23 ms·

5G Just Got Weird

167 points by embit 6y ago

elil17 6y ago
As I’ve learned more and more about 5G (which is a nebulous term, really, but what I mean specifically is the planned upcoming releases of LTE 16 and 17, as well as the features of LTE 14 and 15 that users have yet to take advantage of) I’ve become convinced that it’s going to transform how so much of the world is designed. 5G technologies allow for more devices to send more data using less power. This is achieved using a huge variety of new technologies. For instance, with beamforming, the tower sends a directional signal to your phone based on its location instead of broadcasting an omnidirectional signal. This uses less power and supports for more users. What consumers see is much higher data rates for the same price, which doesn’t seem that important. But on the industrial side, there will be offerings that allow for low data rate, low power applications at cheaper and cheaper prices.
- gruez 6y ago
  > But on the industrial side, there will be offerings that allow for low data rate, low power applications at cheaper and cheaper prices. oh great, now my appliances can phone home even without connecting to a wifi network.
  - GrayShade 6y ago
    Just add a SIM card. I've always wondered why they don't put one in the smart TVs, then they could eavesdrop on you all day long. Maybe they'll finally do it now.
    - PeterStuer 6y ago
      There's enough operator deployed wifi around for that already in most countries, so they don't need it.
    - hnlmorg 6y ago
      There is little point when there is already a huge incentive for customers to connect their smart TV to the internet (ie the "smart" features). However you do already see some devices include a sim card. Home "smart" meters for the south of England operate this way. I believe some cars do to.
      - fyfy18 6y ago
        All new cars sold in Europe since 2018 have been required to have a system to automatically contact emergency services in case of an accident: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davekeating/2018/04/01/starting-today-all-cars-in-europe-can-call-the-police-themselves/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/davekeating/2018/04/01/starting...
    - jackson1442 6y ago
      Some IoT stuff already does[0]. According to the trusty people on the internet, you can remove these with your defrosters, and the SIM inside has unlimited data. Of course, approach this with proper scrutiny, but I honestly wouldn't be surprised since their entire business model is based on people not understanding how suction cups work. [0]: https://barnacleparking.com/ https://barnacleparking.com/
  - DarthGhandi 6y ago
    Maybe you should consider not buying internet connected devices or following a simple YouTube tutorial to disable the modem. This is only a problem if you wish it to be.
    - progval 6y ago
      What if it becomes so commonplace you no longer have a choice to buy a device not connected to the internet? and if it's not easy to disable the modem? Right now it's already hard enough to have a smartphone's software not spying on you.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- nfriedly 6y ago
  > What consumers see is much higher data rates for the same price, which doesn’t seem that important. I think this is in part due to data caps. Nobody takes advantage of the speed, because that could mean burning an entire month's worth of data in 10 minutes.
  - Nursie 6y ago
    In circumstances where there is such a thing as a "month's worth of data". Which is still a lot of places, but you can get truly unlimited contracts in some places now, for reasonable amounts.
    - AnssiH 6y ago
      > you can get truly unlimited contracts in some places now This makes it sound like this was not possible before. But e.g. my mobile provider Elisa never did have data caps in the first place, it's been unlimited since GPRS (and no weird tethering limits either).
      - Nursie 6y ago
        Probably very country dependent! I've only had that sort of deal for the last 5ish years.
    - ClikeX 6y ago
      I have "unlimited". In the sense that I have a daily 5GB cap, if I hit that I have to manually trigger 1GB more. But I can do so as much as I want.
      - Nursie 6y ago
        I have (as far as I can tell) truly unlimited, including tethering. When we had trouble getting a fast connection to the house, for a couple of months we just hooked up my phone to the router and burned through 100GB+ per month, with not a squeak from the provider. These deals seem to be getting more common here in the UK, and I pay around £20 per month for it.
- lipanski 6y ago
  > As I’ve learned more and more about 5G Out of curiousity, what's a good source of information on 5G? I assume the standard itself is not the easiest thing to digest so I'd appreciate your input.
  - m4rtink 6y ago
    Last years CCC has a lot of 5G related videos.
  - elil17 6y ago
    An Introduction to LTE by Christopher Cox and sharetechnote.com have been most useful to me
  - johnnycab 6y ago
    Yes, the 3GPP or ITU standards can make for a dour read. Probably best to look for sources that you find engaging. You can start with something that gives you the basics, and/or just go straight to the vendors ─ who provide a plethora of white papers, case studies, industry insights etc. https://5g.systemsapproach.org/index.html https://5g.systemsapproach.org/index.html https://www.ericsson.com/en/5g/5g-for-consumers https://www.ericsson.com/en/5g/5g-for-consumers https://www.nokia.com/networks/5g/ https://www.nokia.com/networks/5g/
    - wqTJ3jmY8br4RWa 6y ago
      Stranger, your links above were very helpful for me in formulating my company's strategy in 5G. we are a big well known player. How can I get in touch with you for a more in depth conversation?
  - femto 6y ago
    Clone the srsLTE repository [1], and use it to set up a demonstration system with a core network (srsEPC), base station (srsENB) and a mobile phone (srsUE). It's several hours work to set up a system that runs on a couple of Virtual Machines and bridges the IP networks together on your two VMs. You can then do pings and file transfers over your newly minted LTE network. An Intel i7 processor is fast enough to run a multi-megabit link in real time, with all three of the above components running on the same i7. Use srsLTE's simulated channel model to start with, as if avoids the cost of hardware and the regulatory restrictions on making an actual radio transmission. Only buy radio hardware if you graduate to wanting to experiment with actual transmissions and have developed the knowledge to not get in trouble with the regulators. Once you have the demo running, download the standards [2] and start digging though the srsLTE source code with the standards by your side for reference. The source code makes the standard digestible and includes comments with references to documents, teaching you the best places to start. Because you have a live system running you can experiment as needed to understand something. 5G is an evolution of 4G (LTE), so whilst the srsLTE isn't a complete 5G implementation it will teach you enough about 4G (which is the foundation of 5G) that you will probably be able to understand 5G. I've found this approach to be a valuable way to learn about LTE/5G, but I do have a background in such systems. My feeling is such an approach would work for someone with a software background, even if lacking the radio knowledge, as the srsLTE source acts as a "roadmap" and the necessary background reading (MIMO, coding, ...) could be done on an as needed basis as the concept is encountered in the source code. [1] https://github.com/srsLTE/srsLTE https://github.com/srsLTE/srsLTE [2] https://www.3gpp.org/ftp/Specs/latest https://www.3gpp.org/ftp/Specs/latest
