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Why is the ‘race to 5G’ a race?

194 points by takanori 7y ago

shams93 7y ago
5g just means you can blow your entire data plan in 5 minutes if it even works. 4g is fast enough where they could actually just lie and sell you 4g service by labeling it 5g you likely wouldn't notice because YouTube already runs great on 4g.
- baroffoos 7y ago
  This is the big one imo. 4g is so fast compared to data caps that it might as well be unlimited speed because downloading anything big enough to make the speed matter would use your entire months data allowance in minutes. Until data caps are significantly higher I don't see 5g as anything other than a marketing name from people who want to sell new phones.
  - rayiner 7y ago
    That’s like arguing that improvements in mobile CPUs don’t matter because if you continuously pegged your CPU, you’d quickly run out of battery. Most consumer usage is bursty. In the era of single web pages that take up 5-10MB, going from 30 Mbps to 300 Mbps offers a marked improvement in user experience.
    - mrpopo 7y ago
      > In the era of single web pages that take up 5-10MB, going from 30 Mbps to 300 Mbps offers a marked improvement in user experience. I know the consumer can't change that. But the one at fault here is the bloated 10MB web app. It is incredibly wasteful to build an entirely new network infrastucture + new chips in order to let web devs include useless 2MB javascript frameworks.
    - drivebycomment 7y ago
      Also, the the overall available bandwidth of the system is one of the key factors behind the data cap, so we can expect the cap to increase in general when 5G rolls out. That means this line of"current data cap makes 5G useless" thinking is short-sighted.
      - cadence- 7y ago
        So you think wireless companies will spend billions of dollars upgrading their infrastructure to 5G only to later increase your monthly caps so that you will be able to pay less monthly? Keep dreaming. The reality is that they will use 5G to increase your monthly payments somehow.
        kalleboo 7y ago
        > increase your monthly caps so that you will be able to pay less monthly You're not going to pay less monthly because you're going to want to stay on the higher caps when the experience is better. YouTube will no longer be capped to 480p so you will use more video streaming bandwidth, etc. The wireless companies are also looking to eat the wireline companies' lunch. They want you to cancel Comcast for 5G. For that they'll have to have higher caps.
        mises 7y ago
        For that, they'll have to get rid of caps. At least for me; I dont have one. And none of this "first 25gb is fast" nonsense. Wifi is where I dont have to worry about how much data I use, so I can download my 30gb vm image. By doing so, I only have to buy a gig of data a month and only use 200mb of that. 5g has the capability to handle it, or if it doesn't, maybe it's not the future after all. At least not for home internet.
        kalleboo 7y ago
        For power users like us it will never be a replacement. But I know plenty of people who already use 4G as their home internet. The complain about congestion during the evening and hitting their cap at the end of the month, and some switch to fiber. Going from a 30 GB to a 300 GB cap, they would be serves perfectly.
    - baroffoos 7y ago
      The size of websites is based on the speed of the average users internet. If we were still on 3G no website would bundle 10MB of js. As soon as the average user gets 300Mbps mobile internet half of the internet will bundle 50MB of JS and another 50MB of wasm to power 400 tracking scrips that can use the new cpu power on phones.
    - mises 7y ago
      Single-threaded download still stinks. Maybe the new HTTP stuff will make it better, maybe not. Google drive is one of the few sites that maxes out a fast internet connection single-threaded; until others adopt those tweaks, why bother? I believe they have a better TCP control algorithm plus some other stuff?
  - palunon 7y ago
    That may be true for the US, but here I am in France with an unlimited 4G data cap for $16/month. There may be a hidden limit, but it's at least greater than 200GB/month.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- dearrifling 7y ago
  5G means that providers can sell higher data caps.
frankc 7y ago
This title does not match what is in the article at all. It's about the race to first, not the technology in general.
klondike_ 7y ago
The real end game of the race to 5G is increased unavoidable surveilance on the general population. 5G won't provide better speeds as much as increased bandwith. Instead of IoT devices requiring a connection to your WiFi network (and thus your consent) to phone home, they will send your data over 5G, with sim cards paid for by selling your data to advertisers. Ubiquitous internet access has a lot of exciting potential but inevitably it will make the mass surveillance problem even worse
- nyolfen 7y ago
  internet over cell networks is already ubiquitous, 5g is just faster. due to short wavelength it probably won't even be consistently accessible for a long time unless you live and work in a densely populated area.
  - 0xB31B1B 7y ago
    5g can support orders of magnitude more devices in a network cell. Have you ever been to a crowded outdoor area and had full data signal but no ability to complete any requests? It’s because the local network cell is oversubscribed so no new connections can be made. 5g has both smaller cells and a greater ability to support more devices in a single cell, thus making IoT 5g devices more acceptable. 4g LTE wouldn’t be able to support people having 10x the number of devices they currently have on cell networks.
    - joosters 7y ago
      Are you promoting smaller cells as a feature?
      - pjc50 7y ago
        Yes? That's the design intent of 5G: geographically smaller, denser cells. However I don't think these are intended to be deployed unconditionally everywhere, just in areas of high population density or foot traffic. Not on hilltop towers kilometers away.
      - 7y ago
locacorten 7y ago
Two points: 1. The article's point is that the "The Race to 5G is BS" and not "5G is BS". Please adjust. 2. I can try to offer an answer to the author. History has shown that a novel piece of technology often leads to innovation. Dial-up led to BBNs and the Web, broadband led to audio and video content delivery, and so on. Winning the "race to 5G" means the US will be the first to innovate in systems that take advantage of faster wireless broadband networks. That's important. IMO.
- takanori 7y ago
  You are technically correct. Updated the title.
- Despegar 7y ago
  >Winning the "race to 5G" means the US will be the first to innovate in systems that take advantage of faster wireless broadband networks. That's important. Why is being "first to innovate" important? What happens if we aren't first?
  - ori_b 7y ago
    The first to innovate tends to make the most money off of the innovation.
    - Despegar 7y ago
      Being first is often not a sustainable competitive advantage and we have a good case study in looking at the recent past with 3G and 4G. Apple makes all the profit in smartphones and all the incumbents like Nokia, RIM, Ericsson are gone.
      - ori_b 7y ago
