18 ms·

AT&T’s current 5G is slower than 4G in nearly every city tested by PCMag

513 points by LinuxBender 6y ago

Scoundreller 6y ago
Is 5G like 4G where it’s more spectrally efficient? So even if 5G is slower because it’s allocated fewer MHz, in aggregate, the network’s bandwidth is increased? While 20mbps vs 100mbps is nice to have the luxury of comparing on mobile, my bigger question is how many gb you can consume as a user before getting throttled. Canada has speedy mobile networks... and $5-$10/gb pricing. No wonder why it’s fast.
- albertopv 6y ago
  In Italy I pay 5€/month for 4G 40GB/month (WindTre operator). I tested this morning in Treviso, near Venice, (I was working remotely), download speed was about 40Mbit/sec. Vodafone is much faster but a bit more expensive.
  - jefft255 6y ago
    That's just crazy to me. Similar 4G data caps in Canada would run you well over 100$ per month.
    - Scoundreller 6y ago
      Now now, OP’s 5 EUR plan includes a 22% sales tax. Your $100/month Canadian plan doesn’t.
  - sirbutters 6y ago
    In France I signed up for an exclusive offer with Free Mobile operator where 100GB/month (in France) for 1 year only cost 1 EUR per month, and then would go back to 19.99 EUR per month. After 11 months, the company shat itself they would lose a ton of customers, so decided to give a 10 EUR a month discount... indefinitely. The kicker is that their roaming deal in the US is amazing: 25GB per month at HSPA+ speed. So now I pretty much have a $11/month bill for my data plan in the US. I use Google Voice for people to contact me. Best deal ever.
    - Scoundreller 6y ago
      That plan isn’t just data, I think it includes worldwide texting and LD calls to most major countries.
      - sirbutters 6y ago
        You're correct.
    - xxpor 6y ago
      HSPA+ will be turned off in the US in early 2022, FWIW. Unless you just meant HSPA+ speeds, not an actual HSPA+ connection.
      - sirbutters 6y ago
        Just HSPA+ speed (I think). In any case they wouldn't just remove the service, they'd transfer to another protocol. For the life of me I can't understand why anyone would need more speed. It's not like I need to download a 3GB game in X seconds in a spot where I don't have a wifi. This whole LTE and 5G is marketing bullshit. No one needs that much speed. IMHO.
    - brnt 6y ago
      Apart from the food, the thing I miss most from France. You can fibre hop indefinitly, because at any point in time someone's offering 100mbit or more at 10eur/mo. Currently 30 is the cheapest I can get fiber, at a measly 50mbit.
  - ivalm 6y ago
    In the US with ATT I currently pay $90/month (15.2x more!) for "5Ge" (fake 5G, which is actually 4G). At home, with not quite full bars, I have 87Mbps down, 3.9Mbps up (higher than article says average for ATT 5G). The plan is "unlimited" data, but you lose priority if you use more than 22.5GB/month. I've went above that limit a few times but was never throttled (so that's good!). I guess another silver lining is that the plan works in similar unlimited fashion in Mexico/Canada.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
  A big problem is the marketing around 5G is a total clusterfuck, to the great detriment of consumers. As I understand it, the "true" original definition of 5G was millimeter wave technology. From the PCMag article this is based on: > Millimeter-wave uses very weak, short-range panels that are easily blocked by obstacles. In our tests, millimeter-wave doesn't generally penetrate buildings, and even has trouble with glass; we had our drivers keep their windows down, with the phones facing out, so the network even had a chance. That is, this kind of 5G is essentially useless now, and will be for a long time until buildings/cars/subways etc. are built with repeaters that would make indoor coverage possible. However, I definitely don't understand all the various versions of "5G" so it's difficult for me to understand which tech is used by which phones and carriers.
  - sroussey 6y ago
    No, true 5G is a basket of technologies. Sub-6 is about beam-forming — instead of sending your signal in all directions, it sends only in the direction of your device (and visa-versa which is why antenna design is a larger cost on mobile than before). Now the base station can use the same bandwidth for another device located in a different direction. Over time this will get better and have compounding effects. And that’s just one item in the basket. mmWave is another. There are several.
    - newhouseb 6y ago
      LTE already has a fair bit of beam-forming standard, 5G dramatically increases the number of antennas used to do so (allowing you to beam-form more efficiently /precisely) Another bucket is coding schemes: LTE uses Turbo and Convolutional Coding, whereas 5G adds Polar and LDPC codes to the mix which bring us closer to the Shannon Limit (theoretical maximum data capacity given a certain SNR).
