11 ms·

The 'Race to 5G' Is Lobbyist Nonsense

226 points by rahuldottech 7y ago

soylentcola 7y ago
Just think if this level of marketing, lobbying, and energy was channeled into something like a national fiber broadband utility available to everyone. "But," you may ask, "why would industry groups ever push something like that? Such a thing would cost loads of money and put market dominance at risk!" And then maybe you start to wonder why they're in such a rush to fight for the subsidies, investment, and contracts for "more wireless, but faster and more G's!"
- state_less 7y ago
  Yes, and I can't talk with other radios either, I need to talk to a provider's cell tower. I have to drop down something ancient like a VHF radio to do peer to peer communication at long range. PS. If I'm wrong, please let me know. I'd love to hear about any developments in long range P2P wireless phones.
  - rolleiflex 7y ago
    I do Aether (P2P Reddit~ish, https://getaether.net https://getaether.net) and I investigated doing something like this over radio mesh networks. Specifically doing it over HAM radio was one of the possibilities. The plan was something like doing anycast over Radio. Turns out, even those bands do have a lot of limitations. For example you cannot use any encryption, which makes most of the modern tools out of the picture because TLS is impossible. There are some workarounds like doing TLS with blank keys, but far as I understand it is dicey so far as legality goes. (The data on Aether is public, but we use encryption tools for authentication of messages.)
    - ohazi 7y ago
      What does TLS with blank keys give you over plaintext?
      - mokus 7y ago
        I can see how it’s not obvious, but the parentheses at the end are the answer to that (or maybe they were edited in after your question). You can use TLS without ciphering but with signatures to authenticate messages.
  - thepete2 7y ago
    That's a really stupid thing about cell phones. We all carry these amazing radios with us, but they become completely useless once there is no tower around. Why can't phones be used as walkie-talkies?
    - Polylactic_acid 7y ago
      Because the person you want to contact is unlikely to be within radio distance.
      - thepete2 7y ago
        yes, but how cool would that be?
        state_less 7y ago
        I think it would be pretty cool too. For those times when you are out of range of a tower and in range of each other, you could chat up your pals out at the campsite or whathaveyou. And if you and your ilk load some kind of meshing or 'router app' on these advanced (non-hobbled) handheld radios, you might have a better chance of getting in touch with that out of range person by routing packets across radios until you're at the internet. Even if you limit the bandwidth to text messages for this feature, it could be a real lifesaver for folks needing to get emergency messages out.
        Something1234 7y ago
        What about the push to talk feature on some work phones?
        lawfulcactus 7y ago
        You're effectively talking about APRS[1]. [1] http://www.aprs.org http://www.aprs.org
        state_less 7y ago
- rayiner 7y ago
  > Just think if this level of marketing, lobbying, and energy was channeled into something like a national fiber broadband utility available to everyone. I mean this is pretty much exactly why the government shouldn’t be in charge of deciding how to allocate this investment. Fiber is far less useful than fast wireless. 60% of Maryland has access to fiber. It hasn’t been revolutionary in the least. Most people don’t even subscribe to it, even in high income suburbs. Meanwhile, over 15% of high income households are “mobile only.” I think it’s fair to say that if you are computing using a tablet, you’re probably not benefitting much from fiber. Well, global PC sales peaked in 2010: https://images.app.goo.gl/4jwgmheZhp1S39EZ6 https://images.app.goo.gl/4jwgmheZhp1S39EZ6. Desktop PC sales globally are about the same as they were in 2001. The percentage of people using a computing device that can take advantage of fiber continues to shrink.
  - wtallis 7y ago
    When the "fast wireless" under discussion more or less requires deploying FTTC as the backhaul, consumers definitely stand to benefit from transforming that into a regulated FTTH network instead of being further subjugated by cellular carriers.
    - tptacek 7y ago
      Isn't the cost difference between running fiber to base stations and running fiber to individual homes enormous? Just based on the economics: a fiber-lit base station serves anyone nearby with a mobile device, while the infrastructure to support FTTH is a risk (and, apparently, an unprofitable risk) based on how many homes sign up. I don't think base station backhaul and FTTH are comparable investments.
      - wtallis 7y ago