        That's why you need to keep innovating if you want to keep making money. Turns out that doing a thing once isn't sufficient to profit off it for eternity.
mdorazio 7y ago
Ehhh, my opinion is that 5G is bullshit for consumer internet. Actual 4G (as opposed to whatever your carrier has in your area) is supposed to be capable of up to gigabit speeds, but that's obviously not happening many places, if anywhere due to a variety reasons. However, even so, 4G with good implementation and penetration would be fast enough to stream or download anything reasonable on mobile devices for quite a few years yet. 5G, however, is not bullshit for IoT. If you've ever tried to build an IoT device that uses 4G, you know it generally sucks. 5G will, if they actually build to the flashy spec, fix a lot of issues around latency, cost, and power to send/receive "thing" data.
- tanilama 7y ago
  > but that's obviously not happening many places Is it happening in ANY places at all? As the carriers add more and more users to their 4G network, and they are not in place to raise the price for their plans, the 4G is just getting worse and worse.
- sonnyblarney 7y ago
  "5G, however, is not bullshit for IoT" I humbly disagree because IoT itself is BS. We've been talking about it for a decade, and I don't have any use for it, nor do most folks. The ideas are nice, but practicalities are not there. There's a lack of standards, no consistent 'home hub', not enough use cases for expensive gear, security problems galore. The 'beachhead' for IOT has thus been Google/Alexa, which are really Cloud services and don't integrate very well locally. Theoretically, I can see my fridge telling me what to order, my microwave knowing how long to cook etc. etc. but I'm wary that any of it will come to fruition for a long time. But I'm not that concerned because I don't care. I think IoT needs a 'killer app' that everyone 'needs' which paves the way for everything else. Nobody was building anything for the data networks when BlackBerry came along with an addictive product. It was not until BlackBerry was printing money that Apple and Google took notice and thus justified massive investment in their mobile offers.
  - ianai 7y ago
    I agree. I think it may be a dollar value thing. I recently doubled my income and still can’t see the value in expensive Hue bulbs. Their price for wirelessly dial-able colored light far exceeds my willingness to pay and deal with hub generations. I might budge if they were half their cost, or if I doubled my income again. But probably not because of the technicalities. Seriously, what benefits from perfect information? Human stuff...healthcare, weather, investment choices, etc. the information I would like on my “things” are things like when things will fail or what I need to do to keep them. I don’t need nor want a fridge suggesting merchandise for me. The other use is wireless control-that’s also got limited appeal.
sumoboy 7y ago
I'm expecting higher costs for the consumer, increased data plan costs, new phones, less coverage. All sounds positive to fund these new networks nobody is asking for.
- kalleboo 7y ago
  Did higher data plan costs happen in the transitions from 2G to 3G and 3G to 4G?
  - mises 7y ago
    5g is a massive capex on the part of telcos due to density requirements orders of magnitude greater than 2,3,4g. Unit on every block kind of density is significantly cost increase; no way around higher prices.
55555 7y ago
5G boxes will be on "every street" meaning that real-time triangulation of devices and thus citzens will have exact precision. Whoever wins the race to 5G will be the one who writes the protocol and thus it will be tailored for their backdoors in the code. The US wants their backdoors in the code, not China's.
- frittig 7y ago
  FYI, even according to the protocol it is back doored. Search for lawful intercept.
  - nradov 7y ago
    It's a front door, not a back door. Lawful intercept of telephone calls has been a stated requirement for every previous generation of cellular technology going back many years. This was never a secret.
    - JohnFen 7y ago
      It's still a back door. It's just a legally required one.
- ulfw 7y ago
  Only in countries like the US that need millimetre wave for 5G
- kalleboo 7y ago
  > Whoever wins the race to 5G will be the one who writes the protocol A common standard is already decided, the race is just to deployment. Does the US manufacture any 5G network equipment anyway? I thought it was all Ericsson, Nokia and Huawei
  - Scea91 7y ago
    Not sure, but what about Cisco?
  - 7y ago
9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
One data point: FOMA [1] in Japan was the world's first commercial 3G service to launch. Was it the "winner" of that "war"? No, it was basically an incompatible fork of UMTS [2] that in the end was used by nobody except NTT Docomo, who had to retool a few years later at considerable expense to be compatible with the global standard. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_Mobile_Multimedia_Access https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_Mobile_Multimedia_A... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMTS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMTS
- ulfw 7y ago
  and similarly in the US Wimax was Sprint's disastrous entry into 4G https://www.rcrwireless.com/20160401/opinion/worst-week-bold-look-back-sprint-wimax-network-tag2 https://www.rcrwireless.com/20160401/opinion/worst-week-bold...
  - nradov 7y ago
    Which has left Sprint crippled to this day, to the extent they need to merge with T-Mobile to fund a 5G network. The rest of the industry has well learned not to jump too soon.
- qtwhat 7y ago
  This answer and the answers below ignored one simple point: 5G is a global collaboration (3GPP), not a regional experiment, which includes operators around the world and vendor around the world (not true, few from American..). You can basically call 3GPP the dictatorial organization, simply it is the only organization truely working on the cellular technique. More importantly, it is getting stronger, and the ecosystem getting more diversified as more OTT and devices vendors like Google, Tencent, Alibaba, Apple, all joining in. Face it, US is being left behind.
  - 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
    FOMA was an UMTS implementation also shepherded by 3GPP. This didn't stop it from being incompatible. Put another way, the W3C is supposed to set global standards for web browsing, and we all know how compatible browsers are...
madengr 7y ago
It’s really no different than winning the supercomputer race; there is no finish line and no end. I’d rather have the USA take its time and develop mmWave 5G hardware than the lower frequency stuff Huawei is developing, as mmWave is far more interesting, technically.
- kingosticks 7y ago
  But which US companies would be working on developing that tech?
  - madengr 7y ago
    Anokiwave and Qualcomm, off the top of my head. TI has a mmWave in CMOS process, so I can see them getting in on it.
    - kingosticks 7y ago
      I'd never heard of that first one. Is it supposed to be an anagram of Nokia, are they related?!
      - madengr 7y ago
        No relation that I know of; it’s a US company making IC for sub array beamforming.
ajxs 7y ago