- amelius 6y ago
  > For instance, with beamforming, the tower sends a directional signal to your phone based on its location instead of broadcasting an omnidirectional signal. This uses less power and supports for more users. I think the biggest advantage is the other way around: devices using less battery power for transmitting signals, so batteries would last longer. (And I'm betting that if receiving would be less power-intensive for these devices if the incoming signal has more power, then the towers would use more power, not less.) But you're right about the other advantage of beamforming: less interference.
  - elil17 6y ago
    Beamforming uses less power on both ends. There’s a regulatory maximum signal power for both the user equipment and the node B, and sending a unidirectional signal uses less electricity while producing the same signal power in the direction of the beam.
- p_l 6y ago
  Beamforming and generally avoiding omnidirectional signal is something that's been around since at least HSDPA, iirc? At least that's when I heard of it in telco...
  - elil17 6y ago
    It’s true that beamforming itself is not new (there’s actually been rudimentary beamforming since 2G). But beams are getting small and targeted enough to support space division multiple access (same frequency can be used for many mobile stations in different locations). Also, 5G mobile stations themselves support beamforming, which is important for uplink bandwidth and power usage.
- ksec 6y ago
  >releases of LTE 16 and 17 Nitpicking, 3GPP Rel 16 / 17. There is no such thing as LTE 16 :) But generally yes. 5G is basically a much better 4G.
  - tuatoru 6y ago
    Any chance we could get that standards committee to re-do bluetooth? :-)
- supernova87a 6y ago
  Do we really think that 5G will bring faster connectivity for cheaper (for the consumer)? That's what I want to know amidst all the hype about the technology by headline writers. If it's not going to make things faster and cheaper, I'm not eagerly awaiting its arrival like many would have us believe. Isn't that the point of technology?
  - elil17 6y ago
    Typically, in the US, the big name cell operators (Verizon, TMobile, etc) charge similar rates and give the highest packet priority to their customers, while selling deprioritized bandwidth to virtual network mobile operators (US Mobile, Google Fi, Mint, etc.), who in turn sell it to consumers at a lower price. My guess is that with 5G, VNMOs will be a better option for more people because circumstances where connectivity is limited and priority matters will be much rarer. That’s just the US market, though. I can’t speak to other countries.
    - supernova87a 6y ago
      Oh, I didn't know about that at all -- the aspect of selling off lower "grade" bandwidth to others. Are there any stats about that? Does that apply to voice channels as well? Is there somewhere I can read more about this? Thanks!
LockAndLol 6y ago
> Private Networks > [...]At those scales, 5G could function essentially like Wi-Fi networks. Now that's going to get interesting, I hope. Will we finally see a reliable alternative to 802.11?
- bzb4 6y ago
  I thought 11ax is meant to be finally reliable?
  - LockAndLol 6y ago
    I was talking more about the alternatives. Bluetooth can be used for networking, but personal experience hasn't been very positive with reliability and range. LiFi never really took off. And honestly, another alternative doesn't come to mind...
- ksec 6y ago
  For consumer usage, that is still uncertain. Technically it should be better than 802.11ax, but no one has figure out the patents royalty issues for this use case.
- foobiekr 6y ago
  Private APNs existed in 3g and LTE as well; 5g slicing is an evolution of that.
thinkingkong 6y ago
5G doesnt seem like its enabling anything fundamentally new. The talk of any ”killer app” based on having more throughput or on these optimizations always feels like demand generation and slightly inauthentic. Are there any technologies enabled by these techniques that are not possible today?
- rsynnott 6y ago
  Last mile for fixed rural wireless broadband seems like the obvious one. Today, this is generally done with either LTE or various proprietary things (or if you’re particularly unlucky, satellite). 5G should allow for greater total bandwidth, reducing the impact of contention. And on the other side, it should be helpful for very dense urban usage. Try using LTE in a large city’s central train station at a busy time and see how you get on. But yeah, not revolutionary, but should make existing LTE applications less awful in some scenarios where they struggle.
  - CydeWeys 6y ago
    I wonder how this will fare vs Starlink, which seems like it's trying to solve the same problem.
    - magicsmoke 6y ago
      Starlink will probably do better than 5G for access to rural areas because you don't need to build out a physical cable. In highly dense urban areas with large numbers of simultaneous users, 5G is a better fit.
      - dylan604 6y ago
        Have the 5G towers connect to Starlink rather than running the cabling to them.
        selectodude 6y ago
        That doesn't really fix the total bandwidth capacity issue though.
justinclift 6y ago
Reading through this, it doesn't sound like the people involved considered the amount of outright misuse some of these features are likely to enable. Haven't we already seen bad actors will misuse mobile tech to track our movements, spy on people, (etc) on a wholesale scale? This seems to be wilfully charging down the road of making it worse?
- amelius 6y ago
  I bet that the concerns of the average user are not really what 5G committee members thought was most important.
  - justinclift 6y ago
    Fair point. :) Unfortunately though, they really should.
- tuatoru 6y ago
  This is my concern also. 5G will be great for advertisers, insurance companies, police forces, totalitarian governments and NSA-type organisations. (It may be useful here and there for manufacturers, miners, and farmers.) Oh well, carrying a smartphone was great while it lasted.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
nobleach 6y ago
The idea of vehicle to vehicle communication is a bit frightening. Imagine the obscenities and insults you yell at other drivers, are now able to be communicated directly to the object of ire.
- derekp7 6y ago
  We had that back in the 70's. It was called Citizen's Band radio.
- dragonelite 6y ago
  And reading this a smirk came on my face, yo tesla open a comm channel to that car.
  - ClikeX 6y ago
    Are we getting Star Trek comm channels? "Tesla, hail the Hyundai behind me!"
t0astbread 6y ago
Uhh, I'm not sure what that was but I tried to access that site via Tor and on the particular exit node I was on I got back a "418 I'm a teapot" response. Yeah, it got weird.
- erulabs 6y ago
  Well, it's probably a teapot! > The HTTP 418 I'm a teapot client error response code indicates that the server refuses to brew coffee because it is, permanently, a teapot. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status/418 https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status/418
lcnmrn 6y ago
Can we skip 5G already?
BigBalli 6y ago
