In order of your responses: ``3'' : "Work well" for what? I was specifically addressing comms, as that's where the problem currently exists. There are too many

In order of your responses: ``3'' : "Work well" for what? I was specifically addressing comms, as that's where the problem currently exists. There are too many concurrent protocols/specs for me to keep up with LoRA (I'm only familiar with the 3GPP standards i.e. the NarrowBand IOT analog to LoRA, for obvious reasons), but I did some reading[1]. It has some awesome features like low-power consumption that allows long range, but again, you're not going to be streaming Youtube videos via that protocol. Their site officially says[2] their solution "is a network ideal for Internet of Things (IoT), metering, security, asset tracking, and machine-to-machine (M2M) applications." So while a great solution for, say, plopping down a few thousand soil hydrometers, it's not going to help with the over-saturation of the 4G networks. ``1'': Spectrum efficiency varies as a function of carrier wave length[3 for a brief overview] There's an information theory limit as to how much data you can effectively transport (throughput, not latency) limited by the Shannon-Hartley limit. (Or maybe the Nyquist something-something...forgive my ignorance on the topic, I really should have went to grad school or at least taken more physics classes.) To offer more bandwidth you can do plenty of things without resorting to mmWave, i.e. picking up rights to a carrier wave when Auction 73 occurred, or use OFDM amongst the ISM bands Which brings me to (``2''- at least, as I understand it). What providers are trying to do is use the standard UWB/OFDM that already has well established, cheap commodity hardware behind it (think: a Cisco Aironet equivalent). The poster at the start of the thread said >> 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. I was simply saying that any new technology will be bundled into the next revision of phones. It's not going to cost the consumer any more than usual, because (at least in the US) the 24-month sign+subsidized phone practice is commonplace enough that the next-gen technologies will be bundled in at the same rate. I'm right there with you on mmWave - if you're looking to replace 4G with that, well, probably not viable at the moment as people still tune transmission lines using machined components (expensive, can't really use powdered metal bulk solutions when you need .1 thou tolerances..) that are designed filter cavities like this[4] in one offs (even more expensive without economies of scale) by generally those with graduate degrees. I haven't heard any ballpark quotes for 5G pricing from the usual suppliers.. who's quoting what, and from where? [1] https://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/lp-wan/current/pdfbVG486gGVD.pdf https://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/lp-wan/current/pdfbVG4... [2] http://www.semtech.com/wireless-rf/lora.html http://www.semtech.com/wireless-rf/lora.html [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_capacity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_capacity [4] http://www.rfsworld.com/stayconnected/userfiles/stayconnected/issueimages/bilder/0308/WiMAX-filter_1_RZ.jpg http://www.rfsworld.com/stayconnected/userfiles/stayconnecte...