The one issue at stake that I can think of is the manufacture of the underlying hardware infrastructure. The risk associated with relying on hardware manufactured in China for critical infrastructure seems to be of some concern for the US government. It's probably unlikely in any case, but importing Chinese-manufactured 5G modems for phone handsets would potentially pose an issue, so would using Chinese-made hardware for telecom infrastructure. I don't think this has any bearing on what telecom companies offer consumers, or those other aspects of the '5G race'. Nonetheless, falling behind Asia in developing this technology might have other consequences.
- rswail 7y ago
  The proper answer to losing the technological race for hardware development is to accelerate your own. But instead the US government are doing their best to hobble China.
takanori 7y ago
I’ve read L5 autonomous cars are contingent on 5G and others say it’s not a factor. What’s the consensus here?
- javagram 7y ago
  Sounds like there isn’t a consensus according to your own statement. Waymo is running on public roads right now without 5G. IMO: if 5G is required for an “autonomous” car it can’t qualify as L5. That’s a remote controlled car not an autonomous car...
- roca 7y ago
  It would be crazy to build a car that won't work unless you have a 5G connection.
- tanilama 7y ago
  5G, if it is really the umbrella term for ubiquitous unlimited gigabit internet access anywhere, any corner on earth, then it might be useful to self-driving vehicle, since they can download the high precision maps quickly anywhere they go. But that is it. First of all, 5G couldn't possible live up its claim, consider the number of stations that are required and how densely they need to be placed next to each other, it only makes economical sense to deploy them to populous cities. But most importantly, L5 driving needs to tackle its 'brain' problem, that is a highly intelligent core device to schedule the vehicle's actions regardless of weather/light/road condition/erroneous situation where accidents occurs, to name just a few, and makes sure the driver and passengers alike, are safe. I didn't see how this could happen any time soon, not to even mention the legal challenges it might be facing.
- takanori 7y ago
  https://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/wireless/mwc-barcelona-2019-on-the-road-to-selfdriving-cars-5g-will-make-us-better-drivers https://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/wireless/mwc-barcelona-201...
kristianov 7y ago
Sadly I see only one killer feature in all 5G phones: foldable screens.
- cududa 7y ago
  What on earth does one have to do with the other
sonnyblarney 7y ago
The author has a point to suggest that 5G is overhyped. Increasing data vastly will be nice, but it won't change anything fundamentally. I suspect usage will go up, caps will go up - but I don't suspect any new lines of business to come out of this. A 'quicker 5G rollout' will not make any economy more competitive, or given them an advantage. 5G will require different tower configs and will be a pain for carriers. I'm buying a new device right now and for the first time I'm looking to downgrade. I hardly use my data, and I could care less about all these stupid apps bothering me. I want a cheaper, simpler option. 5G will probably make 'dongles for your laptop' more in consumer range for prices, in which we may see people shift away from cable, that will be nice. And using that or pumping Netflix from my mobile to the screen might be nice.
- SapporoChris 7y ago
  Sorry, 'I don't suspect any new lines of business to come out of this.' is akin to '640K of memory should be enough for anybody' (falsely attributed to Gates) There's a lot of speculation of what new lines of business and evolving lines of business spring from 5G capabilities. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-16/south-korea-s-embrace-of-5g-may-usher-in-an-era-of-robot-friends https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-16/south-kor... Other areas just off top of my head: Mobile gaming including Mobile VR, Autonomous Vehicles where lower latency promised by 5G is critical, and replacement of wired data services with wireless.
  - sonnyblarney 7y ago
    Mobile gaming and autonomous vehicles are already developing industries and will develop irrespective of the availability of 5G. We're already not close to utilizing the full bandwidth power of LTE for example.
    - fsiefken 7y ago
      My Oculus Quest might well be soon saturating my 4G with h.265 or h.264 encoded VR streams; teleporting me and others all over.
SapporoChris 7y ago
Has anyone found any decent reporting on how the rollout of 5G in USA is progressing? South Korea has been rolling out 5G and I found a decent article that highlighted numbers and issues.[1] But for USA all I see is marketing propaganda from the Telcos. [1] https://www.fitchsolutions.com/corporates/telecoms-media-technology/south-korea-5g-rollout-key-highlights-progress-so-far-24-05-2019 https://www.fitchsolutions.com/corporates/telecoms-media-tec...
Causality1 7y ago
Being able to burn through Verizon's 22GB "secret" data cap on my "unlimited" plan in ten minutes instead of 70 minutes at normal 4G speeds is not an upgrade in any way. Meanwhile I still can't send a text message or check my email when visiting my parents' house out in the boonies. 5G is a scam.
8077628 7y ago
Oh ho ho. Next you're going to be questioning the "race to AI". It's like you want to be forced to read articles about raccoons with distemper, instead of buzzwordy tech FUD pieces, on slow news days. Is this what you want? Is it possible, dare I say it, that you might even want want us to lose the race to racing? Why are you rocking the boat?
mises 7y ago
I've seen "millimeter wave" in tsa and heard it takes a picture of you without clothes, though they now supposedly obscure it. Creepy as all get-out. Anyway, could a hijacked 5g unit do this? Seems like a serious concern.
- vectorEQ 7y ago
  ultrasound would be easier and cheaper...
- JohnFen 7y ago
  > could a hijacked 5g unit do this? No, for two reasons. First, the mmwave scanners require more power than 5G cell sites will provide. Second, the transmission of the radio signals is only half of the equation for this sort of thing. The other half is the sophisticated receiving systems that are required, and that 5G cell sites won't have.
lysp 7y ago
One of the large Australia carriers is promoting 5g as a "paid add-on". There is some marketing material saying it'd cost an extra $15 per-month on top of your normal plan's price. With "first 12 months free" to try it out. This is a 20-30% premium for average prices. I can see the uptake of 5g in that case being less than 5%. 4g is already fast enough for most things, so very few will actually need faster. I'm not sure if they are completely clueless thinking people will pay extra, or they are trying to discourage large uptake.
- Creationer 7y ago
  Pricing like this is not designed so that people actually pay for it. Instead it creates 'value' which is given away with some other product. For example: Free 5G for all business customers, all customers on an $80 plan or above, etc. It also helps smooth demand - I don't think Telstra have invested a lot in 5G.
nraynaud 7y ago
https://theamphour.com/430-shahriar-discusses-5g/ https://theamphour.com/430-shahriar-discusses-5g/ I am a bit confused, according to the preceding link, 5G can’t be at all used like 4G, in particular it can’t be used from a base station to a mobile phone. Can someone explain a bit more?
