. You can VPN home and use remote desktop at near local performance. You don't need to plan your data usage. Worry whether you have the files with you. At least that's what it means for me.
  - cwe 10y ago
    That's a good point: does the bandwidth reach the native performance of another computer? Can a commodity phone/tablet stream much better performance?
    - vardump 10y ago
      The current crop of mobile devices do have very nice performance. However ergonomics is a different matter... Touch screen is pretty bad for desktop usage. Android devices let you connect a USB or a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. You get even a mouse pointer last I tried. Although not using it like that in everyday life. It's more convenient to just use a small laptop. With iOS Apple's Bluetooth keyboard works. Other input devices didn't work, or at least I couldn't figure out how.
  - sliverstorm 10y ago
    We've already got plenty of bandwidth for remote desktop, latency is usually the remaining problem.
    - vardump 10y ago
      Yeah, latency is the issue. I have fiber at home. About 50/50 Mbps goodput and 15 ms latency to home VPN using 4G. Remote desktop is pretty fluid. While I can notice the extra latency, it's not a problem in any way. For example Bluetooth mouse latency is worse. Even full screen WebGL/CSS3/whatever web apps and full screen web video work well. Some tips: Don't use any TCP based tunneling or VPN solution, like ssh or OpenVPN over TCP. They're bad for interactive use. Measure, mobile devices have different 4G performance profiles, and that includes latency. You can have up to about 5 ms latency difference between a new flagship model and some low end 4G phone. Desktop applications other than the browser tend to be less demanding. Although games are not my thing, playing PS4 games remotely works also very nicely on a Macbook over 4G. Just need to have a PS4 controller and a USB cable. It just works. Very near to local performance. There's some kind of NAT traversal, so you don't necessarily even need to use VPN.
randiantech 10y ago
Offtopic, but the header of the page makes doc hard to read.
mschuster91 10y ago
What many people who criticize the high data fees that carriers charge often forget, esp. in Germany: in contrast to highly rural US (where you need LOTS of towers to serve few people) it's not about the infrastructure costs in Germany, and it's also not about the profits of shareholders, at least not much. Problem was when former finance minister Hans Eichel decided to reduce the German state debts in 2000... he did so by auctioning off the UMTS frequencies, for in total 50.000.000.000 €. That's 625€ per German citizen that first have to be paid off before the network provider makes a profit on that user. Also, the provider has to pay interest on the debts (ECB interbank rate at the time was 4.5%), and the infrastructure had to be built, maintained and upgraded (electricity costs, networking termination fees, personnel, construction workers, materials, ...); this in turn moves the "profitability point" per customer waaay behind. In essence, Eichel screwed over us Germans by selling us "reduced state debt" when all we got was a debt-shift from the state to private entities, and we still suffer to this day from the highest data prices in Europe.
davesque 10y ago
I'd say that, in the US, exuberance for 5G is irrational since the pricing for cellular internet is ridiculous. In the mean time, we have T-Mobile's CEO calling his customers "data thieves" for rebelling against unfair rates.

124 points by davidiach 10y ago

"In conclusion, our analysis of past, current and future trends in technology and network evolution, suggests that the increased momentum we are seeing around 5G network deployments relative to prior eras is the result of a coincidence of prevailing winds of both technological and business (human) value, and is therefore a case of ‘rational exuberance’ about the future." I can't agree more! Awesome analysis.

JBiserkov 10y ago

Off topic, but I thought AT&T still owned Bell Labs. It seems I missed the last 20 years in that regard: In 1996, AT&T spun off Bell Laboratories, along with most of its equipment manufacturing business, into a new company named Lucent Technologies. In April 2006, Bell Laboratories' parent company, Lucent Technologies, signed a merger agreement with Alcatel. On April 15, 2015, Nokia agreed to acquire Alcatel-Lucent, the Bell Labs' parent company, in a share exchange worth $16.6 billion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_Bell_Labs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_Bell_Labs

pbarnes_1 10y ago
Yeah this was the most interesting part of the blog post -- knowing that Nokia owns Bell Labs! :D