        If we're talking typical suburban housing density, deploying 5G mmWave will require digging trenches or hanging wires on poles through almost as many properties as deploying FTTH. A 5G basestation is going to be a lot more expensive than a GPON ONT, probably enough that the per-customer costs aren't a net win for 5G. (When the fiber is already at the mailbox, taking it down the driveway too just isn't that much more investment.) And the 5G basestation faces the same problem as FTTH that not every person in the neighborhood will be a guaranteed subscriber to any particular provider; even if Verizon/ATT/etc. already has you under contract for your smartphone, they have to work on convincing you to add all your wired devices to the plan. Barring detailed cost estimates to the contrary, I don't see how mmWave will be viable in suburban America. Sub-6GHz 5G will be, but that's not going to be providing dramatic speed upgrades or price/Mbps improvement the way FTTH has. In a denser urban residential setting, mmWave certainly won't have enough penetration to provide solid service to high-rise apartments, and it's even less likely that sub-6GHz 5G will have enough aggregate capacity to kill off wired ISPs. mmWave simply isn't viable for residential/fixed usage, and sub-6 is only an incremental improvement that brings cellular performance up to WiFi speeds, but not beyond.
- closeparen 7y ago
  What does 5G have to do with public policy? Getting the necessary approvals from the FCC seems like it would be a quiet, technocratic thing. Beyond that, cell carriers' infrastructure is their own business.
- altacc 7y ago
  > Just think if this level of marketing, lobbying, and energy Just think if governments made decisions based on evidence, trials and what was best for the populace, not which industry backed lobby shouted loudest and hired the most politicians' friends.
craftinator 7y ago
Well, I'd like to take this moment to announce 6G, which on a logarithmic scale is twice that of 5G. 6G is the future of being a G; it'll be so much more G-like than current G's, you won't be able to keep from throwing your money at us. Soon, 6G will be in your home, offices, cars, underware drawers, lawnmowers, fireplaces, cerebelli, quants, and everywhere else as well. 6G is the ubiquitous marketing campaign that you didn't know that you both don't want and can't resist! 6G, coming to a dimension near you soon!
- FlyMoreRockets 7y ago
  Except rural areas.
notlukesky 7y ago
When 3G first came out it was a disaster for most carriers. The phones were buggy and hard to come by. More importantly there was no compelling reason to use data from your phone till the iPhone and then Android appeared. The previous generation of “smartphones” (like Symbian and NTT Docomo imode) tried to dumb and water down the Internet. 5G will present similar problems in the early stages. There are not enough compelling applications for the increase in bandwidth now, but there sure will be later on. So I don’t see a race to it now. It’s the next evolution in the cycle of faster speed.
- JohnFen 7y ago
  > I don’t see a race to it now I think it would actually be better to slow-walk 5G and let other nations work through all of the inevitable problems the initial deployments will have. This "race" to 5G has never made any sense to me at all. What is the advantage to being the first to roll this stuff out?
  - llukas 7y ago
    Selling very detailed location data.
  - im3w1l 7y ago
    Whoever gets it first will build apps for it first and have a head start.
    - JohnFen 7y ago
      I don't understand this argument. First 5G is just a comms channel. What "apps" would be built for it? The only things I can think of that might be special are things that would require a large amount of bandwidth (that most people won't be getting anyway). You can easily write such apps without actually having 5G at your disposal. Second, even if the first point is off the mark, why does it matter who builds it first? Everyone else can still write apps for that system, and those apps would then immediately work on the others as they come online.
PaulHoule 7y ago
Where is the race to optic fiber?
- mohankumar246 7y ago
  I think the article does a fair work in answering this question - Optic fiber will not get the $ into the pockets of oem's or carriers. And it's already there in several metros(even in India)
dom2 7y ago
I'm not familiar with 5G infrastructure at all really, but a friend of mine brought up that they were worried about China beating the US to 5G deployment because if China did so, other counties would be more likely to use Chinese tech to setup their own 5G networks. This in turn would pose security issues as there seems to be concern over whether or not China could be trusted not to use their tech as spyware. Is anyone familiar with the issue who can speak more on this?
- frequentnapper 7y ago