    - snovv_crash 6y ago
      On the tower side they've been using multiple directional antennas per base station since the 2G days. Beamforming is only going to help on the mobile side.
  - 6y ago
- toast0 6y ago
  5g has several parts. If used on existing frequencies, I believe it's more efficient as you suggested. Which will be a clear win, once there's enough deployed equipment (base stations and mobile devices) It also is available on new frequencies. Lots of bandwidth on those frequencies, but a lot less signal propagation too. Helpful for sports stadiums, transit terminals, and other crowded situations, not so helpful for most situations. Carrier aggregation sounds like it could be useful too.
- lloeki 6y ago
  Just ran this test from my iPhone 7^. 60GB/mo 4G plan, 15€/mo. 115 Mbps down, 30 up, barely takes a dent inside buildings. 100GB plans are available. I’m looking at 5G developments with bewildered amusement :popcorn: (especially the beyond ridiculous marketing side) and honestly couldn’t care less right now. ^ mentioning iPhone 7 because I had a 8 that stupidly went MIA, and the 7’s connection definitely is “lousier” that the 8 was, which was able to maintain a solid connection (obviously not at the speeds above, but continuously usable) on a 350kph TGV. https://www.speedtest.net/my-result/i/4124020081 https://www.speedtest.net/my-result/i/4124020081
  - zzapplezz 6y ago
    Does your 7 have the intel or qualcomm sku?
    - lloeki 6y ago
      A1778, so, Intel I guess?
      - zzapplezz 6y ago
        Bingo. That explains it.
criddell 6y ago
Here's a link to the original PC Mag story: https://www.pcmag.com/fastest-mobile-networks/2020 https://www.pcmag.com/fastest-mobile-networks/2020
axaxs 6y ago
I remember this being the case on the dawn of each new cellular technology. Edge vs 3g, HSPA(+) vs 4g, etc. It'll get better over time. That said, I am purposely avoiding 5g until that time. No sense in paying extra for the phone and service for features I -don't- want to use.
- rsynnott 6y ago
  5G is generally looking a good bit better than 4G in most markets (including in non-AT&T US markets). This would seem to be an AT&T problem. That said, I wouldn't go near a 5G phone right now; in a year or so the price and battery impact will be down a lot.
  - axaxs 6y ago
    Yeah, power usage is going to be a hard one. One of the biggest things to drain battery, moreso than screen time even, is a super weak cell signal. I am curious how they are going to mitigate this effect, especially with mid band and mmwave 5g. I don't want my phone grabbing onto weak 5g and burning up when I'd be perfectly happy with existing low band LTE.
  - fomine3 6y ago
    I avoid Snapdragon 865 generation because it requires external 5G modem thus not efficient, even thought Snapdragon 765G integrates 5G modem.
- jdsully 6y ago
  4G Was amazing before everyone switched and it got overloaded. I remember being astonished to get better download speeds on my phone than my wired home internet when it first came out.
mensetmanusman 6y ago
High frequency is hard, because fewer materials are transparent, so you have to deal with impedance matching and reflections.
grishka 6y ago
So what's the point of 5G again?
- MBCook 6y ago
  To buy new phones! More seriously, as more 5G is deployed it should speed up. Also I believe 5G allows more phones to use a single tower at once which should make the carriers job easier. Especially at very busy places like festivals and sporting events.
  - grishka 6y ago
    I live in a country that won't see 5G soon, if ever (that is, not in the US). My point is that the existing LTE networks are plenty fast for all intents and purposes. I don't always notice the difference even between 3G and 4G. So, then, it comes naturally to ask what is the exact problem that 4G has but 5G aims to solve, besides all the marketing and change for its own sake. Especially that weird kind of 5G that can't go through your hand and has coverage area of a single tower smaller than that of a WiFi access point.
    - MBCook 6y ago
      My understanding is there are two forms of 5G. One works like 4G but faster, and the other (millimeter wave) has the limitations you mentioned but crazy high bandwidth. We’ll probably get a mix of the two deployed depending on topography, density, cost, etc.
    - goihoiholi 6y ago
      actual development and standardization uses shorter cycles than the 5G hype cycle. release 8 is slow. your phone would show 4G release 14 is super fast. your phone would show 4G release 15 will show 5G but it's just one iteration away from fast 4G. it brings some cool techniques that boost efficiency (more people in the same cell can download things, increasing the average speed) -- and other stuff. peak download rate is one of the less interesting features, but most prominent.