prth 10y ago

I have one question regarding the statement: "the cloud infrastructure cannot be more than 100km from the end device consuming the application, due to the finite speed of light, which can only traverse ~100km (round trip) in the 1 ms that is available for the networking portion ..." Since light would traverse ~299km in 1ms, would the max distance of the cloud architecture be ~149.9km - assuming we do not take into account any additional processing and response times? Edit: The author was using the speed of light in current-day fibre-optics as an estimation (~213km in 1ms, a reduction of about 30% from vacuum). Relevant - http://www.nature.com/nphoton/journal/v7/n4/full/nphoton.2013.45.html http://www.nature.com/nphoton/journal/v7/n4/full/nphoton.201...

cmdrfred 10y ago
Is that not the speed of light in a vacuum? I believe its different in different mediums.
- jarvist 10y ago
  Yes, it's about 2/3 c (speed of light) in a fibre optic (refractive index n=1.44), and about 1/3 c in a copper cable. Air barely slows it down.
  - zoren 10y ago
    Do you have a source on the 1/3 c in copper?
    - iheartmemcache 10y ago
      http://www.nature.com/nphoton/journal/v7/n4/full/nphoton.2013.45.html http://www.nature.com/nphoton/journal/v7/n4/full/nphoton.201... Here's a definitive src on .69c for an 'ideal' fibre velocity factor. Here are two sources, both of which have prop. velocities @ around .6c depending on the dialectric. Again ideal. I haven't architected any long-run infrastructure, but 1/3rd sounds pretty right to me. https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0986/4308/files/Cable-Delay-FAQ.pdf https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0986/4308/files/Cable-Dela... http://www.faculty.ece.vt.edu/swe/lwa/memo/lwa0136.pdf http://www.faculty.ece.vt.edu/swe/lwa/memo/lwa0136.pdf RG58 is your traditional coax copper you'd run with copper and SMA connectors on an above-average scope.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
overlordalex 10y ago
Typically the speed of light in copper/fibre is about 2/3rds of lights speed in a vacuum. Hence the discrepancy.
- 10y ago

ProxCoques 10y ago

At least in terms of its effects on network speed, latency and reliability to mobile devices, I don't expect 5G to deliver anything like the hype it's getting. Having witnessed the roll-out of 2G, 3G and 4G over the last 15 years in the UK, with each one being as disappointing, over-promised and patchy as the one before it, I'm hoping to be surprised. But I'm not holding my breath. I have a phone that has been downgraded to 3G only because my provider's 4G is actually slower.

raesene6 10y ago
The rollouts in the UK have been particularly dispiriting as the coverage doesn't seem to ever catch up (or indeed move at all) in rural areas. You can be pretty close in to large cities in scotland and struggle for 2G coverage let alone anything faster..
kbart 10y ago
UK is infamous for its overcrowded networks and sloppy telecoms, so that's not a problem of the technology itself. I have seen better Internet/cell networks in some 3rd world countries than UK.. In my country, there's a pretty big difference between 3G and 4G (and currently used 4.5G), where ~350 Mbps is an actual speed.
- Symbiote 10y ago
  English people are infamous for grumbling... Akamai's State of the Internet, released yesterday, puts the UK in the lead for mobile data speeds with an average speed of 28Mb/s, followed by Belgium, with 19Mb/s. http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/29/12056760/uk-fastest-mobile-internet-us-lags-behind-akamai-report http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/29/12056760/uk-fastest-mobile... https://www.akamai.com/us/en/our-thinking/state-of-the-internet-report/ https://www.akamai.com/us/en/our-thinking/state-of-the-inter... (Downloading requires an email, but it wasn't verified.)
  - kbart 10y ago
    Somewhat strange methodology is used there: "speeds can be altered by mobile networks' use of proxies, meaning that the speeds recorded will be between those proxies and Akamai's servers, rather than between the servers and the actual mobile devices themselves." For users end mile usually matters the most and this table doesn't count for that, so it doesn't reflect the actual user experience. Sounds more like PR stuff than an actual test.