Epopeehief54 7y ago
Not even a full finished roll out in LTE in rural areas. Telecoms don’t want to lower prices for us, so 5G is going to sell at a premium to consumers. This race about "who control 5G controls the world" is ridiculous.
superkuh 7y ago
5G-NR standard only gives a 15-20% gain in data thoroughput over the same bandwidth as compared to 4G LTE. The vast majority of the increase in thoroughput has to come from the millimeter wave bands. Think about streetlights to get an idea of coverage and propagation. Now think about running internet fiber to every streetlight. It's quite a task. It'll only be done (and has only been done so far in the USA) in areas that require high bits/khz/km^2 like entertainment stadiums. Additionally, almost no two countries actually have overlapping 5G bands. It's a mess of competing standards. So it'll be different frontend modules for controlling the antenna arrays required on the handsets (high power usage and space requirements) due to the integration required. Handsets are going to have to get bigger. Unlikably big and specific to region. And beyond that the 5G setups being implemented now aren't stand alone. They're both LTE and Non-Standalone (NSA) 5G. The 5G just provides extra bandwidth and isn't used as a control for the handsets. It more than doubles the complexity of setups because of the trouble RF designers have to take with harmonics and intermodulation. All the competing national freq band standards mean different filtering solutions. The future will not be evenly distributed.
- emilfihlman 7y ago
  >5G-NR standard only gives a 15-20% 15-25% is _fucking_ _huge_. Even a few percent increase would be worth it for telcos.
  - woah 7y ago
    15%-20% might be huge for Verizon’s CFO and shareholders, but it’s inconsequential for consumers who are currently being sold some terabit-IoT-self-driving-car-VR-surgery yarn in an effort to get governments to give handouts of property and spectrum to anyone waving the magical 5g sauce.
    - Cookiesaurusbex 7y ago
      It's also inconsequential for everyone who has a data cap on their phone plan. Running out of data 20% sooner isn't a win for people who can't afford a luxury plan.
agsamek 7y ago
This is similar to new car sales being an early indicator of a recession. Government answer in the wake of a coming recession? Subsidize cars. Winning 5g race is an indication of technological leadership. But you cannot help win it forcefully. You should just watch it respectfully and draw forward looking conclusions. Of course some people can use it instrumentally to get benefits or desired decisions. Anyway - congrats to the winner.
Proven 7y ago
Couldn’t agree more - in essence the crony capitalists (and useful idiots) want the government to help them market their tech (and pay for it with taxpayer money). I couldn’t care less. Let free market work - if millions can’t wait for 5G, let them race to it at premium prices and let the telcos and equipment makers meet them half-way with higher and non-subsidized service prices. The “race” to 5G indeed is a complete bullshit.
hestefisk 7y ago
Isn’t parts of the US network still on CDMA? The reason Europe has had lower prices is because we have been better at infra-carrier standards and co-opetition / lowering transaction costs. Perhaps before that the Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT) is a great example for others to lead by.
Nokinside 7y ago
Home markets are important for new technologies and services that build on the top of the new infrastructure. US companies and startups are not going be first to innovate 5G technologies and services if their home market is behind. The US tech sector is already out from the main 4G/LTE/5G air infrastructure business except for components and mobile phones. There is only Eriksson, Nokia, Huawei and ZTE, Samsung is #5 with very tiny market share.
- JohnFen 7y ago
  > US companies and startups are not going be first to innovate 5G technologies and services if their home market is behind. That answer is really just begging the question. Why is that so important as to require such a huge push as a "race" implies?
Pulletwee12549 7y ago
Not even a full finished roll out in LTE in rural areas. Telecoms don’t want to lower prices for us, so 5G is going to sell at a premium to consumers. This race about "who control 5G controls the world" is ridiculous.
- Nokinside 7y ago
  Rural areas will benefit from Low-band FDD 5G.
Foivos 7y ago
5G is not that much for consumers but for industries [1]. There is a number of industry use cases that are just impossible for anything other than 5G. For example, self driving cars, virtual /augmented reality, support for huge numbers of IoT devices (ie. smart city). Also, 5G is not just higher speed / reduced latency. The core network is way more flexible than 4G. This can allow it to provide guaranteed service to specific users, like first responders. That way first responders will be able to use the way cheaper and feature rich commercial networks instead of dedicated networks as it is the case now. The first countries to have 5G infrastructure will be able to have faster developments on these sectors. [1] The only major difference for consumers, given how they currently use their mobile devices, is that now everyone at a live concert will be able to stream it to instagram. I do not know if it a good thing though.
- dmitrygr 7y ago
  1. What does 5g have with self driving cars? And specifically what does lack of 5g do to make them any more or less possible? 2. NO wireless service provides GUARANTEED anything. To anyone. That's not how physics works
  - Foivos 7y ago
    1. It is not my field, but in general, self driving cars should be connected to a central entity that manages them. For more information search for "C-V2X". 2. They guarantee an SLA.
    - JohnFen 7y ago
      > self driving cars should be connected to a central entity that manages them Why?
  - marios 7y ago
    Absolutely agree with your second point. If only marketing had gotten the memo ... Regarding your question, self driving cars have to interact with their environment. Receiving a message that indicates there is a vehicule of x,y coordinates may be better than trying to figure it out on your own using sensors. Getting the message in a timely fashion is essential, otherwise it is practically useless. 5G could be the communication channel for the message to transit, given that 5G aims to achieve lower latencies that 4G.
IlegCowcat 7y ago
The ironic part is that mobile 5G is basically pointless. Fixed 5G could provide competition to cable companies if it actually works, but mobile 5G’s range is so short that anywhere with mobile 5G will be getting several hundred mbps on 4G from the same site and fiber improvements necessary for 5G that 5G itself is pointless. The upside is that the areas that get a dense small-cell buildout for 5G will have way better 4G service as a result that virtually everyone can use as soon as the cells go up and the fiber is lit up for them.
JohnFen 7y ago
It's not really a race. It's more like a scam. The telecoms and equipment manufacturers want to make it seem like a race in an effort to make people demand 5G, to increase the amount of subsidies as much as possible.