  the issue is much bigger than just spyware. If a nation allows Huawei or any Chinese company to build its future tech infrastructure such as 5G, they are basically signing over their national security and interests over to the Chinese govt. E.g. your nation has someone who speaks out against the Chinese govt or something as dumb as making fun of the Chinese president. Hand him over or else we flick a switch here and the power grid in your city X goes down and there's nothing you can do about it. Why do yo think China is pushing Huawei so hard and vowing trade punishment against any nation in the EU or elsewhere if they stop Huawei? They want to control the future of those nations. This will give China every leverage they can get in terms of trade, compliance, security, etc. basically making each of these nations a vassal state to China.
  - rusk 7y ago
    Makes sense to me ... I just cant get over how people are being labelled cranks for voicing what are pretty common sense concerns. I guess in the public mindset wireless network != critical infrastructure.
  - cesarb 7y ago
    > Hand him over or else we flick a switch here and the power grid in your city X goes down and there's nothing you can do about it. The issue in your scenario is not who built the infrastructure, but who has remote access to it. Why would the manufacturer of (for instance) the PLCs controlling a substation have remote access to it? Wouldn't they be isolated in their own subnetwork, firewalled so that only a few hosts in the substation operator's network can reach it?
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
tonylemesmer 7y ago
Is 5g attractive to vendors because it’s harder to turn off than a plugged in wire? With landline you can unplug or filter within your premises. With 5g they can push megabit speeds without any of your own premises equipment.
- perpetualpatzer 7y ago
  It's possible that that would be a "benefit", but I'd expect that it's way down the list behind: * infrastructure buildout costs in cities are reduced because you don't need to run a wire into each individual building, * "fast enough" wireless could capture the usage/spend currently delivered by landlines, but the reverse isn't true because most people like to take their phones out of the house.
dougmwne 7y ago
This article really missed the mark. Yeah, the 5G lobbying is using some really strange and confusing arguments that don't seem to make sense to DC outsiders. All you need to need to know is on the media page. Clearly Huawei is bad for business for the sponsors of this lobbying. https://5gactionnow.com/media/ https://5gactionnow.com/media/
- chooseaname 7y ago
  From the link: > FOX BUSINESS: 74% of Americans think Huawei should be removed from U.S., poll shows I don't think 74% of Americans have even heard of Huawei!
  - Spooky23 7y ago
    8/10 dentists prefer Ericsson.
  - thrwaway69 7y ago
    When has polls and surveys for political reasons shown reality?
  - SkyMarshal 7y ago
    It's not implausible, it's been in the mainstream news a lot the past year.
  - mcv 7y ago
    A couple of years ago a poll showed that 30% of Americans should bomb Agrabah, the fictional city from Aladdin. Not knowing what it's about has never stopped people from having an opinion about it.
nesky 7y ago
5G will need it's iPhone moment. In my opinion that will be gaming, sports and live events in cutting edge quality VR applications. If consumers can buy a 'digital ticket' and watch the World Cup, Superbowl, Indy 500, Le Mans, etc. in whatever cutting edge quality exists at the time in VR you'll have that moment. You'll be able to buy digital season tickets for the NY Yankees right on the 3rd base line (your friends will be there next to you represented by their memoji or the like so you're still watching the game with your buddies), buy a ticket for an Indy Car race and be able to watch the race in VR as if I was sitting in Alexander Rossi's seat from start to finish. The next question is how much will I have to pay to not have commercial breaks...
- gambiting 7y ago
  I just don't understand what that has to do with 5G. You could build such a thing already just using WiFi, and yet....no one has done so. I mean, where are people likely to sit and use that VR headset and watch a world cup? On a sofa in their home where they have fast wi-fi, or on a park bench where they have to rely on 5G?
  - nesky 7y ago
    If you have 1M people around the world checking into a VR camera atop a car going around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway at 200MPH you need bandwidth and image quality. I want to see what the driver see's in near perfect image quality and be able to look around when he goes wheel to wheel around a turn. The entire layer of crap that's fed from whatever service, NBC, ABC, ESPN, etc will flatten and the consumer will be able to watch the event as if they were in the action themselves. 5G will help in driving that engagement. EDIT: Given how crazy America is about football, my guess as well is the NFL could sell millions of VR related tickets to the Superbowl in a similar scheme. The hitch in my opinion is commercial breaks will ruin the experience if commercials as they're broadcasted today happen in VR - people will want to plug themselves into the action with no obstructions.