Qantourisc 10y ago

Yep speeds on Cellphones can be crazy fast, I was testing a WIFI connection speed with a cellphone. Data was quite consistent ... until I noticed I was on 4G. Only to get lower results when I turned 4G off (the WIFI there is slower).

ksec 10y ago
Same experience as well, 4G has consistently been better then my WiFi connection. And even if i had perfect WiFi Connection i was still limited by Internet connection speed. Which most WiFi Connection spot, even at home, are slower then 4G.
- dingo_bat 10y ago
  I must say I have had the opposite experience. My home wifi provides a consistent ~100Mbps unless I go to the other end of my apartment. 4G, where the signal is good, goes up to ~20Mbps.
mrlinx 10y ago
I'd say the problem is latency/routing. Any data on data?

SCdF 10y ago

I'm going to do that lazy contribution thing you do on HN, where you ignore the thrust of the piece and instead complain about the web experience. https://imgur.com/kfbbZo2 https://imgur.com/kfbbZo2 Bell labs are you for real?

nefitty 10y ago
Try it on mobile...
jeroen 10y ago
There seems to be a growing movement of web designers/developers who think that their header is interesting enough to fill half the screen on mobile (in landscape).
Olap84 10y ago
Firefox reader mode. It fixes the web, and it makes me slightly sad.
- franciscop 10y ago
  I am seriously thinking of making a small web that parses HN and shows the links in a decent way and when clicking something it opens it with automatic styles like Firefox reader mode. The % of decent (as in readable) articles / articles in HN is too low, and Firefox reader mode fixes them all (so far 100% correct for me after years).
  - CoolGuySteve 10y ago
    Someone already beat you to it: https://hn.premii.com https://hn.premii.com
    - franciscop 10y ago
      That is... awesome! thank you so much

JumpCrisscross 10y ago

Could Musk et al's satellite Internet plans [1] ever compete with terrestrial Internet? [1] http://motherboard.vice.com/read/elon-musk-admits-satellite-internet-plan-could-over-extend-spacex http://motherboard.vice.com/read/elon-musk-admits-satellite-...

kozak 10y ago
Latency will always be inferior in satellite links.
- jewel 10y ago
  You're thinking of traditional large satellites in geosynchronous orbit, which is 35 km above the surface (ping time of about 250 ms). SpaceX's plan is to put 4,000 small satellites in low-earth orbit, 625 km up. That gives a ping time of about 4 ms to the satellite. SpaceX can do this far cheaper than others because they can launch the satellites for "free" as part of launches that are happening anyway.
  - vardump 10y ago
    > which is 35 km above the surface (ping time of about 250 ms) Surely you mean 35000 km?
    - larrypress 10y ago
      Actually, they are planning on a low-Earth orbit at around 1100 km, which will require a constellation of satellites to maintain ubiquitous coverage. That will cut latency -- particularly on long routes since it will cut the number hops between hosts, see: http://cis471.blogspot.com/2014/11/elon-musk-and-greg-wylers-plan-for.html http://cis471.blogspot.com/2014/11/elon-musk-and-greg-wylers...
nabla9 10y ago
Satellites can't provide enough bandwidth. We are talking about 1 Tb/s/km² for cities.

TorKlingberg 10y ago

Still missing: any kind of technical protocol spec for 5G. It is still just a mad scramble to claim the name.

iheartmemcache 10y ago
3GPP (not to be confused with the old tech 3G, this is a consortium sort of like the W3C for the web or the ISO for ...tons of stuff) are the defacto group who meets up and agrees on what gets done. They meet up and agree upon standards every so often as described here[1] (release 8 and 9 delineating LTE, LTE-A, and the transitional 3G -> LTE stuff, along with tons of other stuff). Releases 13 and 14 standardized 5G[2] earlier this year. Here's the set of documents that I'm pretty sure shouldn't be public (you typically have to be a member to get access). Bad sysadmins, disable DirectoryIndexes ! The R13 and R14 zips have quite a bit of descriptive content. Here's the marketing mumbojumbo stuff, for completeness[3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTE_(telecommunication) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTE_(telecommunication) [2] http://www.3gpp.org/ftp/Information/WORK_PLAN/Description_Releases/ http://www.3gpp.org/ftp/Information/WORK_PLAN/Description_Re... [3] http://www.4gamericas.org/files/3714/4224/8256/Executive_Summary_3GPP_Release_13_final.pdf http://www.4gamericas.org/files/3714/4224/8256/Executive_Sum...