194 points by takanori 7y ago

5g just means you can blow your entire data plan in 5 minutes if it even works. 4g is fast enough where they could actually just lie and sell you 4g service by labeling it 5g you likely wouldn't notice because YouTube already runs great on 4g.

baroffoos 7y ago
This is the big one imo. 4g is so fast compared to data caps that it might as well be unlimited speed because downloading anything big enough to make the speed matter would use your entire months data allowance in minutes. Until data caps are significantly higher I don't see 5g as anything other than a marketing name from people who want to sell new phones.
- rayiner 7y ago
  That’s like arguing that improvements in mobile CPUs don’t matter because if you continuously pegged your CPU, you’d quickly run out of battery. Most consumer usage is bursty. In the era of single web pages that take up 5-10MB, going from 30 Mbps to 300 Mbps offers a marked improvement in user experience.
  - mrpopo 7y ago
    > In the era of single web pages that take up 5-10MB, going from 30 Mbps to 300 Mbps offers a marked improvement in user experience. I know the consumer can't change that. But the one at fault here is the bloated 10MB web app. It is incredibly wasteful to build an entirely new network infrastucture + new chips in order to let web devs include useless 2MB javascript frameworks.
  - drivebycomment 7y ago
    Also, the the overall available bandwidth of the system is one of the key factors behind the data cap, so we can expect the cap to increase in general when 5G rolls out. That means this line of"current data cap makes 5G useless" thinking is short-sighted.
    - cadence- 7y ago
      So you think wireless companies will spend billions of dollars upgrading their infrastructure to 5G only to later increase your monthly caps so that you will be able to pay less monthly? Keep dreaming. The reality is that they will use 5G to increase your monthly payments somehow.
      - kalleboo 7y ago
        > increase your monthly caps so that you will be able to pay less monthly You're not going to pay less monthly because you're going to want to stay on the higher caps when the experience is better. YouTube will no longer be capped to 480p so you will use more video streaming bandwidth, etc. The wireless companies are also looking to eat the wireline companies' lunch. They want you to cancel Comcast for 5G. For that they'll have to have higher caps.
        mises 7y ago
        For that, they'll have to get rid of caps. At least for me; I dont have one. And none of this "first 25gb is fast" nonsense. Wifi is where I dont have to worry about how much data I use, so I can download my 30gb vm image. By doing so, I only have to buy a gig of data a month and only use 200mb of that. 5g has the capability to handle it, or if it doesn't, maybe it's not the future after all. At least not for home internet.
        kalleboo 7y ago
        For power users like us it will never be a replacement. But I know plenty of people who already use 4G as their home internet. The complain about congestion during the evening and hitting their cap at the end of the month, and some switch to fiber. Going from a 30 GB to a 300 GB cap, they would be serves perfectly.
  - baroffoos 7y ago
    The size of websites is based on the speed of the average users internet. If we were still on 3G no website would bundle 10MB of js. As soon as the average user gets 300Mbps mobile internet half of the internet will bundle 50MB of JS and another 50MB of wasm to power 400 tracking scrips that can use the new cpu power on phones.
  - mises 7y ago
    Single-threaded download still stinks. Maybe the new HTTP stuff will make it better, maybe not. Google drive is one of the few sites that maxes out a fast internet connection single-threaded; until others adopt those tweaks, why bother? I believe they have a better TCP control algorithm plus some other stuff?
- palunon 7y ago
  That may be true for the US, but here I am in France with an unlimited 4G data cap for $16/month. There may be a hidden limit, but it's at least greater than 200GB/month.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
dearrifling 7y ago
5G means that providers can sell higher data caps.

frankc 7y ago

This title does not match what is in the article at all. It's about the race to first, not the technology in general.

klondike_ 7y ago

The real end game of the race to 5G is increased unavoidable surveilance on the general population. 5G won't provide better speeds as much as increased bandwith. Instead of IoT devices requiring a connection to your WiFi network (and thus your consent) to phone home, they will send your data over 5G, with sim cards paid for by selling your data to advertisers. Ubiquitous internet access has a lot of exciting potential but inevitably it will make the mass surveillance problem even worse

nyolfen 7y ago
internet over cell networks is already ubiquitous, 5g is just faster. due to short wavelength it probably won't even be consistently accessible for a long time unless you live and work in a densely populated area.
- 0xB31B1B 7y ago
  5g can support orders of magnitude more devices in a network cell. Have you ever been to a crowded outdoor area and had full data signal but no ability to complete any requests? It’s because the local network cell is oversubscribed so no new connections can be made. 5g has both smaller cells and a greater ability to support more devices in a single cell, thus making IoT 5g devices more acceptable. 4g LTE wouldn’t be able to support people having 10x the number of devices they currently have on cell networks.
  - joosters 7y ago
    Are you promoting smaller cells as a feature?
    - pjc50 7y ago
      Yes? That's the design intent of 5G: geographically smaller, denser cells. However I don't think these are intended to be deployed unconditionally everywhere, just in areas of high population density or foot traffic. Not on hilltop towers kilometers away.
    - 7y ago

locacorten 7y ago

Two points: 1. The article's point is that the "The Race to 5G is BS" and not "5G is BS". Please adjust. 2. I can try to offer an answer to the author. History has shown that a novel piece of technology often leads to innovation. Dial-up led to BBNs and the Web, broadband led to audio and video content delivery, and so on. Winning the "race to 5G" means the US will be the first to innovate in systems that take advantage of faster wireless broadband networks. That's important. IMO.

takanori 7y ago
You are technically correct. Updated the title.
Despegar 7y ago
>Winning the "race to 5G" means the US will be the first to innovate in systems that take advantage of faster wireless broadband networks. That's important. Why is being "first to innovate" important? What happens if we aren't first?
- ori_b 7y ago
  The first to innovate tends to make the most money off of the innovation.
  - Despegar 7y ago
    Being first is often not a sustainable competitive advantage and we have a good case study in looking at the recent past with 3G and 4G. Apple makes all the profit in smartphones and all the incumbents like Nokia, RIM, Ericsson are gone.
    - ori_b 7y ago
      That's why you need to keep innovating if you want to keep making money. Turns out that doing a thing once isn't sufficient to profit off it for eternity.