    - redisman 7y ago
      Again, you're just describing Wifi plus unspecified VR magic. Why do you need 5G for this at home VR thing?
josephd79 7y ago
Doesn't matter, they'll limit the amount of bandwidth you will be allowed to use under the "plan" and then charge you crazy for the overages. Which would make it damn near unusable to begin with. Hell, I read an article that ATT cap theirs at 15 gb a month plus $10 each gb you go over. I'd burn through that in 1 day, shit maybe 1 afternoon. Hard to get excited about anything when the prune juice posse creates policies for this stuff and have no idea how a family uses or consumes data anymore....
madengr 7y ago
The FCC is screwing hams, as usual, for 5G. http://www.arrl.org/news/fcc-formally-adopts-proposals-to-remove-amateur-3-ghz-band-invites-comments http://www.arrl.org/news/fcc-formally-adopts-proposals-to-re...
- chooseaname 7y ago
  Not to be that guy, but would we really expect anything else from Ajit Pai at this point? He's so far into Verizon, et al's pockets... it seems.
Traster 7y ago
I remember being told that 5G wasn't about speed, it was about bandwith and every car would be transmitting 40Gigs an hour because of all the autonomous vehicles. That was the bullish picture. If your bullish picture was "Consumers are going to get nothing and it's going to enable autonomous vehicles that don't exist" then you're probably in trouble.
Animats 7y ago
The article is on point. 5G has an advantage in only a few situations: - Very crowded areas, where you need lots of microcells so everyone can watch streaming video at once. Like stadiums. Verizon is making a lot of noise about 5G in NFL stadiums. Amusingly, latency for sports video is a big deal, because, in sports bars, not all the screens have the same amount of buffering in the path. So some people are cheering while others are waiting for their feed to catch up, and they feel left out and alone. - Moderately remote areas where the capability to drop to the VHF bands will provide some service far from towers. That's actually useful. Claims involving public safety and remote surgery are fantasy. Besides, once it's going, it will probably be overloaded, and there will be rate caps and data caps. But the capped service will be called "unlimited".
- gsich 7y ago
  "Overloading" will come later. Similar to LTE before, customers don't have 5G capable devices yet. There is also no need to buy one.
- Spooky23 7y ago
  5G is a strategy to replace wireline service and the regulatory limits imposed on them. Carriers selling fixed 5G will be able to monetize traffic more effectively.
- the8472 7y ago
  > - Moderately remote areas where the capability to drop to the VHF bands will provide some service far from towers. That's actually useful. It does? Wikipedia lists the lowest 5G frequencies at 600MHz, which is above the VHF band.
  - tyingq 7y ago
    The point that 600Mhz has greater distance/range than the higher frequency 4G signals is still correct, despite the miss on whether it's VHF.
    - martinald 7y ago
einpoklum 7y ago
Remind me again why I need even 4G (which I don't have)?
- reaperducer 7y ago
  You're getting downvoted because most people on HN have never experienced solid, reliable 3G. There's a town I go to sometimes that has only 3G service. But because it's not oversubscribed and has the proper telco infrastructure it's faster and more reliable than the 4G I get at home.
- josephg 7y ago
  From memory, 3G usually has much higher latency on network traffic. The bandwidth of 3G is reasonably good, but web pages usually load noticeably faster over 4G because modern websites usually need a lot of round-trips to load. (With the notable exception of HN) I have no idea why it has higher latency. It might be because in metro areas its often oversubscribed or the bandwidth ends up saturated.
jinushaun 7y ago
Can we get 4G in more places first before worrying about 5G?
anonsivalley652 7y ago
5G is all about greed: selling more cell-site gear and new phones. If the goal were to actually improved coverage and spectrum utilization, it would be designed, engineered and deployed very differently. From an end-user perspective, 4G is relatively damn good, perhaps too good, so they have to turnover the apple cart and replace it with something crappier. PS: And yes, there are way too many conspiracy theories about 5G before it was even released that distract from the games hardware vendors and carriers wanted to play.
rapjr9 7y ago
How much carbon will building 5G release? Does climate change make building 5G a bad idea? (Does climate change make any big new infrastructure project that isn't just a restoration of existing infrastructure a bad idea?) Also, it seems obvious that the smaller cell size means there will never be good coverage in even slightly remote areas, unless 4G also remains operational. In places like Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine 5G-only would greatly reduce public safety.

