5 ms·

I have 150Mbps right now (checked on fast.com) with 4G in Central Denver. It’s not about the number before the G, but whether the carriers are building enough i

I have 150Mbps right now (checked on fast.com) with 4G in Central Denver. It’s not about the number before the G, but whether the carriers are building enough infrastructure to support it.

renaudg 7y ago
It is definitely about the number before the G. With perfect infrastructure investment like what your carrier seems to have done with 4G in Denver, 5G could reach 1-2GBps. In other words, real world imperfect 5G is ten times better than 4G with all stars aligned.
- kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
  It doesn't look like like your old "4G" was legitimate full performance LTE. Cell carriers lie and demur about what performance they actually provide. You can't trust the number to mean anything.
  - soulofmischief 7y ago
    I don't know much about the specifics behind 5G but if asciident's claim is true then towers on every block should perform very well under high load. What kind of performance are you referring to? Throughput? Latency? Availability? Reliability?
  - renaudg 7y ago
    It was definitely a busy area and dozens of Mbps are more typical on 4G. My point is that real world 5G is an order of magnitude faster than real world 4G, much like 4G was in comparison to 3G.
    - inimino 7y ago
      Your 5G, and your 4G. That doesn't mean it is the 5G that is the difference, unless you did an exhaustive root cause investigation of the poor performance of the 4G.
- Spooky23 7y ago
  Backhaul matters as well. If you do carrier comparisons at scale, it becomes obvious that the connectivity to the towers varies dramatically, as do network conditions, quality of proxies on the carrier network and other factors. A fancy new 5G tower also has underutilized connectivity to it.
jdietrich 7y ago
The population density in London is an order of magnitude higher than in Denver. That has an obvious impact on air congestion, which is one of the primary limiting factors on cellular network performance.
- nkurz 7y ago
  That sounded high, so I checked: London Density 14,670/sq mi (5,666/km2) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London) Denver Density 4,519.94/sq mi (1,745.15/km2) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denver https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denver) London has a population density 3.25x that of Denver. Why exaggerate when the facts are on your side? Or more specifically, why make an explicit numeric claim without confirming that it's correct?
  - inimino 7y ago
    "order of magnitude" is literally the least explicit you can be without just saying "lots bigger". Why be overly pedantic?
    - nkurz 7y ago
      I think the problem may be that "order of magnitude more" means different things to different people. Colloquially, it does get used to mean "a lot more", and some people use it because it sounds more scientific. But in a more correct sense, it means "closer to 10x than 1x or 100x": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_magnitude#Definition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_magnitude#Definition. I personally dislike the phrase and try to avoid it. But if one is going to use it, I think it should be used correctly. (I agree with jdietrich that the definition of "city" matters)
  - jdietrich 7y ago
    That depends very much on your definition of "London" and "Denver". Your first figure refers to the population density of Greater London, a vast area covering much of what used to be the Home Counties. Your second figure refers solely to Denver City rather than the broader Denver-Aurora-Lakewood metropolitan statistical area, much of which is functionally suburban Denver. I don't think it's particularly useful to attempt to pin down a fixed definition of the boundaries of either city, particularly one as amorphous as London. Suffice it to say that London is densely populated, Inner London is even more densely populated and rush hour on the tube is genuinely insane; Londoners regularly encounter densities that simply don't occur in most US cities outside of a football stadium and have a subsequent need for far higher throughput than 4G can deliver.

I have 150Mbps right now (checked on fast.com) with 4G in Central Denver. It’s not about the number before the G, but whether the carriers are building enough infrastructure to support it.

renaudg 7y ago

It is definitely about the number before the G. With perfect infrastructure investment like what your carrier seems to have done with 4G in Denver, 5G could reach 1-2GBps. In other words, real world imperfect 5G is ten times better than 4G with all stars aligned.

kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
It doesn't look like like your old "4G" was legitimate full performance LTE. Cell carriers lie and demur about what performance they actually provide. You can't trust the number to mean anything.
- soulofmischief 7y ago
  I don't know much about the specifics behind 5G but if asciident's claim is true then towers on every block should perform very well under high load. What kind of performance are you referring to? Throughput? Latency? Availability? Reliability?
- renaudg 7y ago
  It was definitely a busy area and dozens of Mbps are more typical on 4G. My point is that real world 5G is an order of magnitude faster than real world 4G, much like 4G was in comparison to 3G.
  - inimino 7y ago
    Your 5G, and your 4G. That doesn't mean it is the 5G that is the difference, unless you did an exhaustive root cause investigation of the poor performance of the 4G.
Spooky23 7y ago
Backhaul matters as well. If you do carrier comparisons at scale, it becomes obvious that the connectivity to the towers varies dramatically, as do network conditions, quality of proxies on the carrier network and other factors. A fancy new 5G tower also has underutilized connectivity to it.

jdietrich 7y ago

The population density in London is an order of magnitude higher than in Denver. That has an obvious impact on air congestion, which is one of the primary limiting factors on cellular network performance.

nkurz 7y ago
That sounded high, so I checked: London Density 14,670/sq mi (5,666/km2) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London) Denver Density 4,519.94/sq mi (1,745.15/km2) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denver https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denver) London has a population density 3.25x that of Denver. Why exaggerate when the facts are on your side? Or more specifically, why make an explicit numeric claim without confirming that it's correct?
- inimino 7y ago
  "order of magnitude" is literally the least explicit you can be without just saying "lots bigger". Why be overly pedantic?
  - nkurz 7y ago
    I think the problem may be that "order of magnitude more" means different things to different people. Colloquially, it does get used to mean "a lot more", and some people use it because it sounds more scientific. But in a more correct sense, it means "closer to 10x than 1x or 100x": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_magnitude#Definition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_magnitude#Definition. I personally dislike the phrase and try to avoid it. But if one is going to use it, I think it should be used correctly. (I agree with jdietrich that the definition of "city" matters)
- jdietrich 7y ago
  That depends very much on your definition of "London" and "Denver". Your first figure refers to the population density of Greater London, a vast area covering much of what used to be the Home Counties. Your second figure refers solely to Denver City rather than the broader Denver-Aurora-Lakewood metropolitan statistical area, much of which is functionally suburban Denver. I don't think it's particularly useful to attempt to pin down a fixed definition of the boundaries of either city, particularly one as amorphous as London. Suffice it to say that London is densely populated, Inner London is even more densely populated and rush hour on the tube is genuinely insane; Londoners regularly encounter densities that simply don't occur in most US cities outside of a football stadium and have a subsequent need for far higher throughput than 4G can deliver.