mdorazio 7y ago

Ehhh, my opinion is that 5G is bullshit for consumer internet. Actual 4G (as opposed to whatever your carrier has in your area) is supposed to be capable of up to gigabit speeds, but that's obviously not happening many places, if anywhere due to a variety reasons. However, even so, 4G with good implementation and penetration would be fast enough to stream or download anything reasonable on mobile devices for quite a few years yet. 5G, however, is not bullshit for IoT. If you've ever tried to build an IoT device that uses 4G, you know it generally sucks. 5G will, if they actually build to the flashy spec, fix a lot of issues around latency, cost, and power to send/receive "thing" data.

tanilama 7y ago
> but that's obviously not happening many places Is it happening in ANY places at all? As the carriers add more and more users to their 4G network, and they are not in place to raise the price for their plans, the 4G is just getting worse and worse.
sonnyblarney 7y ago
"5G, however, is not bullshit for IoT" I humbly disagree because IoT itself is BS. We've been talking about it for a decade, and I don't have any use for it, nor do most folks. The ideas are nice, but practicalities are not there. There's a lack of standards, no consistent 'home hub', not enough use cases for expensive gear, security problems galore. The 'beachhead' for IOT has thus been Google/Alexa, which are really Cloud services and don't integrate very well locally. Theoretically, I can see my fridge telling me what to order, my microwave knowing how long to cook etc. etc. but I'm wary that any of it will come to fruition for a long time. But I'm not that concerned because I don't care. I think IoT needs a 'killer app' that everyone 'needs' which paves the way for everything else. Nobody was building anything for the data networks when BlackBerry came along with an addictive product. It was not until BlackBerry was printing money that Apple and Google took notice and thus justified massive investment in their mobile offers.
- ianai 7y ago
  I agree. I think it may be a dollar value thing. I recently doubled my income and still can’t see the value in expensive Hue bulbs. Their price for wirelessly dial-able colored light far exceeds my willingness to pay and deal with hub generations. I might budge if they were half their cost, or if I doubled my income again. But probably not because of the technicalities. Seriously, what benefits from perfect information? Human stuff...healthcare, weather, investment choices, etc. the information I would like on my “things” are things like when things will fail or what I need to do to keep them. I don’t need nor want a fridge suggesting merchandise for me. The other use is wireless control-that’s also got limited appeal.

sumoboy 7y ago

I'm expecting higher costs for the consumer, increased data plan costs, new phones, less coverage. All sounds positive to fund these new networks nobody is asking for.

kalleboo 7y ago
Did higher data plan costs happen in the transitions from 2G to 3G and 3G to 4G?
- mises 7y ago
  5g is a massive capex on the part of telcos due to density requirements orders of magnitude greater than 2,3,4g. Unit on every block kind of density is significantly cost increase; no way around higher prices.

55555 7y ago

5G boxes will be on "every street" meaning that real-time triangulation of devices and thus citzens will have exact precision. Whoever wins the race to 5G will be the one who writes the protocol and thus it will be tailored for their backdoors in the code. The US wants their backdoors in the code, not China's.

frittig 7y ago
FYI, even according to the protocol it is back doored. Search for lawful intercept.
- nradov 7y ago
  It's a front door, not a back door. Lawful intercept of telephone calls has been a stated requirement for every previous generation of cellular technology going back many years. This was never a secret.
  - JohnFen 7y ago
    It's still a back door. It's just a legally required one.
ulfw 7y ago
Only in countries like the US that need millimetre wave for 5G
kalleboo 7y ago
> Whoever wins the race to 5G will be the one who writes the protocol A common standard is already decided, the race is just to deployment. Does the US manufacture any 5G network equipment anyway? I thought it was all Ericsson, Nokia and Huawei
- Scea91 7y ago
  Not sure, but what about Cisco?
- 7y ago

9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago

One data point: FOMA [1] in Japan was the world's first commercial 3G service to launch. Was it the "winner" of that "war"? No, it was basically an incompatible fork of UMTS [2] that in the end was used by nobody except NTT Docomo, who had to retool a few years later at considerable expense to be compatible with the global standard. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_Mobile_Multimedia_Access https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_Mobile_Multimedia_A... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMTS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMTS

ulfw 7y ago
and similarly in the US Wimax was Sprint's disastrous entry into 4G https://www.rcrwireless.com/20160401/opinion/worst-week-bold-look-back-sprint-wimax-network-tag2 https://www.rcrwireless.com/20160401/opinion/worst-week-bold...
- nradov 7y ago
  Which has left Sprint crippled to this day, to the extent they need to merge with T-Mobile to fund a 5G network. The rest of the industry has well learned not to jump too soon.
qtwhat 7y ago
This answer and the answers below ignored one simple point: 5G is a global collaboration (3GPP), not a regional experiment, which includes operators around the world and vendor around the world (not true, few from American..). You can basically call 3GPP the dictatorial organization, simply it is the only organization truely working on the cellular technique. More importantly, it is getting stronger, and the ecosystem getting more diversified as more OTT and devices vendors like Google, Tencent, Alibaba, Apple, all joining in. Face it, US is being left behind.
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
  FOMA was an UMTS implementation also shepherded by 3GPP. This didn't stop it from being incompatible. Put another way, the W3C is supposed to set global standards for web browsing, and we all know how compatible browsers are...

madengr 7y ago

It’s really no different than winning the supercomputer race; there is no finish line and no end. I’d rather have the USA take its time and develop mmWave 5G hardware than the lower frequency stuff Huawei is developing, as mmWave is far more interesting, technically.

kingosticks 7y ago
But which US companies would be working on developing that tech?
- madengr 7y ago
  Anokiwave and Qualcomm, off the top of my head. TI has a mmWave in CMOS process, so I can see them getting in on it.
  - kingosticks 7y ago
    I'd never heard of that first one. Is it supposed to be an anagram of Nokia, are they related?!
    - madengr 7y ago
      No relation that I know of; it’s a US company making IC for sub array beamforming.

