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5G can eliminate the need to provide fiber or cable to the home. Instead, radio is used for the last hundreds of meters. Physical drops into homes are expensive

5G can eliminate the need to provide fiber or cable to the home. Instead, radio is used for the last hundreds of meters. Physical drops into homes are expensive to install and maintain.

sroussey 7y ago
mm 5G stops at the wall/window and doesn’t make it indoors.
- matthewmacleod 7y ago
  That’s really not a problem with an outdoor antenna though. I think the idea is that 5G would be used as the last mile carrier into some kind of CPE.
  - ianai 7y ago
    Also we already have a model for bringing weak signals into the home through antennas-even roof mounted.
- Merrill 7y ago
  A clear glass window is about a 10 dB drop at 28 GHz. Windows with film and foil-faced insulation in walls result in more like a 20 dB drop. The obvious solution is a CPE in the window that converts to WiFi within the dwelling. Alternatively, use the sub-6 GHz bands. The end game by whatever means is that all the cords are cut and radio is the ubiquitous connection technology.
- anticensor 7y ago
  High-speed modes of 5G are like that. Sub-5Ghz modes of 5G-NR also exist.
  - sroussey 7y ago
    Yeah, that’s why I said mm 5G. Curious... what is the sub-6 speed increases in 5G over LTE?
CharlesW 7y ago
> 5G can eliminate the need to provide fiber or cable to the home. 4G can too, but it's a very niche option and will remain so with 5G and beyond until mobile operators stop thinking of themselves as mobile operators.
- asark 7y ago
  Yeah. Higher cost, usage caps low enough to be worth mentioning, and mobile operators seem a lot more likely to do really weird crap to my traffic. Fix those and who needs a physical line? Until all are fixed I'll keep the fiber.
jws 7y ago
I just had fiber pulled into my home. It was no more difficult than the copper line which preceded it (which we used as a messenger to pull the copper through my buried conduit.) An aerial install would have been identical to copper. Just for ongoing cost… I've been in the house for 30 years. I've had new copper pulled three times (twice for adding ISDN lines back in the day and once to bury the service). The copper lines have over the years required days of effort for the linemen to work their way back toward the switching office looking for bad connections. Every spring for a few years I used to have problems from moisture ingress to the lines. My neighborhood is older than telephones. All of the pairs on the poles were in use and they had to work their way back through the lead clad lines to repair mine instead of just switching to a good pair. Eventually in the days of DSL they lost me as a customer because they couldn't (or wouldn't) afford to give me a clean enough pair of copper for reliable service. So from the phone company's standpoint they made a capital expenditure which was long overdue to nail up fiber to the poles, and for a 4 hour truck roll they got me back as a customer for probably a decade. The fiber on the poles is made for easy installation. There are ports already in place for each house. The installer rolls out some bulk fiber in a black cladding with some sort of tensile element. The cross section is smaller than a copper line, so it fits anywhere the copper is. I didn't see how he terminated it after cutting, but it didn't take long. … and my upstream speeds are now 50 times faster than the cable company could provide. Happy nerd.
- sgt101 7y ago
  how far are you from the switching office?
  - jws 7y ago
    About 1km as the fiber goes. It’s easy to see why we are an early install. High income area, relatively dense free standing houses, all aerial poles. It doesn’t really get any easier than that so the telco can say “we have gigabit fiber in xyz”. Well, a small percent of xyz, but they don’t have to mention that.

5G can eliminate the need to provide fiber or cable to the home. Instead, radio is used for the last hundreds of meters. Physical drops into homes are expensive to install and maintain.

sroussey 7y ago

mm 5G stops at the wall/window and doesn’t make it indoors.

matthewmacleod 7y ago
That’s really not a problem with an outdoor antenna though. I think the idea is that 5G would be used as the last mile carrier into some kind of CPE.
- ianai 7y ago
  Also we already have a model for bringing weak signals into the home through antennas-even roof mounted.
Merrill 7y ago
A clear glass window is about a 10 dB drop at 28 GHz. Windows with film and foil-faced insulation in walls result in more like a 20 dB drop. The obvious solution is a CPE in the window that converts to WiFi within the dwelling. Alternatively, use the sub-6 GHz bands. The end game by whatever means is that all the cords are cut and radio is the ubiquitous connection technology.
anticensor 7y ago
High-speed modes of 5G are like that. Sub-5Ghz modes of 5G-NR also exist.
- sroussey 7y ago
  Yeah, that’s why I said mm 5G. Curious... what is the sub-6 speed increases in 5G over LTE?

CharlesW 7y ago

> 5G can eliminate the need to provide fiber or cable to the home. 4G can too, but it's a very niche option and will remain so with 5G and beyond until mobile operators stop thinking of themselves as mobile operators.

asark 7y ago
Yeah. Higher cost, usage caps low enough to be worth mentioning, and mobile operators seem a lot more likely to do really weird crap to my traffic. Fix those and who needs a physical line? Until all are fixed I'll keep the fiber.

jws 7y ago

I just had fiber pulled into my home. It was no more difficult than the copper line which preceded it (which we used as a messenger to pull the copper through my buried conduit.) An aerial install would have been identical to copper. Just for ongoing cost… I've been in the house for 30 years. I've had new copper pulled three times (twice for adding ISDN lines back in the day and once to bury the service). The copper lines have over the years required days of effort for the linemen to work their way back toward the switching office looking for bad connections. Every spring for a few years I used to have problems from moisture ingress to the lines. My neighborhood is older than telephones. All of the pairs on the poles were in use and they had to work their way back through the lead clad lines to repair mine instead of just switching to a good pair. Eventually in the days of DSL they lost me as a customer because they couldn't (or wouldn't) afford to give me a clean enough pair of copper for reliable service. So from the phone company's standpoint they made a capital expenditure which was long overdue to nail up fiber to the poles, and for a 4 hour truck roll they got me back as a customer for probably a decade. The fiber on the poles is made for easy installation. There are ports already in place for each house. The installer rolls out some bulk fiber in a black cladding with some sort of tensile element. The cross section is smaller than a copper line, so it fits anywhere the copper is. I didn't see how he terminated it after cutting, but it didn't take long. … and my upstream speeds are now 50 times faster than the cable company could provide. Happy nerd.

sgt101 7y ago
how far are you from the switching office?
- jws 7y ago
  About 1km as the fiber goes. It’s easy to see why we are an early install. High income area, relatively dense free standing houses, all aerial poles. It doesn’t really get any easier than that so the telco can say “we have gigabit fiber in xyz”. Well, a small percent of xyz, but they don’t have to mention that.