5G will make Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, BLE, and NFC obsolete.
- downrightmike 6y ago
  Not unless you want to control your connectivity/data. Imagine how bad ads will be if you can't block them and they follow you around without mercy.
  - Meandering 6y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bXJ_obaiYQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bXJ_obaiYQ
- cupofjoakim 6y ago
  I could see wi-fi (even if I don't believe it) but how would this compete with BLE/NFC/Bluetooth? It's not like I want my wireless earbuds or my apple pay to go up to the internet and then back to device i'm using it from, right?
  - progval 6y ago
    "Sidelinks will allow 5G-connected vehicles to communicate directly with one another, rather than going through a cell-tower intermediary."
    - coronadisaster 6y ago
      I bet google wont implement that part... Just like they didnt implement ad-hoc wifi
      - tdonovic 6y ago
        Wifi direct is definitely implemented on android, not sure what you are specifically talking about?
suddenstutter 6y ago
Lol cant wait for the right wingers to use this to further their ridiculous 5G conspiracies.
Havoc 6y ago
>5G for cars to communicate with each other That's pretty good news. Even a simple "sharp braking" type coms between cars has decent potential to save lives beyond what can be achieved with radar & the like.
- kungato 6y ago
  How do you avoid bad actors in these scenarios? Sounds ripe for general havoc, targeting specific people etc
  - cptskippy 6y ago
    Yeah, I could see someone have button to transmit hard braking on demand for tailgaters.
    - TotempaaltJ 6y ago
      Regulate security measures eg signed messaging where only manufacturers can get certificates? Maybe combine it with license plate so it's traceable to a person?
      - oauea 6y ago
        There will be markets where you can simply buy someone else's certificate.
      - blincoln 6y ago
        So the attack will then be to hook into the car's on-board computer and tell it to send the falsified message with a fake plate number, and let the existing cryptographic code handle the signing. Alternatively, dump a legit cert once (e.g. by detailed examination of one on-board computer), then put that into the malicious hardware that sends falsified messages. This is "the DRM problem", but in reverse. There is no way to give an end user a device that can send cryptographically-protected messages while also guaranteeing that they can't generate messages other than the ones the manufacturer wants them to send. One can make it very, very hard to do so, like with TPM/trusted enclave hardware, but when the potential consequences are people dying in car crashes, and the motivation to send false messages is so high[1], it's just an awful idea, because it will absolutely be misused, and people will die as a result. Vehicle-to-vehicle communication makes this even worse. At least with a tower intermediary, there would be some sort of forensic evidence stored outside of the vehicles involved. [1] The ability to manipulate traffic in order to get to one's destination faster would be a huge selling point for a lot of people.
gumbo 6y ago
Can we change the title. As is, it’s just click bait.
mac01021 6y ago
Not exactly on topic: There have been a few HN submissions in the past linking to papers concerned with the effect of 5G on insects. As a layperson I was not able to evaluate those papers. But if anyone knows if there was any kind of consensus reached about that, or even if this is something that anyone serious is concerned about, I would appreciate the pointer.
- benbristow 6y ago
  Hopefully not something to fuel conspiracy theorists with more reasons to burn down mobile towers like what has been happening in the UK recently.
  - mac01021 6y ago
    What conspiracies are moving people to do that? And how do you burn down a steel tower?
    - jmcgough 6y ago
      similar to QAnon, there are a lot of offshoots of different ideas that all stem from people not understanding 5G and thinking that it's unsafe, despite a lack of scientific evidence to support that. Pre-covid it was that 5G was making everyone physically ill. Post-covid it's that the radiation is mutating the virus to make it more deadly or spread it more quickly. https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/conspiracy-theorists-burn-5g-towers-claiming-link-virus-70258811 https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/conspiracy-theorists...
      - godmode2019 6y ago
        I think its important to think about things as information and disinformation. The post covid comment is clearly disinformation. It was used and promoted by the media in my country as a strawman argument for anyone who had concerns about 5g. Its important to promote the most creditable voice rather than the least. When the least creditable argument is promoted you know the promoters don't want to deal with the argument at first principal, you believe X this crazy person also believes X there for you are Y. Its a common framing technique used by the media, you will start to notice it everywhere on both sides of the media echo chamber.
mellosouls 6y ago
Seems a poor taste title considering the conspiracy theories around 5G that have actually got engineers physically attacked and threatened. Click bait is one thing but poor form in this context and publication.
partyboat1586 6y ago
Someone debunk this for me please: http://www.5gappeal.eu/about/ http://www.5gappeal.eu/about/ Edit: I'm legitimately looking for good sources on this. Not trolling.
- erulabs 6y ago
  What is supposed to be debunked? The main claim seems to be: > RF-EMF has been proven to be harmful for humans and the environment. Which... is true-ish? That's a bit like saying water is harmful to the environment and humans. For sure it is, if it's rushing at you with incredible velocity and mass (power). Electromagnetic radiation could certainly harm a human - with enough power. Drinking a glass of water or sending a ~100mW 2.5ghz or ~50mW 5.0ghz signal at your body is harmless. Maybe a better example is solar radiation or sound, which is much more similar to a 5ghz signal (re: invisible radiation). A bit of sunlight is probably good for you - intense, unfiltered, high-powered UV light could roast the whole earth. A good study to dive into some of the effects of 5GHz/100mW radiation would be https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6765906/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6765906/ A good snippet: > The three in vivo investigations addressed a variety of issues including acute effects on muscle contraction, skin-reflection properties (which are more of a dose-related than health-related issue), and skin cancer [19,54,57]. The rat skin cancer study (one to two weekly, short-term exposures at 94 GHz, 1 W/kg; DMBA-initiated animals) did not show any positive outcome [54]. Another study examined the muscle contraction of mice and described some responses [19]. Again, 94 GHz was used, but power density or SAR values were not reported. So at incredibly high power (94GHz / 1W/kg - thousands of times more powerful than what we're talking about with 5g) there were no positive outcomes for a skin cancer test. It was possible to stimulate muscle contraction, which makes total sense: pump enough electricity through the air to contract a muscle. But mammal bodies are great at insulation (our skulls are amazing at protecting us from rouge radiation). The