226 points by rahuldottech 7y ago

Just think if this level of marketing, lobbying, and energy was channeled into something like a national fiber broadband utility available to everyone. "But," you may ask, "why would industry groups ever push something like that? Such a thing would cost loads of money and put market dominance at risk!" And then maybe you start to wonder why they're in such a rush to fight for the subsidies, investment, and contracts for "more wireless, but faster and more G's!"

state_less 7y ago
Yes, and I can't talk with other radios either, I need to talk to a provider's cell tower. I have to drop down something ancient like a VHF radio to do peer to peer communication at long range. PS. If I'm wrong, please let me know. I'd love to hear about any developments in long range P2P wireless phones.
- rolleiflex 7y ago
  I do Aether (P2P Reddit~ish, https://getaether.net https://getaether.net) and I investigated doing something like this over radio mesh networks. Specifically doing it over HAM radio was one of the possibilities. The plan was something like doing anycast over Radio. Turns out, even those bands do have a lot of limitations. For example you cannot use any encryption, which makes most of the modern tools out of the picture because TLS is impossible. There are some workarounds like doing TLS with blank keys, but far as I understand it is dicey so far as legality goes. (The data on Aether is public, but we use encryption tools for authentication of messages.)
  - ohazi 7y ago
    What does TLS with blank keys give you over plaintext?
    - mokus 7y ago
      I can see how it’s not obvious, but the parentheses at the end are the answer to that (or maybe they were edited in after your question). You can use TLS without ciphering but with signatures to authenticate messages.
- thepete2 7y ago
  That's a really stupid thing about cell phones. We all carry these amazing radios with us, but they become completely useless once there is no tower around. Why can't phones be used as walkie-talkies?
  - Polylactic_acid 7y ago
    Because the person you want to contact is unlikely to be within radio distance.
    - thepete2 7y ago
      yes, but how cool would that be?
      - state_less 7y ago
        I think it would be pretty cool too. For those times when you are out of range of a tower and in range of each other, you could chat up your pals out at the campsite or whathaveyou. And if you and your ilk load some kind of meshing or 'router app' on these advanced (non-hobbled) handheld radios, you might have a better chance of getting in touch with that out of range person by routing packets across radios until you're at the internet. Even if you limit the bandwidth to text messages for this feature, it could be a real lifesaver for folks needing to get emergency messages out.
        Something1234 7y ago
        What about the push to talk feature on some work phones?
        lawfulcactus 7y ago
        You're effectively talking about APRS[1]. [1] http://www.aprs.org http://www.aprs.org
        state_less 7y ago
rayiner 7y ago
> Just think if this level of marketing, lobbying, and energy was channeled into something like a national fiber broadband utility available to everyone. I mean this is pretty much exactly why the government shouldn’t be in charge of deciding how to allocate this investment. Fiber is far less useful than fast wireless. 60% of Maryland has access to fiber. It hasn’t been revolutionary in the least. Most people don’t even subscribe to it, even in high income suburbs. Meanwhile, over 15% of high income households are “mobile only.” I think it’s fair to say that if you are computing using a tablet, you’re probably not benefitting much from fiber. Well, global PC sales peaked in 2010: https://images.app.goo.gl/4jwgmheZhp1S39EZ6 https://images.app.goo.gl/4jwgmheZhp1S39EZ6. Desktop PC sales globally are about the same as they were in 2001. The percentage of people using a computing device that can take advantage of fiber continues to shrink.
- wtallis 7y ago
  When the "fast wireless" under discussion more or less requires deploying FTTC as the backhaul, consumers definitely stand to benefit from transforming that into a regulated FTTH network instead of being further subjugated by cellular carriers.
  - tptacek 7y ago
    Isn't the cost difference between running fiber to base stations and running fiber to individual homes enormous? Just based on the economics: a fiber-lit base station serves anyone nearby with a mobile device, while the infrastructure to support FTTH is a risk (and, apparently, an unprofitable risk) based on how many homes sign up. I don't think base station backhaul and FTTH are comparable investments.
    - wtallis 7y ago
      If we're talking typical suburban housing density, deploying 5G mmWave will require digging trenches or hanging wires on poles through almost as many properties as deploying FTTH. A 5G basestation is going to be a lot more expensive than a GPON ONT, probably enough that the per-customer costs aren't a net win for 5G. (When the fiber is already at the mailbox, taking it down the driveway too just isn't that much more investment.) And the 5G basestation faces the same problem as FTTH that not every person in the neighborhood will be a guaranteed subscriber to any particular provider; even if Verizon/ATT/etc. already has you under contract for your smartphone, they have to work on convincing you to add all your wired devices to the plan. Barring detailed cost estimates to the contrary, I don't see how mmWave will be viable in suburban America. Sub-6GHz 5G will be, but that's not going to be providing dramatic speed upgrades or price/Mbps improvement the way FTTH has. In a denser urban residential setting, mmWave certainly won't have enough penetration to provide solid service to high-rise apartments, and it's even less likely that sub-6GHz 5G will have enough aggregate capacity to kill off wired ISPs. mmWave simply isn't viable for residential/fixed usage, and sub-6 is only an incremental improvement that brings cellular performance up to WiFi speeds, but not beyond.
closeparen 7y ago
What does 5G have to do with public policy? Getting the necessary approvals from the FCC seems like it would be a quiet, technocratic thing. Beyond that, cell carriers' infrastructure is their own business.
altacc 7y ago
> Just think if this level of marketing, lobbying, and energy Just think if governments made decisions based on evidence, trials and what was best for the populace, not which industry backed lobby shouted loudest and hired the most politicians' friends.