petra 10y ago

I don't buy this hype about so much demand and applications. Why ? 1. It won't really reduce costs. Why? Because 3-5ghz 5G offer similar spectrum efficiency to current methods while on the other hand mmWave(20+ghz), which do offer tons of spectrum, don't penetrate building, and attenuate rapidly in air, so you'll need more base stations. 2. Users have shown they aren't willing to pay more wireless. And for most things consumers do like VR and 360 video etc, wifi is fine and cheaper. 3.There are other good methods for the internet of things, and 5G is too late for that anyway. So that leaves the realistic use cases as cars(but isn't it too early? ). and maybe VR(although we're very far from appealing VR services which users will pay $60+/month for, and we probably need for wifi confined AR to be a thing first ). And on top of that the question remains - could we improve 4G enough, without needing to deploy all new hardware?

forrestthewoods 10y ago
Could it replaced Comcast? That would certainly excite people!
zanny 10y ago
On top of all of that 4G is still so data-restricted you cannot do anything with it that the speed was meant for. The cost of streaming a blu-ray quality film over 4G on many carriers can cost you tens of dollars alone. I agree, and would rather see ubiquitous and cheap 4G before anyone talks about 5G. I think 4G already has the potential to eliminate the vast majority of wired to the home cable Internet service given its rates, the only downside is the extreme spectrum crunch and the lack of viable open bands to use to provide Internet to everyone.
- rayiner 10y ago
  But who is streaming Blu-Ray over their cellular connection? There is still a lot of room to grow with existing use cases. E.g. when I upload photos or videos of my toddler on Facebook, the picture quality is still potato. It could be better even without breaking my bandwidth budget.
  - 10y ago

mtgx 10y ago

If only 5G brought end-to-end encrypted calls and texts, too. We're going to live through another decade of poorly encrypted wireless communications.

selectodude 10y ago
Seeing as 5G (and 4G before it) are both packet switched networks, you can encrypt the things you do however you want.
- doctorshady 10y ago
  Seeing as we've been encrypting calls with circuit switched technologies for years, it wouldn't really matter one way or the other.

nfriedly 10y ago

4G is fast enough for me right now. My problem is the ridiculous pricing of wireless data. In ideal circumstances, I can hit nearly 75mb/s over LTE... but that just means that I could burn up my entire 3GB allotment in under 6 minutes. At $15 for the next 3 gigs, my marginal cost is nearly $1/minute for full-speed 4G data.

mkane848 10y ago
Even between wifi at home and work, streaming Spotify while driving and miscellaneous app usage off wifi gets me to basically 4GB a month. I can keep downloading more songs since I'm on Premium, but I think even with that I still actively have to watch my data usage and make a conscious effort to conserve data. I dunno, it's just nuts to try to do anything online without breaking your data cap in the world of 1080p and high quality audio streams
- bogomipz 10y ago
  Your carrier might be "zero-rating" your music streaming provider. A lot of them do now.
pkaye 10y ago
I doubt wireless data will get really cheap give than wireless bandwidth has a physical limit. There is only so much capacity and the infrastructure is not cheap so providers need enough customer to subscribe to pay for it. That means oversubscribing customers or throttling in some manner. Ask yourself if you would prefer 75mb/s for burst use vs 75kb/s sustained use?
- jacquesm 10y ago
  All bandwidth has a physical limit. Without seeing the books on capacity planning for your average wireless provider it is impossible to know what the current situation really is but with what I know of telcos if they can get away with billing for 'air' they definitely will. Note how it is just about impossible to get any usage statistics other than 'per person' from the various providers. See also: 'roaming charges' and 'air time'.

tmaly 10y ago

I would like to see more 4G build out first. As others have mentioned, some carriers still have data caps at the 4G level. So we are not really seeing the full potential of 4G at this point.