- 6y ago
gok 6y ago
Good news got buried from the original story: "All three US carriers showed significantly higher download speeds and better broadband reliability than they did in our 2019 tests."
ur-whale 6y ago
Must be all those chines 5g chips eating up bandwidth when they send everything back to beijing :D
kayson 6y ago
I really believe that for commercial cellular in urban areas, 5G is more of a benefit for the carriers than the consumers. While low band spectrum (850MHz) has decent penetrating power, the majority of 5G is deployed at ~5GHz and mm-Wave frequencies, where you won't get much of any signal through a wall, or even on the other side of the building. This is why so many 5G base stations have to be deployed; the coverage just isn't as good. But the improvements in base station handoffs and spectral efficiency will increase a carrier's total capacity, even if the end user doesn't see a massive benefit. There are scenarios where you might see massive speeds, though. 5G heavily leverages Carrier Aggregation, where a client can connect to multiple channels at once, increasing bandwidth, and beam-forming, where the "shape" of the signal is modified to steer maximum power to the physical location of a client. If you happen to be near a base station with good Signal to Noise Ratio while downloading something large, the base station can allocate multiple channels and use beamforming to finish your download at Gbps speeds and get you off the network faster, freeing up spectrum time for more users at lower SNR's and bandwidths. There is potential for much more impactful deployment of 5G cellular in rural areas where there aren't many buildings or walls blocking high frequency signal. The same goes for point-to-point links such as inter-building WAN or low latency self driving car to self driving car communication.
- sroussey 6y ago
  The majority is at mm wave? Citation? I think only Verizon in the US went this path.
  - joecool1029 6y ago
    T-Mobile has been doing mmwave on 2 different bands for over a year now in various cities, airports, venues[1][2]. The difference between T-Mobile and Verizon was the launch strategy. T-Mobile played it right by not hyping technologies most of the country can't use like LAA (5GHZ) and mmwave. Verizon arguably had the best LTE launch strategy years ago, but yeah... I guess they could afford to botch this. Come to think of it, pre-merger Sprint probably had the best launch strategy which was to launch 5G on mid-band where they had enough spectrum to service both LTE and 5G NR users. Masayoshi Son was too busy flushing his money down other toilets like WeWork and Uber to cut the checks Sprint needed to get it completed nationwide. Sprint also suffered from having 5 or 6 different equipment vendors across the country... where T-Mobile had two. They have been ripping out the NSN 5G equipment from NYC post-merger, because this is a T-Mobile Ericsson market and they don't want to deal with it. AT&T meanwhile got a $100 billion 25yr contract from the post-9/11 telecom pork project, FirstNet[2]. So they've been throwing up tons of new sites with that money over the past year or two. I don't think anyone was thinking about 5G or spectrum planning over there, just focusing on acquiring consumers through acquisitions (Directtv, some crappy Mexican carriers) and getting government contracts. Gov M2M stuff moves slower than Apple at acquiring new modem technologies for their devices, so there's not a huge rush to ramp up 5G. https://www.t-mobile.com/support/coverage/t-mobile-network#tech https://www.t-mobile.com/support/coverage/t-mobile-network#t... < [1] tmo band listing https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/t-mobile-revs-up-5g-6-cities-using-mmwave-spectrum https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/t-mobile-revs-up-5g-... < [2] News coverage of tmo bandwidth deployment over a year ago. https://washingtontechnology.com/blogs/editors-notebook/2017/03/att-firstnet-award.aspx https://washingtontechnology.com/blogs/editors-notebook/2017... [3] Firstnet contract
leptoniscool 6y ago
The article says they only gave 5G 5MHz of spectrum. Of course this makes it slower.. In 4G LTE it's common to use multiple blocks of spectrum (carrier aggregation) to provide even higher data throughput.
- mdasen 6y ago
  Yea, 5G does support carrier aggregation with LTE. It looks like the big difference is in LAA (License Assisted Access). LAA allows the use of unlicensed spectrum which can be added to the licensed spectrum that carriers use. 5G NR Release 15 (which is what networks are almost assuredly running since Release 16 just came out in July) doesn't have the ability to use unlicensed spectrum. One of the images in the PCMag article (linked below) shows the different combinations. You can see how LTE with LAA just has a lot of spectrum dedicated to it. 5G ends up with almost the same amount of spectrum as LTE for non-LAA LTE. And it's important to note that right now, 5G isn't that much more efficient than LTE. Remember, when LTE came out, it was advertised as 5-8Mbps which we'd consider slow today. 5G NR will get better as it evolves. However, right now it looks like it'll be around 20% more efficient in low-band deployments and 50% more efficient in mid-band deployments (T-Mobile had numbers similar to that in some FCC filings during their merger proceedings, IIRC). Things like higher-order MIMO will help mid-band and higher applications more. Given the chart of relative 5G/4G download speeds and the fact that T-Mobile usually beats their 4G network, it seems likely that AT&T is leaning heavily on LAA for their LTE performance and that's the difference-maker. As Release-16 becomes what networks and phones are using, that will likely change. https://i.pcmag.com/imagery/fastest-networks/03efBScpy2I3SSVCIHR6erM-7.fit_lim.size_1600x99999.jpg https://i.pcmag.com/imagery/fastest-networks/03efBScpy2I3SSV... https://www.pcmag.com/fastest-mobile-networks/2020 https://www.pcmag.com/fastest-mobile-networks/2020
  - fulafel 6y ago
    wasn't 4G supposed to be 1 Gbps originally? Eg first para at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4G#Technical_overview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4G#Technical_overview
Apofis 6y ago
I'm amazed that Verizon is getting 2000mbps/10ms with 5G in certain places. I assume that's why they and Google pretty much ceased fiber roll-out.