same study is also mentioned in this article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Denial_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Denial_System and (https://www.wired.com/2009/08/pain-ray-first-commercial-sale-looms/ https://www.wired.com/2009/08/pain-ray-first-commercial-sale...) which is about "pain guns" - systems that use radiation to inflict pain from a distance. It mentions a beam power of 30 kilowatts! That's 300,000x more powerful, and the weapon doesn't work if the person is wearing a thick sweater. It takes a _ton_ of power to interfere with organic objects. Edit: I do want to say that I think more investigation should be done re: radiation pollution and it's impact on micro-biology, insects, birds, etc. Humans are really resilient, but it's not super clear that for example, some algae might not respond to low levels of radiation in interesting ways. My intuition says it's unlikely, as there is tons of low level radiation flying around in nature - 5g isn't some new, different kind of energy, but further study should be done, absolutely. I'd suspect light radiation is far more dangerous to bugs and bacteria than 5g though.
Maha-pudma 6y ago
The privacy implications for this actually horrifies me.
rektide 6y ago
Good article but I continue to feel like for whatever use cases 5g is fit to serve, it seems likely to be a limited technology, used only by heavyweight giant companies. Unlike other communications bands, there is no intent to make any of this at all consumerly accessible.
- fock 6y ago
  I think, the general idea is to make this very accessible. But obviously, there will be a price to pay: buy this Matebook - no Wifi, but hey you can get this very sweet, data-limited 5G plan for only USD50 a month. Get an unlimited plan for USD300 a month. Or: buy this car, with superfast 5G V2V – oh, there's a USD1000 licenses included; well, nevermind. (and remember, some companies would have liked to use Wifi for V2V, which is freeish...)
  - DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
    I thought V2V was going to use redundant, multi-media, communications - such as modulating a car’s lights’ LED PWM to provide a low-bandwidth signal to other cars within line-of-sight, while also using some analogue of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi for longe-range communications.
- sasaf5 6y ago
  Especially the use of unlicensed spectrum has the potential to make this technology accessible to consumers (say, in lieu of wifi). So does device-to-device communication when not mediated by a network.
Dylan16807 6y ago
> Millimeter waves means it will be possible to build a network just for an office building, factory, or stadium. At those scales, 5G could function essentially like Wi-Fi networks. LTE was already using a whole lot of frequencies adjacent to Wi-FI, and I'm sure similar bands would be a critical part of making a private 5G network since you want to go through minor obstacles. Millimeter-wave on the other hand could be useful for speed but I bet it wouldn't be a critical part.
sabas123 6y ago
> In defining V2X for 5G, Seo says the most challenging thing was to provide high data throughput, reliability, and low latency, both of which are essential for anything beyond the most basic communications. Seo explains that earlier standards typically deal with messages with hundreds of bytes that are expected to reach 90 percent of receivers in a 300-meter radius within a few hundred milliseconds. The 3GPP standards bring those benchmarks into the realm of gigabytes per second, 99.999 percent reliability, and just a few milliseconds. Did the previous standard lag behind or is this improvement truly this ridiculous?
- nine_k 6y ago
  This is what a quickly developing field feels like. Say, in 10 years from 1985 to 1995, personal computer CPUs developed from 80286 @12MHz and 134k transistors to Pentium MMX @133MHZ and 3.3M transistors, with at least 100x improvement in integer performance alone, to say nothing about FPU and the vector unit (MMX). And another similar jump occurred in next 10 (well, 11) years when Intel unveiled the Core line of CPUs.
- thu2111 6y ago
  The difficulty with V2X is that both terminal and 'base station' might be moving at high speeds relative to each other, from what I understand. In conventional telephony the base station doesn't move.
pupdogg 6y ago
This might be a good time to scrap it all and start from scratch!
CarbyAu 6y ago
5G communication fine. But trust? I don't want my car accepting information from untrusted cars or roadside infrastructure. It will be interesting riding a motorbike through these years.
k__ 6y ago
I hoped 5G would be like 4G but with much more speed, lower latency, and more area covered by one antenna. But it seems it won't deliver.
- exciteabletom 6y ago
  It's hard to deliver both higher speed and longer range, because higher frequencies don't reach as far and don't penetrate walls as well.
  - k__ 6y ago
    But what I read about 5G is that its range is comparable to wifi. Why do they do that?
    - exciteabletom 6y ago
      AFAIK, the speed is >gigabit fast, but to achieve that speed you need to have super high frequencies and hence smaller range. To me, it seems inconvenient as a replacement for 4G. However it is also being used for other applications; like self-driving cars[1]. [1]: https://www.cnet.com/news/5g-could-make-self-driving-cars-smarter-commutes-safer/ https://www.cnet.com/news/5g-could-make-self-driving-cars-sm...
mark_l_watson 6y ago
I expect and hope that 5G makes it possible to have virtual environments with many participants, very high resolution, low latency, and high frame rate. While there is something human and nurturing about getting a hug or shaking someone’s hand, very high quality shared virtual spaces will open up many business and social opportunities. Endless possibilities...
krick 6y ago
There's so much messy stuff with 5G from nearly the very beginning. And I like it less and less. I'm nobody in the domain of wireless physical protocols, so I wouldn't know, of course. But does it actually even make sense to mix up peer-to-peer and peer-to-tower communications within one protocol? Why would you even want that? To be able to do all this stuff on the same frequencies? Having (more-or-less) same chip for everything, regardless of if it needs close-range and/or global network communications not only disgusts me "politically" (privacy issues, totally absent transparency, you know all that stuff), but also means more complicated, more expensive tech where you could do with cheaper one. And doing everything there is to do wirelessly on the same frequencies means these frequencies busy as fuck. Wouldn't you actually want the opposite for the protocol you hope to become the ubiquitous high-throughput cellular network protocol? It seems like it would make more sense to send 2 identical messages (or even to use 2 chips, if need be) on different frequencies if you actually need both for some reason.
knorker 6y ago
Wow, those are really cool technologies. That said, the unlicensed spectrum thing sounds absolutely awful. Sorry your wifi will suck because your local telco decided to beam 5GHz to your neighbor, and your AP understands that as "collision" at best, and "weather radar" at worst. I thought that was thrown out of the plan, with torches and pitchforks? With DFS wifi is already super crammed, and now "right of way" managed spectrum people want to land grab it for profit? That's so not cool.

