8 ms·

I'm not disputing 5G is faster, but was congestion taken into account for this test? 4G for me is noticeably slower than when I first got a 4G phone, primarily

I'm not disputing 5G is faster, but was congestion taken into account for this test? 4G for me is noticeably slower than when I first got a 4G phone, primarily because the network has become more congested as it became the mainstream.

the_mitsuhiko 9y ago
5G is less about just faster network anyways. The goal as far as I understand is to use something like gre bonding to achieve some support for transparent handoff between base station and home network. So in theory if you are in your own wifi the network should not need to talk to your phone.
- votepaunchy 9y ago
  How is this different from WiFi Calling?
  - freehunter 9y ago
    Hopefully it improves over that technology... I regularly get dropped calls switching from wifi to LTE networks, especially if I spend any amount of time on the edge of my wifi network (like if I take the call inside the house and then walk to my garage).
- xur17 9y ago
  Would this transparent handoff work for just calls, or for data as well? I'd love to see a solution to the wifi to 4g data handoff issues I run into.
  - martinald 9y ago
    Multipath TCP is a solution to this, Apple has it in iOS. But adoption is really low.
    - ilovecars2 9y ago
      There are also some unsolved challenges with Multipath TCP, at least last time I studied it in 2014/2015. For example, when multiple good links are available, Multipath TCP will tend to flip flap between them rather than stabilise on one or the other. You can also get massive reordering which will tend to throw off the congestion control algorithm, but I believe that issue has since been resolved. Good chance are there are some other issues that make MPTCP not quite suitable for widespread use right now.
haikuginger 9y ago
It doesn't look like they considered substantial congestion for either 4G LTE or 5G, which should mean that while the specific bandwidth numbers may not hold up, the speed ratio should be comparable in production. You can see that they evaluate LTE at 50Mbps, which is around what Verizon phones were getting when they first started going to market but before congestion and backhaul limitations were hit due to the number of LTE devices on the network. Currently on LTE with AT&T, I can usually hit 10-20Mbps, so applying the 14x ratio, I'd expect to be able to get 100-300Mbps with 5G once congestion takes hold, which is quite sufficient.
- Retric 9y ago
  I think the biggest difference is going to be raising monthly download caps. 4gig to ~50 gig is huge, but T-mobil has 50 gig caps now. So, I could see most people getting by with 500 gig / month for home internet connections. Which is going to put a lot of pressure on ISP's to improve.
  - jsgo 9y ago
    I'm genuinely hoping that it puts ISPs in a bad position to have no dominance in the market. I've been under a "provider" who caps out at 10Mbps with, sadly, about 40% uptime with our neighborhood for about 5 years (constant outages. On a first name/you've got my phone number basis with the contracted technician, as is quite a few people in the neighborhood). I joined the board to get out of it. We're due to get out of it at the end of March, but Spectrum has zero interest of coming in and servicing people. CenturyLink said they'd be willing... but want a 5-7 year contract and everyone in the neighborhood is understandably against that idea. So yes, bring on the time when mobile bandwidth is such that low caps aren't "needed" and the speed is high enough to get rid of ISPs as an option.
    - woah 9y ago
      What's the difference between an ISP and a cell phone company?
Someone1234 9y ago
And related to that, how many towers currently have the bandwidth capacity at their base to support this new throughput at scale? All this may do is shift the bottleneck from between handset & tower, to the tower's own infrastructure. Mobile vendors won't mind because your phone will say "5G" in the status bar and they can charge more. But in reality your phone to web-site performance (particularly outside of artificial benchmarks) may not improve substantially.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- adventured 9y ago
  > how many towers currently have the bandwidth capacity at their base to support this new throughput at scale? All this may do is shift the bottleneck Expanding tower capacity is part of the 5G build-out. There's an upgrade spending binge going currently. The US wireless market has enough competition now, mostly thanks to T-Mobile, to force all of the carriers to properly upgrade. They're not wasting any time, all of them are aggressively pursuing it as a competitive advantage. AT&T and Verizon have been losing customers to T-Mobile for years now. If they make the mistake of claiming 5G, when it's not, T-Mobile will just use it as an opportunity to hammer them. Competition, it works. This also gives the large carriers in the US an opportunity to go after taking more broadband business from Comcast.
- martinald 9y ago
  Most sites have fibre backhaul now. And then point to point wireless can do 10gig+ these days anyway to a tower that does have fibre backhaul.
  - askvictor 9y ago
    Even with fibre, it wouldn't take many users on the theoretical capacity of 5g to saturate the uplink.
    - Retric 9y ago
minikites 9y ago
I regularly get less than 1 Mbps download on Verizon's LTE, so I have almost no hope for 5G to help this issue.
- matz1 9y ago
  why? if the article is true then with 5G you will get 14 Mbps, which is significant improvement isn't it ?
  - minikites 9y ago
    If it's a capacity issue, it doesn't matter how fast your phone can connect to the tower, the issue is connecting the tower to the rest of the internet.
briffle 9y ago
Even if it loses 60% of its speed due to congestion, if the price and monthly quotas are comparable to my home cable connection, I'll be saying good-bye to Comcast.. (especially if they have any decent upload speed, I push a lot of docker/vagrant images) I actually think the home market would be an ideal place for them to start, as its much less 'mobile' so if you get coverage, your not going to have spotty coverage while they fill in the gaps.
- joezydeco 9y ago
  T-Mobile just bought Layer3. They're totally gunning for home broadband/video. https://newsroom.t-mobile.com/news-and-blogs/uncarrier-tv-close.htm https://newsroom.t-mobile.com/news-and-blogs/uncarrier-tv-cl...
raesene9 9y ago
yeah they're 50Mbps seems awfully low, heck I can get 100Mbps on 4G and I live in a rural village in Scotland.
xutopia 9y ago
It hasn't become more congested. The providers throttle on purpose to reduce costs.

