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If you've ever seriously played with wifi tech you very well know the higher the frequency the less penetration you get. In an indoor environment the differenc

by edoo 8y ago

If you've ever seriously played with wifi tech you very well know the higher the frequency the less penetration you get. In an indoor environment the difference between 800Mhz and 2.7Ghz can be astounding. 5G at 90Ghz is only going to work at certain line of sight distances. If you ever hear anyone talking about terahertz speeds you can almost be guaranteed that would be happening with very specifically located devices or within the confines of an integrated circuit.

Spooky23 8y ago
In my city, they are dropping poles with 5G radios all over the place, as close as every 150-300 yards. It’s a land rush as the city cannot do anything to stop them, the poles get dropped in all sorts of awkward places. My understanding is that repeaters will be mounted on streetlights as well. Those radios aren’t for phones, they are for fixed wireless with antennas attached to your home. 5G is the cable killer, and eventually the WiFi killer.
- chrisco255 8y ago
  What city is this and why can't the city do anything to stop them?
  - wbl 8y ago
    Because of federal preemption. Thankfully NIMBYs dont have the power to block communications improvements.
  - Spooky23 8y ago
    Albany, NY. The FCC is choosing to let the telecoms do whatever. It’s wasteful as they do things like block crosswalks with additional poles (to avoid renting from the electric utility) and place the poles in less attractive spots to reduce cost.
- learc83 8y ago
  You still need to run fiber to the radios, and at a couple hundred yards apart, you're going to be running fiber down almost every single street. If the goal is fixed installation, you could have just ran it a few feet more directly to the house. >and eventually the WiFi killer. How is this going to work? The radios you're talking about are very high frequency, so they require line of site.
  - Frqy3 8y ago
    Don't underestimate the cost difference between running a fibre down a street versus running it into every house.
    - learc83 8y ago
      Sure, but running it down the street is comparatively a much bigger cost. And I'm not sure the cost of maintaining a radio on every street corner, individual antennas on every house, and maintaining a clear line of site to every individual antenna is going to be cheaper than burying a few extra feet of fiber in the long run. Plus running fiber from the street to the house means the residents don't have to worry about heavy rain, trees in their neighbor's yard, or buses impacting their internet service.
      - rayiner 8y ago
        > Sure, but running it down the street is comparatively a much bigger cost. The branch factor kills you. I had fiber installed at my house. It took half a day to run it down the main road to the subdivision another half a day to run it to the pole next to my house. Another half a day to trench it under my driveway and install the CPE. If they just ran it to the subdivision and put up a 5G base station, they could serve a couple of hundred users. It would cost far more time to actually pull the fiber to each of those same couple of hundred users.
        learc83 8y ago
        One tower for a 200 house subdivision isn't going to work. If you want enough bandwidth to replace fiber to the premises, you're going to use millimeter wave (if you're talking one tower per neighborhood you're already talking about mm wave), so you'd need completely unobstructed line of site to every single house. The pole would need to be high enough that tower would he a more accurate description, you'd have to keep removing trees and cutting branches to maintain that clear line of site, and rain would cause problems. I've set up microwave transmitters before for a similar use case. At these frequencies it's going to be much harder. My guess is that they're going to have to run fiber to the end of the hypothetical subdivision anyway and set up multiple towers throughout. Also you don't need to actually run fiber to every house to get competitive speeds to 5G. And you can run fiber without burying it. I don't think 5G towers in every suburban neighborhood is going to be a viable replacement for cable.

by edoo 8y ago

Spooky23 8y ago

In my city, they are dropping poles with 5G radios all over the place, as close as every 150-300 yards. It’s a land rush as the city cannot do anything to stop them, the poles get dropped in all sorts of awkward places. My understanding is that repeaters will be mounted on streetlights as well. Those radios aren’t for phones, they are for fixed wireless with antennas attached to your home. 5G is the cable killer, and eventually the WiFi killer.

chrisco255 8y ago
What city is this and why can't the city do anything to stop them?
- wbl 8y ago
  Because of federal preemption. Thankfully NIMBYs dont have the power to block communications improvements.
- Spooky23 8y ago
  Albany, NY. The FCC is choosing to let the telecoms do whatever. It’s wasteful as they do things like block crosswalks with additional poles (to avoid renting from the electric utility) and place the poles in less attractive spots to reduce cost.
learc83 8y ago
You still need to run fiber to the radios, and at a couple hundred yards apart, you're going to be running fiber down almost every single street. If the goal is fixed installation, you could have just ran it a few feet more directly to the house. >and eventually the WiFi killer. How is this going to work? The radios you're talking about are very high frequency, so they require line of site.
- Frqy3 8y ago
  Don't underestimate the cost difference between running a fibre down a street versus running it into every house.
  - learc83 8y ago
    Sure, but running it down the street is comparatively a much bigger cost. And I'm not sure the cost of maintaining a radio on every street corner, individual antennas on every house, and maintaining a clear line of site to every individual antenna is going to be cheaper than burying a few extra feet of fiber in the long run. Plus running fiber from the street to the house means the residents don't have to worry about heavy rain, trees in their neighbor's yard, or buses impacting their internet service.
    - rayiner 8y ago
      > Sure, but running it down the street is comparatively a much bigger cost. The branch factor kills you. I had fiber installed at my house. It took half a day to run it down the main road to the subdivision another half a day to run it to the pole next to my house. Another half a day to trench it under my driveway and install the CPE. If they just ran it to the subdivision and put up a 5G base station, they could serve a couple of hundred users. It would cost far more time to actually pull the fiber to each of those same couple of hundred users.
      - learc83 8y ago
        One tower for a 200 house subdivision isn't going to work. If you want enough bandwidth to replace fiber to the premises, you're going to use millimeter wave (if you're talking one tower per neighborhood you're already talking about mm wave), so you'd need completely unobstructed line of site to every single house. The pole would need to be high enough that tower would he a more accurate description, you'd have to keep removing trees and cutting branches to maintain that clear line of site, and rain would cause problems. I've set up microwave transmitters before for a similar use case. At these frequencies it's going to be much harder. My guess is that they're going to have to run fiber to the end of the hypothetical subdivision anyway and set up multiple towers throughout. Also you don't need to actually run fiber to every house to get competitive speeds to 5G. And you can run fiber without burying it. I don't think 5G towers in every suburban neighborhood is going to be a viable replacement for cable.