167 points by embit 6y ago

As I’ve learned more and more about 5G (which is a nebulous term, really, but what I mean specifically is the planned upcoming releases of LTE 16 and 17, as well as the features of LTE 14 and 15 that users have yet to take advantage of) I’ve become convinced that it’s going to transform how so much of the world is designed. 5G technologies allow for more devices to send more data using less power. This is achieved using a huge variety of new technologies. For instance, with beamforming, the tower sends a directional signal to your phone based on its location instead of broadcasting an omnidirectional signal. This uses less power and supports for more users. What consumers see is much higher data rates for the same price, which doesn’t seem that important. But on the industrial side, there will be offerings that allow for low data rate, low power applications at cheaper and cheaper prices.

gruez 6y ago
> But on the industrial side, there will be offerings that allow for low data rate, low power applications at cheaper and cheaper prices. oh great, now my appliances can phone home even without connecting to a wifi network.
- GrayShade 6y ago
  Just add a SIM card. I've always wondered why they don't put one in the smart TVs, then they could eavesdrop on you all day long. Maybe they'll finally do it now.
  - PeterStuer 6y ago
    There's enough operator deployed wifi around for that already in most countries, so they don't need it.
  - hnlmorg 6y ago
    There is little point when there is already a huge incentive for customers to connect their smart TV to the internet (ie the "smart" features). However you do already see some devices include a sim card. Home "smart" meters for the south of England operate this way. I believe some cars do to.
    - fyfy18 6y ago
      All new cars sold in Europe since 2018 have been required to have a system to automatically contact emergency services in case of an accident: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davekeating/2018/04/01/starting-today-all-cars-in-europe-can-call-the-police-themselves/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/davekeating/2018/04/01/starting...
  - jackson1442 6y ago
    Some IoT stuff already does[0]. According to the trusty people on the internet, you can remove these with your defrosters, and the SIM inside has unlimited data. Of course, approach this with proper scrutiny, but I honestly wouldn't be surprised since their entire business model is based on people not understanding how suction cups work. [0]: https://barnacleparking.com/ https://barnacleparking.com/
- DarthGhandi 6y ago
  Maybe you should consider not buying internet connected devices or following a simple YouTube tutorial to disable the modem. This is only a problem if you wish it to be.
  - progval 6y ago
    What if it becomes so commonplace you no longer have a choice to buy a device not connected to the internet? and if it's not easy to disable the modem? Right now it's already hard enough to have a smartphone's software not spying on you.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
nfriedly 6y ago
> What consumers see is much higher data rates for the same price, which doesn’t seem that important. I think this is in part due to data caps. Nobody takes advantage of the speed, because that could mean burning an entire month's worth of data in 10 minutes.
- Nursie 6y ago
  In circumstances where there is such a thing as a "month's worth of data". Which is still a lot of places, but you can get truly unlimited contracts in some places now, for reasonable amounts.
  - AnssiH 6y ago
    > you can get truly unlimited contracts in some places now This makes it sound like this was not possible before. But e.g. my mobile provider Elisa never did have data caps in the first place, it's been unlimited since GPRS (and no weird tethering limits either).
    - Nursie 6y ago
      Probably very country dependent! I've only had that sort of deal for the last 5ish years.
  - ClikeX 6y ago
    I have "unlimited". In the sense that I have a daily 5GB cap, if I hit that I have to manually trigger 1GB more. But I can do so as much as I want.
    - Nursie 6y ago
      I have (as far as I can tell) truly unlimited, including tethering. When we had trouble getting a fast connection to the house, for a couple of months we just hooked up my phone to the router and burned through 100GB+ per month, with not a squeak from the provider. These deals seem to be getting more common here in the UK, and I pay around £20 per month for it.
lipanski 6y ago
> As I’ve learned more and more about 5G Out of curiousity, what's a good source of information on 5G? I assume the standard itself is not the easiest thing to digest so I'd appreciate your input.
- m4rtink 6y ago
  Last years CCC has a lot of 5G related videos.
- elil17 6y ago
  An Introduction to LTE by Christopher Cox and sharetechnote.com have been most useful to me
- johnnycab 6y ago
  Yes, the 3GPP or ITU standards can make for a dour read. Probably best to look for sources that you find engaging. You can start with something that gives you the basics, and/or just go straight to the vendors ─ who provide a plethora of white papers, case studies, industry insights etc. https://5g.systemsapproach.org/index.html https://5g.systemsapproach.org/index.html https://www.ericsson.com/en/5g/5g-for-consumers https://www.ericsson.com/en/5g/5g-for-consumers https://www.nokia.com/networks/5g/ https://www.nokia.com/networks/5g/
  - wqTJ3jmY8br4RWa 6y ago
    Stranger, your links above were very helpful for me in formulating my company's strategy in 5G. we are a big well known player. How can I get in touch with you for a more in depth conversation?
- femto 6y ago
  Clone the srsLTE repository [1], and use it to set up a demonstration system with a core network (srsEPC), base station (srsENB) and a mobile phone (srsUE). It's several hours work to set up a system that runs on a couple of Virtual Machines and bridges the IP networks together on your two VMs. You can then do pings and file transfers over your newly minted LTE network. An Intel i7 processor is fast enough to run a multi-megabit link in real time, with all three of the above components running on the same i7. Use srsLTE's simulated channel model to start with, as if avoids the cost of hardware and the regulatory restrictions on making an actual radio transmission. Only buy radio hardware if you graduate to wanting to experiment with actual transmissions and have developed the knowledge to not get in trouble with the regulators. Once you have the demo running, download the standards [2] and start digging though the srsLTE source code with the standards by your side for reference. The source code makes the standard digestible and includes comments with references to documents, teaching you the best places to start. Because you have a live system running you can experiment as needed to understand something. 5G is an evolution of 4G (LTE), so whilst the srsLTE isn't a complete 5G implementation it will teach you enough about 4G (which is the foundation of 5G) that you will probably be able to understand 5G. I've found this approach to be a valuable way to learn about LTE/5G, but I do have a background in such systems. My feeling is such an approach would work for someone with a software background, even if lacking the radio knowledge, as the srsLTE source acts as a "roadmap" and the necessary background reading (MIMO, coding, ...) could be done on an as needed basis as the concept is encountered in the source code. [1] https://github.com/srsLTE/srsLTE https://github.com/srsLTE/srsLTE [2] https://www.3gpp.org/ftp/Specs/latest https://www.3gpp.org/ftp/Specs/latest
amelius 6y ago
> For instance, with beamforming, the tower sends a directional signal to your phone based on its location instead of broadcasting an omnidirectional signal. This uses less power and supports for more users. I think the biggest advantage is the other way around: devices using less battery power for transmitting signals, so batteries would last longer. (And I'm betting that if receiving would be less power-intensive for these devices if the incoming signal has more power, then the towers would use more power, not less.) But you're right about the other advantage of beamforming: less interference.
- elil17 6y ago
  Beamforming uses less power on both ends. There’s a regulatory maximum signal power for both the user equipment and the node B, and sending a unidirectional signal uses less electricity while producing the same signal power in the direction of the beam.
p_l 6y ago
Beamforming and generally avoiding omnidirectional signal is something that's been around since at least HSDPA, iirc? At least that's when I heard of it in telco...
- elil17 6y ago
  It’s true that beamforming itself is not new (there’s actually been rudimentary beamforming since 2G). But beams are getting small and targeted enough to support space division multiple access (same frequency can be used for many mobile stations in different locations). Also, 5G mobile stations themselves support beamforming, which is important for uplink bandwidth and power usage.
ksec 6y ago
>releases of LTE 16 and 17 Nitpicking, 3GPP Rel 16 / 17. There is no such thing as LTE 16 :) But generally yes. 5G is basically a much better 4G.
- tuatoru 6y ago
  Any chance we could get that standards committee to re-do bluetooth? :-)
supernova87a 6y ago
Do we really think that 5G will bring faster connectivity for cheaper (for the consumer)? That's what I want to know amidst all the hype about the technology by headline writers. If it's not going to make things faster and cheaper, I'm not eagerly awaiting its arrival like many would have us believe. Isn't that the point of technology?
- elil17 6y ago
  Typically, in the US, the big name cell operators (Verizon, TMobile, etc) charge similar rates and give the highest packet priority to their customers, while selling deprioritized bandwidth to virtual network mobile operators (US Mobile, Google Fi, Mint, etc.), who in turn sell it to consumers at a lower price. My guess is that with 5G, VNMOs will be a better option for more people because circumstances where connectivity is limited and priority matters will be much rarer. That’s just the US market, though. I can’t speak to other countries.
  - supernova87a 6y ago
    Oh, I didn't know about that at all -- the aspect of selling off lower "grade" bandwidth to others. Are there any stats about that? Does that apply to voice channels as well? Is there somewhere I can read more about this? Thanks!