the_mitsuhiko 9y ago

5G is less about just faster network anyways. The goal as far as I understand is to use something like gre bonding to achieve some support for transparent handoff between base station and home network. So in theory if you are in your own wifi the network should not need to talk to your phone.

votepaunchy 9y ago
How is this different from WiFi Calling?
- freehunter 9y ago
  Hopefully it improves over that technology... I regularly get dropped calls switching from wifi to LTE networks, especially if I spend any amount of time on the edge of my wifi network (like if I take the call inside the house and then walk to my garage).
xur17 9y ago
Would this transparent handoff work for just calls, or for data as well? I'd love to see a solution to the wifi to 4g data handoff issues I run into.
- martinald 9y ago
  Multipath TCP is a solution to this, Apple has it in iOS. But adoption is really low.
  - ilovecars2 9y ago
    There are also some unsolved challenges with Multipath TCP, at least last time I studied it in 2014/2015. For example, when multiple good links are available, Multipath TCP will tend to flip flap between them rather than stabilise on one or the other. You can also get massive reordering which will tend to throw off the congestion control algorithm, but I believe that issue has since been resolved. Good chance are there are some other issues that make MPTCP not quite suitable for widespread use right now.

haikuginger 9y ago

It doesn't look like they considered substantial congestion for either 4G LTE or 5G, which should mean that while the specific bandwidth numbers may not hold up, the speed ratio should be comparable in production. You can see that they evaluate LTE at 50Mbps, which is around what Verizon phones were getting when they first started going to market but before congestion and backhaul limitations were hit due to the number of LTE devices on the network. Currently on LTE with AT&T, I can usually hit 10-20Mbps, so applying the 14x ratio, I'd expect to be able to get 100-300Mbps with 5G once congestion takes hold, which is quite sufficient.

Retric 9y ago
I think the biggest difference is going to be raising monthly download caps. 4gig to ~50 gig is huge, but T-mobil has 50 gig caps now. So, I could see most people getting by with 500 gig / month for home internet connections. Which is going to put a lot of pressure on ISP's to improve.
- jsgo 9y ago
  I'm genuinely hoping that it puts ISPs in a bad position to have no dominance in the market. I've been under a "provider" who caps out at 10Mbps with, sadly, about 40% uptime with our neighborhood for about 5 years (constant outages. On a first name/you've got my phone number basis with the contracted technician, as is quite a few people in the neighborhood). I joined the board to get out of it. We're due to get out of it at the end of March, but Spectrum has zero interest of coming in and servicing people. CenturyLink said they'd be willing... but want a 5-7 year contract and everyone in the neighborhood is understandably against that idea. So yes, bring on the time when mobile bandwidth is such that low caps aren't "needed" and the speed is high enough to get rid of ISPs as an option.
  - woah 9y ago
    What's the difference between an ISP and a cell phone company?

Someone1234 9y ago

And related to that, how many towers currently have the bandwidth capacity at their base to support this new throughput at scale? All this may do is shift the bottleneck from between handset & tower, to the tower's own infrastructure. Mobile vendors won't mind because your phone will say "5G" in the status bar and they can charge more. But in reality your phone to web-site performance (particularly outside of artificial benchmarks) may not improve substantially.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
adventured 9y ago
> how many towers currently have the bandwidth capacity at their base to support this new throughput at scale? All this may do is shift the bottleneck Expanding tower capacity is part of the 5G build-out. There's an upgrade spending binge going currently. The US wireless market has enough competition now, mostly thanks to T-Mobile, to force all of the carriers to properly upgrade. They're not wasting any time, all of them are aggressively pursuing it as a competitive advantage. AT&T and Verizon have been losing customers to T-Mobile for years now. If they make the mistake of claiming 5G, when it's not, T-Mobile will just use it as an opportunity to hammer them. Competition, it works. This also gives the large carriers in the US an opportunity to go after taking more broadband business from Comcast.
martinald 9y ago
Most sites have fibre backhaul now. And then point to point wireless can do 10gig+ these days anyway to a tower that does have fibre backhaul.
- askvictor 9y ago
  Even with fibre, it wouldn't take many users on the theoretical capacity of 5g to saturate the uplink.
  - Retric 9y ago

minikites 9y ago

I regularly get less than 1 Mbps download on Verizon's LTE, so I have almost no hope for 5G to help this issue.

matz1 9y ago
why? if the article is true then with 5G you will get 14 Mbps, which is significant improvement isn't it ?
- minikites 9y ago
  If it's a capacity issue, it doesn't matter how fast your phone can connect to the tower, the issue is connecting the tower to the rest of the internet.

briffle 9y ago

Even if it loses 60% of its speed due to congestion, if the price and monthly quotas are comparable to my home cable connection, I'll be saying good-bye to Comcast.. (especially if they have any decent upload speed, I push a lot of docker/vagrant images) I actually think the home market would be an ideal place for them to start, as its much less 'mobile' so if you get coverage, your not going to have spotty coverage while they fill in the gaps.

joezydeco 9y ago
T-Mobile just bought Layer3. They're totally gunning for home broadband/video. https://newsroom.t-mobile.com/news-and-blogs/uncarrier-tv-close.htm https://newsroom.t-mobile.com/news-and-blogs/uncarrier-tv-cl...

raesene9 9y ago

yeah they're 50Mbps seems awfully low, heck I can get 100Mbps on 4G and I live in a rural village in Scotland.

xutopia 9y ago

It hasn't become more congested. The providers throttle on purpose to reduce costs.