ajxs 7y ago

The one issue at stake that I can think of is the manufacture of the underlying hardware infrastructure. The risk associated with relying on hardware manufactured in China for critical infrastructure seems to be of some concern for the US government. It's probably unlikely in any case, but importing Chinese-manufactured 5G modems for phone handsets would potentially pose an issue, so would using Chinese-made hardware for telecom infrastructure. I don't think this has any bearing on what telecom companies offer consumers, or those other aspects of the '5G race'. Nonetheless, falling behind Asia in developing this technology might have other consequences.

rswail 7y ago
The proper answer to losing the technological race for hardware development is to accelerate your own. But instead the US government are doing their best to hobble China.

takanori 7y ago

I’ve read L5 autonomous cars are contingent on 5G and others say it’s not a factor. What’s the consensus here?

javagram 7y ago
Sounds like there isn’t a consensus according to your own statement. Waymo is running on public roads right now without 5G. IMO: if 5G is required for an “autonomous” car it can’t qualify as L5. That’s a remote controlled car not an autonomous car...
roca 7y ago
It would be crazy to build a car that won't work unless you have a 5G connection.
tanilama 7y ago
5G, if it is really the umbrella term for ubiquitous unlimited gigabit internet access anywhere, any corner on earth, then it might be useful to self-driving vehicle, since they can download the high precision maps quickly anywhere they go. But that is it. First of all, 5G couldn't possible live up its claim, consider the number of stations that are required and how densely they need to be placed next to each other, it only makes economical sense to deploy them to populous cities. But most importantly, L5 driving needs to tackle its 'brain' problem, that is a highly intelligent core device to schedule the vehicle's actions regardless of weather/light/road condition/erroneous situation where accidents occurs, to name just a few, and makes sure the driver and passengers alike, are safe. I didn't see how this could happen any time soon, not to even mention the legal challenges it might be facing.
takanori 7y ago
https://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/wireless/mwc-barcelona-2019-on-the-road-to-selfdriving-cars-5g-will-make-us-better-drivers https://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/wireless/mwc-barcelona-201...

kristianov 7y ago

Sadly I see only one killer feature in all 5G phones: foldable screens.

cududa 7y ago
What on earth does one have to do with the other

sonnyblarney 7y ago

The author has a point to suggest that 5G is overhyped. Increasing data vastly will be nice, but it won't change anything fundamentally. I suspect usage will go up, caps will go up - but I don't suspect any new lines of business to come out of this. A 'quicker 5G rollout' will not make any economy more competitive, or given them an advantage. 5G will require different tower configs and will be a pain for carriers. I'm buying a new device right now and for the first time I'm looking to downgrade. I hardly use my data, and I could care less about all these stupid apps bothering me. I want a cheaper, simpler option. 5G will probably make 'dongles for your laptop' more in consumer range for prices, in which we may see people shift away from cable, that will be nice. And using that or pumping Netflix from my mobile to the screen might be nice.

SapporoChris 7y ago
Sorry, 'I don't suspect any new lines of business to come out of this.' is akin to '640K of memory should be enough for anybody' (falsely attributed to Gates) There's a lot of speculation of what new lines of business and evolving lines of business spring from 5G capabilities. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-16/south-korea-s-embrace-of-5g-may-usher-in-an-era-of-robot-friends https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-16/south-kor... Other areas just off top of my head: Mobile gaming including Mobile VR, Autonomous Vehicles where lower latency promised by 5G is critical, and replacement of wired data services with wireless.
- sonnyblarney 7y ago
  Mobile gaming and autonomous vehicles are already developing industries and will develop irrespective of the availability of 5G. We're already not close to utilizing the full bandwidth power of LTE for example.
  - fsiefken 7y ago
    My Oculus Quest might well be soon saturating my 4G with h.265 or h.264 encoded VR streams; teleporting me and others all over.

SapporoChris 7y ago

Has anyone found any decent reporting on how the rollout of 5G in USA is progressing? South Korea has been rolling out 5G and I found a decent article that highlighted numbers and issues.[1] But for USA all I see is marketing propaganda from the Telcos. [1] https://www.fitchsolutions.com/corporates/telecoms-media-technology/south-korea-5g-rollout-key-highlights-progress-so-far-24-05-2019 https://www.fitchsolutions.com/corporates/telecoms-media-tec...

Causality1 7y ago

Being able to burn through Verizon's 22GB "secret" data cap on my "unlimited" plan in ten minutes instead of 70 minutes at normal 4G speeds is not an upgrade in any way. Meanwhile I still can't send a text message or check my email when visiting my parents' house out in the boonies. 5G is a scam.

8077628 7y ago

Oh ho ho. Next you're going to be questioning the "race to AI". It's like you want to be forced to read articles about raccoons with distemper, instead of buzzwordy tech FUD pieces, on slow news days. Is this what you want? Is it possible, dare I say it, that you might even want want us to lose the race to racing? Why are you rocking the boat?

mises 7y ago

I've seen "millimeter wave" in tsa and heard it takes a picture of you without clothes, though they now supposedly obscure it. Creepy as all get-out. Anyway, could a hijacked 5g unit do this? Seems like a serious concern.

vectorEQ 7y ago
ultrasound would be easier and cheaper...
JohnFen 7y ago
> could a hijacked 5g unit do this? No, for two reasons. First, the mmwave scanners require more power than 5G cell sites will provide. Second, the transmission of the radio signals is only half of the equation for this sort of thing. The other half is the sophisticated receiving systems that are required, and that 5G cell sites won't have.

lysp 7y ago

One of the large Australia carriers is promoting 5g as a "paid add-on". There is some marketing material saying it'd cost an extra $15 per-month on top of your normal plan's price. With "first 12 months free" to try it out. This is a 20-30% premium for average prices. I can see the uptake of 5g in that case being less than 5%. 4g is already fast enough for most things, so very few will actually need faster. I'm not sure if they are completely clueless thinking people will pay extra, or they are trying to discourage large uptake.