LockAndLol 6y ago

> Private Networks > [...]At those scales, 5G could function essentially like Wi-Fi networks. Now that's going to get interesting, I hope. Will we finally see a reliable alternative to 802.11?

bzb4 6y ago
I thought 11ax is meant to be finally reliable?
- LockAndLol 6y ago
  I was talking more about the alternatives. Bluetooth can be used for networking, but personal experience hasn't been very positive with reliability and range. LiFi never really took off. And honestly, another alternative doesn't come to mind...
ksec 6y ago
For consumer usage, that is still uncertain. Technically it should be better than 802.11ax, but no one has figure out the patents royalty issues for this use case.
foobiekr 6y ago
Private APNs existed in 3g and LTE as well; 5g slicing is an evolution of that.

thinkingkong 6y ago

5G doesnt seem like its enabling anything fundamentally new. The talk of any ”killer app” based on having more throughput or on these optimizations always feels like demand generation and slightly inauthentic. Are there any technologies enabled by these techniques that are not possible today?

rsynnott 6y ago
Last mile for fixed rural wireless broadband seems like the obvious one. Today, this is generally done with either LTE or various proprietary things (or if you’re particularly unlucky, satellite). 5G should allow for greater total bandwidth, reducing the impact of contention. And on the other side, it should be helpful for very dense urban usage. Try using LTE in a large city’s central train station at a busy time and see how you get on. But yeah, not revolutionary, but should make existing LTE applications less awful in some scenarios where they struggle.
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  I wonder how this will fare vs Starlink, which seems like it's trying to solve the same problem.
  - magicsmoke 6y ago
    Starlink will probably do better than 5G for access to rural areas because you don't need to build out a physical cable. In highly dense urban areas with large numbers of simultaneous users, 5G is a better fit.
    - dylan604 6y ago
      Have the 5G towers connect to Starlink rather than running the cabling to them.
      - selectodude 6y ago
        That doesn't really fix the total bandwidth capacity issue though.

justinclift 6y ago

Reading through this, it doesn't sound like the people involved considered the amount of outright misuse some of these features are likely to enable. Haven't we already seen bad actors will misuse mobile tech to track our movements, spy on people, (etc) on a wholesale scale? This seems to be wilfully charging down the road of making it worse?

amelius 6y ago
I bet that the concerns of the average user are not really what 5G committee members thought was most important.
- justinclift 6y ago
  Fair point. :) Unfortunately though, they really should.
tuatoru 6y ago
This is my concern also. 5G will be great for advertisers, insurance companies, police forces, totalitarian governments and NSA-type organisations. (It may be useful here and there for manufacturers, miners, and farmers.) Oh well, carrying a smartphone was great while it lasted.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

nobleach 6y ago

The idea of vehicle to vehicle communication is a bit frightening. Imagine the obscenities and insults you yell at other drivers, are now able to be communicated directly to the object of ire.

derekp7 6y ago
We had that back in the 70's. It was called Citizen's Band radio.
dragonelite 6y ago
And reading this a smirk came on my face, yo tesla open a comm channel to that car.
- ClikeX 6y ago
  Are we getting Star Trek comm channels? "Tesla, hail the Hyundai behind me!"

t0astbread 6y ago

Uhh, I'm not sure what that was but I tried to access that site via Tor and on the particular exit node I was on I got back a "418 I'm a teapot" response. Yeah, it got weird.

erulabs 6y ago
Well, it's probably a teapot! > The HTTP 418 I'm a teapot client error response code indicates that the server refuses to brew coffee because it is, permanently, a teapot. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status/418 https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status/418

lcnmrn 6y ago

Can we skip 5G already?