craftinator 7y ago

Well, I'd like to take this moment to announce 6G, which on a logarithmic scale is twice that of 5G. 6G is the future of being a G; it'll be so much more G-like than current G's, you won't be able to keep from throwing your money at us. Soon, 6G will be in your home, offices, cars, underware drawers, lawnmowers, fireplaces, cerebelli, quants, and everywhere else as well. 6G is the ubiquitous marketing campaign that you didn't know that you both don't want and can't resist! 6G, coming to a dimension near you soon!

FlyMoreRockets 7y ago
Except rural areas.

notlukesky 7y ago

When 3G first came out it was a disaster for most carriers. The phones were buggy and hard to come by. More importantly there was no compelling reason to use data from your phone till the iPhone and then Android appeared. The previous generation of “smartphones” (like Symbian and NTT Docomo imode) tried to dumb and water down the Internet. 5G will present similar problems in the early stages. There are not enough compelling applications for the increase in bandwidth now, but there sure will be later on. So I don’t see a race to it now. It’s the next evolution in the cycle of faster speed.

JohnFen 7y ago
> I don’t see a race to it now I think it would actually be better to slow-walk 5G and let other nations work through all of the inevitable problems the initial deployments will have. This "race" to 5G has never made any sense to me at all. What is the advantage to being the first to roll this stuff out?
- llukas 7y ago
  Selling very detailed location data.
- im3w1l 7y ago
  Whoever gets it first will build apps for it first and have a head start.
  - JohnFen 7y ago
    I don't understand this argument. First 5G is just a comms channel. What "apps" would be built for it? The only things I can think of that might be special are things that would require a large amount of bandwidth (that most people won't be getting anyway). You can easily write such apps without actually having 5G at your disposal. Second, even if the first point is off the mark, why does it matter who builds it first? Everyone else can still write apps for that system, and those apps would then immediately work on the others as they come online.

PaulHoule 7y ago

Where is the race to optic fiber?

mohankumar246 7y ago
I think the article does a fair work in answering this question - Optic fiber will not get the $ into the pockets of oem's or carriers. And it's already there in several metros(even in India)

dom2 7y ago

I'm not familiar with 5G infrastructure at all really, but a friend of mine brought up that they were worried about China beating the US to 5G deployment because if China did so, other counties would be more likely to use Chinese tech to setup their own 5G networks. This in turn would pose security issues as there seems to be concern over whether or not China could be trusted not to use their tech as spyware. Is anyone familiar with the issue who can speak more on this?