Aelinsaar 10y ago

Great, now there will be an even faster standard to not use because of the price. A price set by thieving, skiving, miserable, lying monopolists.

qq66 10y ago

I have a 22.5 GB data plan and I burn through the whole thing every month on LTE, without really watching movies or anything over wireless data (I don't turn on WiFi at any time, because my LTE latency and bandwidth is better than my home and work WiFi). The speed of the network isn't my constraint.

cwe 10y ago

As someone still only dreaming of gigabit speeds, I'm having a hard time conceptualizing what that kind of speed can enable. Higher resolution video/VR, sure, but is there more? Is there a game changing use case that opens up when that kind of speed is available everywhere?

vardump 10y ago
When you have connectivity at home you can keep all of your data at your fingertips at all time. Even if it's more than you can feasibly store in consumer cloud services. You can VPN home and use remote desktop at near local performance. You don't need to plan your data usage. Worry whether you have the files with you. At least that's what it means for me.
- cwe 10y ago
  That's a good point: does the bandwidth reach the native performance of another computer? Can a commodity phone/tablet stream much better performance?
  - vardump 10y ago
    The current crop of mobile devices do have very nice performance. However ergonomics is a different matter... Touch screen is pretty bad for desktop usage. Android devices let you connect a USB or a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. You get even a mouse pointer last I tried. Although not using it like that in everyday life. It's more convenient to just use a small laptop. With iOS Apple's Bluetooth keyboard works. Other input devices didn't work, or at least I couldn't figure out how.
- sliverstorm 10y ago
  We've already got plenty of bandwidth for remote desktop, latency is usually the remaining problem.
  - vardump 10y ago
    Yeah, latency is the issue. I have fiber at home. About 50/50 Mbps goodput and 15 ms latency to home VPN using 4G. Remote desktop is pretty fluid. While I can notice the extra latency, it's not a problem in any way. For example Bluetooth mouse latency is worse. Even full screen WebGL/CSS3/whatever web apps and full screen web video work well. Some tips: Don't use any TCP based tunneling or VPN solution, like ssh or OpenVPN over TCP. They're bad for interactive use. Measure, mobile devices have different 4G performance profiles, and that includes latency. You can have up to about 5 ms latency difference between a new flagship model and some low end 4G phone. Desktop applications other than the browser tend to be less demanding. Although games are not my thing, playing PS4 games remotely works also very nicely on a Macbook over 4G. Just need to have a PS4 controller and a USB cable. It just works. Very near to local performance. There's some kind of NAT traversal, so you don't necessarily even need to use VPN.

randiantech 10y ago

Offtopic, but the header of the page makes doc hard to read.

mschuster91 10y ago

What many people who criticize the high data fees that carriers charge often forget, esp. in Germany: in contrast to highly rural US (where you need LOTS of towers to serve few people) it's not about the infrastructure costs in Germany, and it's also not about the profits of shareholders, at least not much. Problem was when former finance minister Hans Eichel decided to reduce the German state debts in 2000... he did so by auctioning off the UMTS frequencies, for in total 50.000.000.000 €. That's 625€ per German citizen that first have to be paid off before the network provider makes a profit on that user. Also, the provider has to pay interest on the debts (ECB interbank rate at the time was 4.5%), and the infrastructure had to be built, maintained and upgraded (electricity costs, networking termination fees, personnel, construction workers, materials, ...); this in turn moves the "profitability point" per customer waaay behind. In essence, Eichel screwed over us Germans by selling us "reduced state debt" when all we got was a debt-shift from the state to private entities, and we still suffer to this day from the highest data prices in Europe.

davesque 10y ago

I'd say that, in the US, exuberance for 5G is irrational since the pricing for cellular internet is ridiculous. In the mean time, we have T-Mobile's CEO calling his customers "data thieves" for rebelling against unfair rates.