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Cell capacity is a shared resource. The reason (or part of it) that Verizon limits your speed is to let others use it too. 5G brings smaller cells and more capa

Cell capacity is a shared resource. The reason (or part of it) that Verizon limits your speed is to let others use it too. 5G brings smaller cells and more capacity in each cell, which means less need to throttle.

ummonk 8y ago
They'd have to upgrade the backhaul too though to take advantage of 5G capacity.
- mikeash 8y ago
  I’m sure they would. For all the faults of telecoms companies, they generally don’t like spending a massive amount of money on upgrades that do nothing.
  - udwum 8y ago
    It does something, it makes your mobile say 5G on the top. That's worth paying more money for some people.
    - baddox 8y ago
      But that can be (and has been!) done with a phone software update, which is much cheaper.
      - udwum 8y ago
        Depends on how expensive the settlement will be. :)
  - penagwin 8y ago
    They love to when customers pay for it! ;) They spend massive amounts of money on marketing, at that doesn't benefit the product at all.
  - JohnFen 8y ago
    Being able to charge customers more for their service would absolutely count as "doing something".
- module0000 8y ago
  >> They'd have to upgrade the backhaul too though to take advantage of 5G capacity. THIS!!! Even if more sites are added, each with their own 10/100gb fiber run - it's still running to the main circuit for a region. That circuit isn't changing(in the near term), this will just consume more of it. Regions without colossal backbone access that are already bandwidth constrained will remain bandwidth constrained.
  - topranks 8y ago
    What, pray tell, is the “main circuit for a region?” Network bandwidth is still going up and up in speed. 100G was very expensive and hard to do only a few years back, now it’s becoming standard. DWDM systems continue to evolve.
- PeterisP 8y ago
  Backhaul generally isn't the bottleneck - you have fiber to the towers, and you can bump the capacity of that with comparably cheap hardware upgrades - however, the available "air bandwidth" per cell is pretty much a hard limit, and to go beyond that you need to build more cells which either requires more frequencies or more towers, which both are very expensive and time consuming. Perhaps it's different in USA, though, the geography and population density differences mean that the backhaul problems are different than in Europe; but here the bottleneck is on the radio side.
dragontamer 8y ago
Not just cell capacity, but phone capacity in general. One of my biggest memories of 9/11 as a school-boy was when all phone-lines were so congested that no one could call their parents. We all kept trying, but it was "busy" tones all the way through. That's the only time I remember land-lines all being too congested to make a call, but it was part of the event that a lot of us talked about for days later. Some of the kids were trying to call their parents to see if they were still alive, because some of them worked at the Pentagon. (Their parents were fine, but they too couldn't contact their kids because all the phone-networks were too congested. I presume everyone was trying to call each other at that time). Its the only time in my memory where I got a busy-signal from picking up a phone. You didn't even dial yet, it was too busy to even give a dial tone. For the kids out there: texting wasn't common yet, and pagers weren't really worth the trouble. Pagers worked like text messaging today, except you didn't have a screen... so it was hard to use and weren't really used very much. You called a pager using a land-line, and then dialed "44 33 555 555 666" for "HELLO". People generally still just did phone calls for simple messages like "I'm okay".

ummonk 8y ago

They'd have to upgrade the backhaul too though to take advantage of 5G capacity.

mikeash 8y ago
I’m sure they would. For all the faults of telecoms companies, they generally don’t like spending a massive amount of money on upgrades that do nothing.
- udwum 8y ago
  It does something, it makes your mobile say 5G on the top. That's worth paying more money for some people.
  - baddox 8y ago
    But that can be (and has been!) done with a phone software update, which is much cheaper.
    - udwum 8y ago
      Depends on how expensive the settlement will be. :)
- penagwin 8y ago
  They love to when customers pay for it! ;) They spend massive amounts of money on marketing, at that doesn't benefit the product at all.
- JohnFen 8y ago
  Being able to charge customers more for their service would absolutely count as "doing something".
module0000 8y ago
>> They'd have to upgrade the backhaul too though to take advantage of 5G capacity. THIS!!! Even if more sites are added, each with their own 10/100gb fiber run - it's still running to the main circuit for a region. That circuit isn't changing(in the near term), this will just consume more of it. Regions without colossal backbone access that are already bandwidth constrained will remain bandwidth constrained.
- topranks 8y ago
  What, pray tell, is the “main circuit for a region?” Network bandwidth is still going up and up in speed. 100G was very expensive and hard to do only a few years back, now it’s becoming standard. DWDM systems continue to evolve.
PeterisP 8y ago
Backhaul generally isn't the bottleneck - you have fiber to the towers, and you can bump the capacity of that with comparably cheap hardware upgrades - however, the available "air bandwidth" per cell is pretty much a hard limit, and to go beyond that you need to build more cells which either requires more frequencies or more towers, which both are very expensive and time consuming. Perhaps it's different in USA, though, the geography and population density differences mean that the backhaul problems are different than in Europe; but here the bottleneck is on the radio side.

dragontamer 8y ago

Not just cell capacity, but phone capacity in general. One of my biggest memories of 9/11 as a school-boy was when all phone-lines were so congested that no one could call their parents. We all kept trying, but it was "busy" tones all the way through. That's the only time I remember land-lines all being too congested to make a call, but it was part of the event that a lot of us talked about for days later. Some of the kids were trying to call their parents to see if they were still alive, because some of them worked at the Pentagon. (Their parents were fine, but they too couldn't contact their kids because all the phone-networks were too congested. I presume everyone was trying to call each other at that time). Its the only time in my memory where I got a busy-signal from picking up a phone. You didn't even dial yet, it was too busy to even give a dial tone. For the kids out there: texting wasn't common yet, and pagers weren't really worth the trouble. Pagers worked like text messaging today, except you didn't have a screen... so it was hard to use and weren't really used very much. You called a pager using a land-line, and then dialed "44 33 555 555 666" for "HELLO". People generally still just did phone calls for simple messages like "I'm okay".