frequentnapper 7y ago
the issue is much bigger than just spyware. If a nation allows Huawei or any Chinese company to build its future tech infrastructure such as 5G, they are basically signing over their national security and interests over to the Chinese govt. E.g. your nation has someone who speaks out against the Chinese govt or something as dumb as making fun of the Chinese president. Hand him over or else we flick a switch here and the power grid in your city X goes down and there's nothing you can do about it. Why do yo think China is pushing Huawei so hard and vowing trade punishment against any nation in the EU or elsewhere if they stop Huawei? They want to control the future of those nations. This will give China every leverage they can get in terms of trade, compliance, security, etc. basically making each of these nations a vassal state to China.
- rusk 7y ago
  Makes sense to me ... I just cant get over how people are being labelled cranks for voicing what are pretty common sense concerns. I guess in the public mindset wireless network != critical infrastructure.
- cesarb 7y ago
  > Hand him over or else we flick a switch here and the power grid in your city X goes down and there's nothing you can do about it. The issue in your scenario is not who built the infrastructure, but who has remote access to it. Why would the manufacturer of (for instance) the PLCs controlling a substation have remote access to it? Wouldn't they be isolated in their own subnetwork, firewalled so that only a few hosts in the substation operator's network can reach it?

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

tonylemesmer 7y ago

Is 5g attractive to vendors because it’s harder to turn off than a plugged in wire? With landline you can unplug or filter within your premises. With 5g they can push megabit speeds without any of your own premises equipment.

perpetualpatzer 7y ago
It's possible that that would be a "benefit", but I'd expect that it's way down the list behind: * infrastructure buildout costs in cities are reduced because you don't need to run a wire into each individual building, * "fast enough" wireless could capture the usage/spend currently delivered by landlines, but the reverse isn't true because most people like to take their phones out of the house.

dougmwne 7y ago

This article really missed the mark. Yeah, the 5G lobbying is using some really strange and confusing arguments that don't seem to make sense to DC outsiders. All you need to need to know is on the media page. Clearly Huawei is bad for business for the sponsors of this lobbying. https://5gactionnow.com/media/ https://5gactionnow.com/media/

chooseaname 7y ago
From the link: > FOX BUSINESS: 74% of Americans think Huawei should be removed from U.S., poll shows I don't think 74% of Americans have even heard of Huawei!
- Spooky23 7y ago
  8/10 dentists prefer Ericsson.
- thrwaway69 7y ago
  When has polls and surveys for political reasons shown reality?
- SkyMarshal 7y ago
  It's not implausible, it's been in the mainstream news a lot the past year.
- mcv 7y ago
  A couple of years ago a poll showed that 30% of Americans should bomb Agrabah, the fictional city from Aladdin. Not knowing what it's about has never stopped people from having an opinion about it.

nesky 7y ago

5G will need it's iPhone moment. In my opinion that will be gaming, sports and live events in cutting edge quality VR applications. If consumers can buy a 'digital ticket' and watch the World Cup, Superbowl, Indy 500, Le Mans, etc. in whatever cutting edge quality exists at the time in VR you'll have that moment. You'll be able to buy digital season tickets for the NY Yankees right on the 3rd base line (your friends will be there next to you represented by their memoji or the like so you're still watching the game with your buddies), buy a ticket for an Indy Car race and be able to watch the race in VR as if I was sitting in Alexander Rossi's seat from start to finish. The next question is how much will I have to pay to not have commercial breaks...

gambiting 7y ago
I just don't understand what that has to do with 5G. You could build such a thing already just using WiFi, and yet....no one has done so. I mean, where are people likely to sit and use that VR headset and watch a world cup? On a sofa in their home where they have fast wi-fi, or on a park bench where they have to rely on 5G?
- nesky 7y ago
  If you have 1M people around the world checking into a VR camera atop a car going around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway at 200MPH you need bandwidth and image quality. I want to see what the driver see's in near perfect image quality and be able to look around when he goes wheel to wheel around a turn. The entire layer of crap that's fed from whatever service, NBC, ABC, ESPN, etc will flatten and the consumer will be able to watch the event as if they were in the action themselves. 5G will help in driving that engagement. EDIT: Given how crazy America is about football, my guess as well is the NFL could sell millions of VR related tickets to the Superbowl in a similar scheme. The hitch in my opinion is commercial breaks will ruin the experience if commercials as they're broadcasted today happen in VR - people will want to plug themselves into the action with no obstructions.
  - redisman 7y ago
    Again, you're just describing Wifi plus unspecified VR magic. Why do you need 5G for this at home VR thing?