Creationer 7y ago
Pricing like this is not designed so that people actually pay for it. Instead it creates 'value' which is given away with some other product. For example: Free 5G for all business customers, all customers on an $80 plan or above, etc. It also helps smooth demand - I don't think Telstra have invested a lot in 5G.

nraynaud 7y ago

https://theamphour.com/430-shahriar-discusses-5g/ https://theamphour.com/430-shahriar-discusses-5g/ I am a bit confused, according to the preceding link, 5G can’t be at all used like 4G, in particular it can’t be used from a base station to a mobile phone. Can someone explain a bit more?

Epopeehief54 7y ago

Not even a full finished roll out in LTE in rural areas. Telecoms don’t want to lower prices for us, so 5G is going to sell at a premium to consumers. This race about "who control 5G controls the world" is ridiculous.

superkuh 7y ago

5G-NR standard only gives a 15-20% gain in data thoroughput over the same bandwidth as compared to 4G LTE. The vast majority of the increase in thoroughput has to come from the millimeter wave bands. Think about streetlights to get an idea of coverage and propagation. Now think about running internet fiber to every streetlight. It's quite a task. It'll only be done (and has only been done so far in the USA) in areas that require high bits/khz/km^2 like entertainment stadiums. Additionally, almost no two countries actually have overlapping 5G bands. It's a mess of competing standards. So it'll be different frontend modules for controlling the antenna arrays required on the handsets (high power usage and space requirements) due to the integration required. Handsets are going to have to get bigger. Unlikably big and specific to region. And beyond that the 5G setups being implemented now aren't stand alone. They're both LTE and Non-Standalone (NSA) 5G. The 5G just provides extra bandwidth and isn't used as a control for the handsets. It more than doubles the complexity of setups because of the trouble RF designers have to take with harmonics and intermodulation. All the competing national freq band standards mean different filtering solutions. The future will not be evenly distributed.

emilfihlman 7y ago
>5G-NR standard only gives a 15-20% 15-25% is _fucking_ _huge_. Even a few percent increase would be worth it for telcos.
- woah 7y ago
  15%-20% might be huge for Verizon’s CFO and shareholders, but it’s inconsequential for consumers who are currently being sold some terabit-IoT-self-driving-car-VR-surgery yarn in an effort to get governments to give handouts of property and spectrum to anyone waving the magical 5g sauce.
  - Cookiesaurusbex 7y ago
    It's also inconsequential for everyone who has a data cap on their phone plan. Running out of data 20% sooner isn't a win for people who can't afford a luxury plan.

agsamek 7y ago

This is similar to new car sales being an early indicator of a recession. Government answer in the wake of a coming recession? Subsidize cars. Winning 5g race is an indication of technological leadership. But you cannot help win it forcefully. You should just watch it respectfully and draw forward looking conclusions. Of course some people can use it instrumentally to get benefits or desired decisions. Anyway - congrats to the winner.

Proven 7y ago

Couldn’t agree more - in essence the crony capitalists (and useful idiots) want the government to help them market their tech (and pay for it with taxpayer money). I couldn’t care less. Let free market work - if millions can’t wait for 5G, let them race to it at premium prices and let the telcos and equipment makers meet them half-way with higher and non-subsidized service prices. The “race” to 5G indeed is a complete bullshit.

hestefisk 7y ago

Isn’t parts of the US network still on CDMA? The reason Europe has had lower prices is because we have been better at infra-carrier standards and co-opetition / lowering transaction costs. Perhaps before that the Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT) is a great example for others to lead by.

Nokinside 7y ago

Home markets are important for new technologies and services that build on the top of the new infrastructure. US companies and startups are not going be first to innovate 5G technologies and services if their home market is behind. The US tech sector is already out from the main 4G/LTE/5G air infrastructure business except for components and mobile phones. There is only Eriksson, Nokia, Huawei and ZTE, Samsung is #5 with very tiny market share.

JohnFen 7y ago
> US companies and startups are not going be first to innovate 5G technologies and services if their home market is behind. That answer is really just begging the question. Why is that so important as to require such a huge push as a "race" implies?

Pulletwee12549 7y ago

Nokinside 7y ago
Rural areas will benefit from Low-band FDD 5G.

Foivos 7y ago

5G is not that much for consumers but for industries [1]. There is a number of industry use cases that are just impossible for anything other than 5G. For example, self driving cars, virtual /augmented reality, support for huge numbers of IoT devices (ie. smart city). Also, 5G is not just higher speed / reduced latency. The core network is way more flexible than 4G. This can allow it to provide guaranteed service to specific users, like first responders. That way first responders will be able to use the way cheaper and feature rich commercial networks instead of dedicated networks as it is the case now. The first countries to have 5G infrastructure will be able to have faster developments on these sectors. [1] The only major difference for consumers, given how they currently use their mobile devices, is that now everyone at a live concert will be able to stream it to instagram. I do not know if it a good thing though.

dmitrygr 7y ago
1. What does 5g have with self driving cars? And specifically what does lack of 5g do to make them any more or less possible? 2. NO wireless service provides GUARANTEED anything. To anyone. That's not how physics works
- Foivos 7y ago
  1. It is not my field, but in general, self driving cars should be connected to a central entity that manages them. For more information search for "C-V2X". 2. They guarantee an SLA.
  - JohnFen 7y ago
    > self driving cars should be connected to a central entity that manages them Why?
- marios 7y ago
  Absolutely agree with your second point. If only marketing had gotten the memo ... Regarding your question, self driving cars have to interact with their environment. Receiving a message that indicates there is a vehicule of x,y coordinates may be better than trying to figure it out on your own using sensors. Getting the message in a timely fashion is essential, otherwise it is practically useless. 5G could be the communication channel for the message to transit, given that 5G aims to achieve lower latencies that 4G.

IlegCowcat 7y ago

The ironic part is that mobile 5G is basically pointless. Fixed 5G could provide competition to cable companies if it actually works, but mobile 5G’s range is so short that anywhere with mobile 5G will be getting several hundred mbps on 4G from the same site and fiber improvements necessary for 5G that 5G itself is pointless. The upside is that the areas that get a dense small-cell buildout for 5G will have way better 4G service as a result that virtually everyone can use as soon as the cells go up and the fiber is lit up for them.

JohnFen 7y ago

It's not really a race. It's more like a scam. The telecoms and equipment manufacturers want to make it seem like a race in an effort to make people demand 5G, to increase the amount of subsidies as much as possible.