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I have yet to hear anyone who's not a telecom CEO or a politician say they actually want 5G
by _bxg1 6y ago
I have yet to hear anyone who's not a telecom CEO or a politician say they actually want 5G
- starpilot 6y agoI want 5g.
- sl1ck731 6y agoI mean, I'm sure a lot of people want it if it improves their mobile experience. It isn't really something that the average person is going to celebrate on Facebook.
- _bxg1 6y agoExcept: - It's shorter-range, so coverage will be spotty for a long time - It doesn't go through buildings, so even the urban centers most likely to get the first towers will have spotty coverage - It will require buying a new device, which OEMs love but the average person won't - That device will take a hit in battery life And all of this for ludicrously-fast new speeds on mobile devices that we'll use for... what exactly? We can already stream HD video over 4G. What experience is 5G, assuming you actually have access to it, going to improve? I'm sure we can contrive some use-cases like streaming VR video or whatever (even though all current phone-based VR platforms have been sunsetted), but I'm extremely skeptical that it will do anything to make the average user's mobile experience better in any meaningful way.
- Mo3 6y agoRegarding your first point, I'm not sure if that's true, I think they use low frequency spectrum around 900MHz (just like LTE) as well, not just the 2000MHz+ to GHz spectrum in densely populated or visited places. Also, as far as I'm concerned, the latency gains are much more interesting as the ludicrous speed, and then not even exclusively for phones and new types of apps, but for IoT as well
- apcragg 6y agoYour first 3 points are all based on a complete misconception of what 5G NR is. You are talking about mmWave which is an accessory component of the 5G NR standard. Low and mid-band 5G use ~ the same bands (or n71 which is the old TV band in the case of T-mobile) as LTE. Some Network Providers have been doing mmWave first because it is easier to deploy but their networks will also be mid and low band when they finish build-out. Maybe don't make blanket statements about a standard you clearly aren't familiar with.
- _bxg1 6y agoThe term is hard to pin down when it's been diluted by things like AT&T rebranding their 4G towers as 5G towers overnight: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/01/att-decides-4g-is-now-5g-starts-issues-icon-changing-software-updates/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/01/att-decides-4g-is-no...
- kalleboo 6y agoThat's not new though, they also rebranded their 3G towers as 4G
- novaRom 6y ago> It will require buying a new device all new modern phone models have 5g, what's the problem? Huawei, Xiaomi I have great experience with 5g, it's way more faster than LTE
- _bxg1 6y agoOnly Samsung's very latest flagship release has a 5G antenna, and Apple hasn't even announced a 5G phone yet. Even if it had, the average person keeps their phone for several years, so almost nobody has a 5G device in their pocket right now.
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- oblio 6y agoThere are 2 kinds of 5G, millimeter wave and non millimeter wave. The one you are talking about is millimeter wave 5G. The other one has pretty long range, goes through building, doesn't use up that much more battery and is overall a better technology (higher bandwidth, better congestion control and overall capacity for more connections in a crowded area, lower latency, etc.).
- _bxg1 6y agoA sibling comment says the non-mmWave one uses the same bands as 4G, which would suggest it's not the version the OP is talking about
- takeda 6y agoThe 5G is pitched because greater speeds, and correct me if I'm wrong, but the millimeter waves are the reason for higher bandwidth otherwise it is similar to 4G that can peak to 1Gbps.
- Junk_Collector 6y agoFR1 (the low band 5G) is capable of greater carrier aggregation and denser QAM modulation than LTE-A so it can achieve higher bandwidths than LTE-A under good conditions. It also has better latency and congestion controls which should provide a better general use experience as well as reduce degradation in heavy traffic. It also pushes more open hardware/software standards for base stations to reduce vendor lock-in.
- omneity 6y ago> What experience is 5G, assuming you actually have access to it, going to improve? Remotely operated robotics due to the much lower latency. Think near instant reaction times while operating a drone with VR goggles, and all the implication this could have. Also many other use cases become more feasible: - Self driving cars with human fallbacks - Safer car racing - Actually smart delivery, where a single person can manage a fleet of vehicles - Search & rescue operations ...
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- johnbrodie 6y agoI'll bite, can you expand just a smidge on "safer car racing"? I'm trying to figure out how 5G enables that and failing.
- Talanes 6y agoPut the racers in simulators that control real race cars remotely. iRacing with more real stakes.
- omneity 6y agoYeah what @Talanes said in a sibling thread. If drivers are not physically present in the racing car then not only they're safer physically but cars could be designed without a human driver in mind (lighter, higher acceleration etc) There's a relative to this already with first person view drone racing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZLimUDUJTA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZLimUDUJTA
- OrgNet 6y ago> - That device will take a hit in battery life 4G was a real battery drain at first
- jsight 6y agoWhat benefit do you see to the telecom that doesn't stem from customer demand?
- _bxg1 6y agoI think they're hoping it will inspire (strongarm?) people into buying new phones, which will juice a slowing smartphone market for both OEMs and the carriers that take a cut of sales.