josephd79 7y ago

Doesn't matter, they'll limit the amount of bandwidth you will be allowed to use under the "plan" and then charge you crazy for the overages. Which would make it damn near unusable to begin with. Hell, I read an article that ATT cap theirs at 15 gb a month plus $10 each gb you go over. I'd burn through that in 1 day, shit maybe 1 afternoon. Hard to get excited about anything when the prune juice posse creates policies for this stuff and have no idea how a family uses or consumes data anymore....

madengr 7y ago

The FCC is screwing hams, as usual, for 5G. http://www.arrl.org/news/fcc-formally-adopts-proposals-to-remove-amateur-3-ghz-band-invites-comments http://www.arrl.org/news/fcc-formally-adopts-proposals-to-re...

chooseaname 7y ago
Not to be that guy, but would we really expect anything else from Ajit Pai at this point? He's so far into Verizon, et al's pockets... it seems.

Traster 7y ago

I remember being told that 5G wasn't about speed, it was about bandwith and every car would be transmitting 40Gigs an hour because of all the autonomous vehicles. That was the bullish picture. If your bullish picture was "Consumers are going to get nothing and it's going to enable autonomous vehicles that don't exist" then you're probably in trouble.

Animats 7y ago

The article is on point. 5G has an advantage in only a few situations: - Very crowded areas, where you need lots of microcells so everyone can watch streaming video at once. Like stadiums. Verizon is making a lot of noise about 5G in NFL stadiums. Amusingly, latency for sports video is a big deal, because, in sports bars, not all the screens have the same amount of buffering in the path. So some people are cheering while others are waiting for their feed to catch up, and they feel left out and alone. - Moderately remote areas where the capability to drop to the VHF bands will provide some service far from towers. That's actually useful. Claims involving public safety and remote surgery are fantasy. Besides, once it's going, it will probably be overloaded, and there will be rate caps and data caps. But the capped service will be called "unlimited".

gsich 7y ago
"Overloading" will come later. Similar to LTE before, customers don't have 5G capable devices yet. There is also no need to buy one.
Spooky23 7y ago
5G is a strategy to replace wireline service and the regulatory limits imposed on them. Carriers selling fixed 5G will be able to monetize traffic more effectively.
the8472 7y ago
> - Moderately remote areas where the capability to drop to the VHF bands will provide some service far from towers. That's actually useful. It does? Wikipedia lists the lowest 5G frequencies at 600MHz, which is above the VHF band.
- tyingq 7y ago
  The point that 600Mhz has greater distance/range than the higher frequency 4G signals is still correct, despite the miss on whether it's VHF.
  - martinald 7y ago

einpoklum 7y ago

Remind me again why I need even 4G (which I don't have)?

reaperducer 7y ago
You're getting downvoted because most people on HN have never experienced solid, reliable 3G. There's a town I go to sometimes that has only 3G service. But because it's not oversubscribed and has the proper telco infrastructure it's faster and more reliable than the 4G I get at home.
josephg 7y ago
From memory, 3G usually has much higher latency on network traffic. The bandwidth of 3G is reasonably good, but web pages usually load noticeably faster over 4G because modern websites usually need a lot of round-trips to load. (With the notable exception of HN) I have no idea why it has higher latency. It might be because in metro areas its often oversubscribed or the bandwidth ends up saturated.

jinushaun 7y ago

Can we get 4G in more places first before worrying about 5G?

anonsivalley652 7y ago

5G is all about greed: selling more cell-site gear and new phones. If the goal were to actually improved coverage and spectrum utilization, it would be designed, engineered and deployed very differently. From an end-user perspective, 4G is relatively damn good, perhaps too good, so they have to turnover the apple cart and replace it with something crappier. PS: And yes, there are way too many conspiracy theories about 5G before it was even released that distract from the games hardware vendors and carriers wanted to play.

rapjr9 7y ago

How much carbon will building 5G release? Does climate change make building 5G a bad idea? (Does climate change make any big new infrastructure project that isn't just a restoration of existing infrastructure a bad idea?) Also, it seems obvious that the smaller cell size means there will never be good coverage in even slightly remote areas, unless 4G also remains operational. In places like Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine 5G-only would greatly reduce public safety.