BigBalli 6y ago

5G will make Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, BLE, and NFC obsolete.

downrightmike 6y ago
Not unless you want to control your connectivity/data. Imagine how bad ads will be if you can't block them and they follow you around without mercy.
- Meandering 6y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bXJ_obaiYQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bXJ_obaiYQ
cupofjoakim 6y ago
I could see wi-fi (even if I don't believe it) but how would this compete with BLE/NFC/Bluetooth? It's not like I want my wireless earbuds or my apple pay to go up to the internet and then back to device i'm using it from, right?
- progval 6y ago
  "Sidelinks will allow 5G-connected vehicles to communicate directly with one another, rather than going through a cell-tower intermediary."
  - coronadisaster 6y ago
    I bet google wont implement that part... Just like they didnt implement ad-hoc wifi
    - tdonovic 6y ago
      Wifi direct is definitely implemented on android, not sure what you are specifically talking about?

suddenstutter 6y ago

Lol cant wait for the right wingers to use this to further their ridiculous 5G conspiracies.

Havoc 6y ago

>5G for cars to communicate with each other That's pretty good news. Even a simple "sharp braking" type coms between cars has decent potential to save lives beyond what can be achieved with radar & the like.

kungato 6y ago
How do you avoid bad actors in these scenarios? Sounds ripe for general havoc, targeting specific people etc
- cptskippy 6y ago
  Yeah, I could see someone have button to transmit hard braking on demand for tailgaters.
  - TotempaaltJ 6y ago
    Regulate security measures eg signed messaging where only manufacturers can get certificates? Maybe combine it with license plate so it's traceable to a person?
    - oauea 6y ago
      There will be markets where you can simply buy someone else's certificate.
    - blincoln 6y ago
      So the attack will then be to hook into the car's on-board computer and tell it to send the falsified message with a fake plate number, and let the existing cryptographic code handle the signing. Alternatively, dump a legit cert once (e.g. by detailed examination of one on-board computer), then put that into the malicious hardware that sends falsified messages. This is "the DRM problem", but in reverse. There is no way to give an end user a device that can send cryptographically-protected messages while also guaranteeing that they can't generate messages other than the ones the manufacturer wants them to send. One can make it very, very hard to do so, like with TPM/trusted enclave hardware, but when the potential consequences are people dying in car crashes, and the motivation to send false messages is so high[1], it's just an awful idea, because it will absolutely be misused, and people will die as a result. Vehicle-to-vehicle communication makes this even worse. At least with a tower intermediary, there would be some sort of forensic evidence stored outside of the vehicles involved. [1] The ability to manipulate traffic in order to get to one's destination faster would be a huge selling point for a lot of people.

gumbo 6y ago

Can we change the title. As is, it’s just click bait.

mac01021 6y ago

Not exactly on topic: There have been a few HN submissions in the past linking to papers concerned with the effect of 5G on insects. As a layperson I was not able to evaluate those papers. But if anyone knows if there was any kind of consensus reached about that, or even if this is something that anyone serious is concerned about, I would appreciate the pointer.

benbristow 6y ago
Hopefully not something to fuel conspiracy theorists with more reasons to burn down mobile towers like what has been happening in the UK recently.
- mac01021 6y ago
  What conspiracies are moving people to do that? And how do you burn down a steel tower?
  - jmcgough 6y ago
    similar to QAnon, there are a lot of offshoots of different ideas that all stem from people not understanding 5G and thinking that it's unsafe, despite a lack of scientific evidence to support that. Pre-covid it was that 5G was making everyone physically ill. Post-covid it's that the radiation is mutating the virus to make it more deadly or spread it more quickly. https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/conspiracy-theorists-burn-5g-towers-claiming-link-virus-70258811 https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/conspiracy-theorists...
    - godmode2019 6y ago
      I think its important to think about things as information and disinformation. The post covid comment is clearly disinformation. It was used and promoted by the media in my country as a strawman argument for anyone who had concerns about 5g. Its important to promote the most creditable voice rather than the least. When the least creditable argument is promoted you know the promoters don't want to deal with the argument at first principal, you believe X this crazy person also believes X there for you are Y. Its a common framing technique used by the media, you will start to notice it everywhere on both sides of the media echo chamber.

mellosouls 6y ago

Seems a poor taste title considering the conspiracy theories around 5G that have actually got engineers physically attacked and threatened. Click bait is one thing but poor form in this context and publication.

partyboat1586 6y ago

Someone debunk this for me please: http://www.5gappeal.eu/about/ http://www.5gappeal.eu/about/ Edit: I'm legitimately looking for good sources on this. Not trolling.

erulabs 6y ago
What is supposed to be debunked? The main claim seems to be: > RF-EMF has been proven to be harmful for humans and the environment. Which... is true-ish? That's a bit like saying water is harmful to the environment and humans. For sure it is, if it's rushing at you with incredible velocity and mass (power). Electromagnetic radiation could certainly harm a human - with enough power. Drinking a glass of water or sending a ~100mW 2.5ghz or ~50mW 5.0ghz signal at your body is harmless. Maybe a better example is solar radiation or sound, which is much more similar to a 5ghz signal (re: invisible radiation). A bit of sunlight is probably good for you - intense, unfiltered, high-powered UV light could roast the whole earth. A good study to dive into some of the effects of 5GHz/100mW radiation would be https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6765906/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6765906/ A good snippet: > The three in vivo investigations addressed a variety of issues including acute effects on muscle contraction, skin-reflection properties (which are more of a dose-related than health-related issue), and skin cancer [19,54,57]. The rat skin cancer study (one to two weekly, short-term exposures at 94 GHz, 1 W/kg; DMBA-initiated animals) did not show any positive outcome [54]. Another study examined the muscle contraction of mice and described some responses [19]. Again, 94 GHz was used, but power density or SAR values were not reported. So at incredibly high power (94GHz / 1W/kg - thousands of times more powerful than what we're talking about with 5g) there were no positive outcomes for a skin cancer test. It was possible to stimulate muscle contraction, which makes total sense: pump enough electricity through the air to contract a muscle. But mammal bodies are great at insulation (our skulls are amazing at protecting us from rouge radiation). The same study is also mentioned in this article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Denial_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Denial_System and (https://www.wired.com/2009/08/pain-ray-first-commercial-sale-looms/ https://www.wired.com/2009/08/pain-ray-first-commercial-sale...) which is about "pain guns" - systems that use radiation to inflict pain from a distance. It mentions a beam power of 30 kilowatts! That's 300,000x more powerful, and the weapon doesn't work if the person is wearing a thick sweater. It takes a _ton_ of power to interfere with organic objects. Edit: I do want to say that I think more investigation should be done re: radiation pollution and it's impact on micro-biology, insects, birds, etc. Humans are really resilient, but it's not super clear that for example, some algae might not respond to low levels of radiation in interesting ways. My intuition says it's unlikely, as there is tons of low level radiation flying around in nature - 5g isn't some new, different kind of energy, but further study should be done, absolutely. I'd suspect light radiation is far more dangerous to bugs and bacteria than 5g though.