- vlan0 6y agoTelecoms want to take the place of WiFi. If you follow the non-technical 5G articles, there is a lot of promotion of how 5G _will_ replace WiFi. Within the last year, we denied Verizon's 5G proposal. They want to run fiber and wireless backhaul to provide indoor access for some buildings. It's also important to watch which door these proposals come through. It's a tell as to what their actual agenda is.
- a_imho 6y agoBy customer you mean the end user with device in hand or the companies buying the tracking data?
- X6S1x6Okd1st 6y agoThere's basically one situation in which I'd like it: when in a large crowd.
- the-dude 6y agoThat is not going to happen soon anyways.
- X6S1x6Okd1st 6y agoMeasured in lived experience? Maybe not, measured in large scale hardware roll outs? It's not that far away.
- nxc18 6y agoI want 5G. There, you heard it. I’m not a telecom CEO and I’m not a politician. Edit: I want fast, reliable telecommunications everywhere I go. I want ultra fast reliable telecom in crowded cities. I want cellular that is competitive with cable internet. I want bandwidth available for IoT devices.
- antsar 6y agoSo you can exhaust the monthly high-speed data cap in 5 minutes instead of 5 days?
- nxc18 6y agoSo I can use my mapping application when I’m in the park. So I can look up an earthquake that just happened when I’m in the lobby of a movie theater (that really happened, and the 4G network really is not capable of handling any sort of crowd at least not in my area).
- wrkronmiller 6y ago> the 4G network really is not capable of handling any sort of crowd at least not in my area As someone living in NYC and using 4G daily with few problems, I suspect this is a problem of your telecom provider not having adequate infrastructure or having a bad configuration for handling many connections to a few nodes.
- throwaway55554 6y ago> ... I suspect this is a problem of your telecom provider not having adequate infrastructure or having a bad configuration for handling many connections to a few nodes. Which they'll likely do for their 5G network as well because, well, telecoms do the minimum possible.
- takeda 6y agoI live in LA and don't have this issues with crowds disabling me from using 4G. Regarding the earthquake, yes it is common that you can't access SCEC website right after an earthquake, but this is not a problem with 4G. You can have 10 gbps over fiber and the site still won't be accessible, because the site itself is bogged down by the traffic.
- filleduchaos 6y agoI mean, I don't go around saying I want a more power-efficient washing machine but I'd obviously pick one up if it was available
- ohazi 6y ago5g uses more power, not less.
- danaliv 6y agoI don’t think that was the point of the analogy. s/more power-efficient/better/
- close04 6y ago> /better/ 5G is better. When the vision is finally realized. In the meantime you get a brand new washing machine that costs double, only works when you're next to it, and the spin cycle must be done in the old one. And by the time it's actually better you have to buy a new one anyway. 5G was rushed in a way 3/4G weren't because smartphone sales are slowing down. This is not the usual "there are some hiccups at the beginning" type of thing. As it is today it's rushed and half-baked.
- Avamander 6y ago> costs double, only works when you're next to it, and the spin cycle must be done in the old one. And by the time it's actually better you have to buy a new one anyway. You just described early GPS receivers.
- close04 6y agoWhich says a lot. Having a first generation that comes with compromises and caveats is understandable and unavoidable. It still solves a problem where there's nothing else to even attempt it. In this light the current 5G deployment is indeed just a severely compromised one meant to oversell advantages that are nonexistent today and handwave the disadvantages. You'd have seen a more mature 5G deployment in a few years if the smartphone market didn't need a nudge.
- dylan-m 6y agoIt has its advantages, but it doesn't do much for consumers, except in some pretty extreme circumstances or dense areas. (Stadiums are a popular example, which, okay. I lived across the water from a stadium and my 3G phone signal sucked when there was something going on there. This got way better as my carrier got less bad and technology improved and the stadium added free wifi, but it's definitely a good problem to solve). It'll help other things more. Someone pointed out 5G could be a big thing for flying drones, in a near-future alternate universe where those are prolific, and there's quite a bit of interest in those. Trouble is a use case like that needs the infrastructure. So, everyone else is going to subsidize it by buying vastly overspecced phones, but that's the mobile industry in a nutshell.
- xwdv 6y agoI want 5G. I’ve always wanted the latest and greatest tech, so why stop now?
- Spooky23 6y agoThey are in a big rush because they have the power to do whatever they want with local towers, etc.
- dwater 6y agoI've heard that top brass at the DoD is fixated on 5G being critical to military superiority in the near future, without really having any practical understanding of its strengths and weaknesses or real world applications. But it's become a hot buzzword and an easy way to drum up money and attention. The fact that China is a major player is also helping funnel funding into many money-torching projects.
- Rebelgecko 6y agoAll of the statements I've seen from pentagon brass are extremely critical of the FCC's decisions to let 5G operate close to bands used for GPS and weather forecasting.
- Rebelgecko 6y agoI'd like to have an alternative to the ISP monopoly that exists at my address (technically I have 2 options, but one of them is about 30x faster than the other for the same price)