Maha-pudma 6y ago

The privacy implications for this actually horrifies me.

rektide 6y ago

Good article but I continue to feel like for whatever use cases 5g is fit to serve, it seems likely to be a limited technology, used only by heavyweight giant companies. Unlike other communications bands, there is no intent to make any of this at all consumerly accessible.

fock 6y ago
I think, the general idea is to make this very accessible. But obviously, there will be a price to pay: buy this Matebook - no Wifi, but hey you can get this very sweet, data-limited 5G plan for only USD50 a month. Get an unlimited plan for USD300 a month. Or: buy this car, with superfast 5G V2V – oh, there's a USD1000 licenses included; well, nevermind. (and remember, some companies would have liked to use Wifi for V2V, which is freeish...)
- DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
  I thought V2V was going to use redundant, multi-media, communications - such as modulating a car’s lights’ LED PWM to provide a low-bandwidth signal to other cars within line-of-sight, while also using some analogue of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi for longe-range communications.
sasaf5 6y ago
Especially the use of unlicensed spectrum has the potential to make this technology accessible to consumers (say, in lieu of wifi). So does device-to-device communication when not mediated by a network.

Dylan16807 6y ago

> Millimeter waves means it will be possible to build a network just for an office building, factory, or stadium. At those scales, 5G could function essentially like Wi-Fi networks. LTE was already using a whole lot of frequencies adjacent to Wi-FI, and I'm sure similar bands would be a critical part of making a private 5G network since you want to go through minor obstacles. Millimeter-wave on the other hand could be useful for speed but I bet it wouldn't be a critical part.

sabas123 6y ago

> In defining V2X for 5G, Seo says the most challenging thing was to provide high data throughput, reliability, and low latency, both of which are essential for anything beyond the most basic communications. Seo explains that earlier standards typically deal with messages with hundreds of bytes that are expected to reach 90 percent of receivers in a 300-meter radius within a few hundred milliseconds. The 3GPP standards bring those benchmarks into the realm of gigabytes per second, 99.999 percent reliability, and just a few milliseconds. Did the previous standard lag behind or is this improvement truly this ridiculous?

nine_k 6y ago
This is what a quickly developing field feels like. Say, in 10 years from 1985 to 1995, personal computer CPUs developed from 80286 @12MHz and 134k transistors to Pentium MMX @133MHZ and 3.3M transistors, with at least 100x improvement in integer performance alone, to say nothing about FPU and the vector unit (MMX). And another similar jump occurred in next 10 (well, 11) years when Intel unveiled the Core line of CPUs.
thu2111 6y ago
The difficulty with V2X is that both terminal and 'base station' might be moving at high speeds relative to each other, from what I understand. In conventional telephony the base station doesn't move.

pupdogg 6y ago

This might be a good time to scrap it all and start from scratch!

CarbyAu 6y ago

5G communication fine. But trust? I don't want my car accepting information from untrusted cars or roadside infrastructure. It will be interesting riding a motorbike through these years.

k__ 6y ago

I hoped 5G would be like 4G but with much more speed, lower latency, and more area covered by one antenna. But it seems it won't deliver.

exciteabletom 6y ago
It's hard to deliver both higher speed and longer range, because higher frequencies don't reach as far and don't penetrate walls as well.
- k__ 6y ago
  But what I read about 5G is that its range is comparable to wifi. Why do they do that?
  - exciteabletom 6y ago
    AFAIK, the speed is >gigabit fast, but to achieve that speed you need to have super high frequencies and hence smaller range. To me, it seems inconvenient as a replacement for 4G. However it is also being used for other applications; like self-driving cars[1]. [1]: https://www.cnet.com/news/5g-could-make-self-driving-cars-smarter-commutes-safer/ https://www.cnet.com/news/5g-could-make-self-driving-cars-sm...

mark_l_watson 6y ago

I expect and hope that 5G makes it possible to have virtual environments with many participants, very high resolution, low latency, and high frame rate. While there is something human and nurturing about getting a hug or shaking someone’s hand, very high quality shared virtual spaces will open up many business and social opportunities. Endless possibilities...

krick 6y ago

There's so much messy stuff with 5G from nearly the very beginning. And I like it less and less. I'm nobody in the domain of wireless physical protocols, so I wouldn't know, of course. But does it actually even make sense to mix up peer-to-peer and peer-to-tower communications within one protocol? Why would you even want that? To be able to do all this stuff on the same frequencies? Having (more-or-less) same chip for everything, regardless of if it needs close-range and/or global network communications not only disgusts me "politically" (privacy issues, totally absent transparency, you know all that stuff), but also means more complicated, more expensive tech where you could do with cheaper one. And doing everything there is to do wirelessly on the same frequencies means these frequencies busy as fuck. Wouldn't you actually want the opposite for the protocol you hope to become the ubiquitous high-throughput cellular network protocol? It seems like it would make more sense to send 2 identical messages (or even to use 2 chips, if need be) on different frequencies if you actually need both for some reason.

knorker 6y ago

Wow, those are really cool technologies. That said, the unlicensed spectrum thing sounds absolutely awful. Sorry your wifi will suck because your local telco decided to beam 5GHz to your neighbor, and your AP understands that as "collision" at best, and "weather radar" at worst. I thought that was thrown out of the plan, with torches and pitchforks? With DFS wifi is already super crammed, and now "right of way" managed spectrum people want to land grab it for profit? That's so not cool.