- londons_explore 6y ago
  To get those kind of speeds, you need fiber to every base station. And you need base stations on every street. So you need fiber to every street anyway.
  - ninkendo 6y ago
    This is the difference between Fiber-to-the-Node and Fiber-to-the-Premises. FttN is already something that ISP's do without it being too newsworthy, but FttP is a much more expensive thing in general, because this last little bit of infrastructure is much more expensive per-customer than just running it to the Node and using existing cable or phone lines to reach your customer. Google/Verizon's "fiber roll-out" was FttP, and what GP was talking about, and it's very understandable to abandon that approach to just FttN plus 5G.
- mdasen 6y ago
  Verizon often has 1,000MHz+ of millimeter-wave spectrum and there's virtually no one using it. T-Mobile is getting 300Mbps speeds using only 40-60MHz of spectrum. Even LTE, when no one is using it, can easily hit a few hundred Mbps (and sometimes more) with traditional spectrum. As carriers are able to use double or triple the spectrum for 5G, we're going to get faster speeds. I think you're right that some halt of the fiber rollout is likely due to the impact that 5G will have. Even if mmWave spectrum can't go very far, it probably offers a good last-few-hundred-feet option. Instead of having to run fiber into someone's home, they can run fiber to their street and let a wireless link handle the last bit. They don't have to deal with construction permits, digging, coordinating with homeowners, etc. However, I don't know what the costs of 5G equipment are right now and there might be resistance from neighborhoods that don't want a 5G cell-site on top of a bunch of lamp-posts in their area. I don't find them that intrusive, but many people have strong aesthetic opinions on their neighborhoods. It'll be interesting to see how things turn out.
mrfusion 6y ago
Is it worth waiting to buy a new phone until they support 5g?
- DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
  The answer undoubtedly depends on your requirements and financial situation.
- Foivos 6y ago
  It depends on how often you change phones. If you change phone, keep your phones more than 3 years I would wait. If not, by the time you will really need to have 5G you would be about to buy the next phone, which will certainly have 5G.
inetsee 6y ago
A quick search leads me to believe that the majority of people use their smartphones as phones; they make calls, they send text messages, they may use apps to buy movie tickets, check their mail, play games. Most of these uses don't really demand a lot of bandwidth. Why should I watch a video on my smartphones 5" screen when I could watch on my 55" TV. I think the cellular carriers should invest more in improving their coverage, especially in rural areas. Of course, that'll never happen because the carriers would rather focus their investments in the big cities, where people are willing to buy a $1000 smartphone every year.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- mynameisvlad 6y ago
  Have fun carrying your 55" TV around town. The appeal of smartphones is the ability to watch videos, play games, etc anywhere you are (within the coverage areas, of course). > I think the cellular carriers should invest more in improving their coverage, especially in rural areas I would say coverage is generally pretty good, especially in the Eastern half of the country. There's very little benefit to providing service in the middle of nowhere when the majority of their subscriber base is going to be in bigger cities.
- samatman 6y ago
  One of my 'smartphones' has a screen the same size as most of the laptops I've ever owned, 13" rounded up. Also, you're way out of touch with how 'the youth' (anyone under 30) use the Internet. It's highly video-centric, and sure, depending on the market, keeping that video feed alive away from WiFi can get expensive: but I would rather pay than go without, and I suspect this is often true for most youngsters as well. Cell carriers spend money where they can make money, and that isn't rural bandwidth. If we want to change that, and I think it's worthwhile to do so, it will take legislation.
gzu 6y ago
Give me rock solid and cheaper 4G before jumping the gun to 5G. How will going from say 40mbps to 250mbps+ on a phone help me in any way over the next 2 years? For video, the limits of a phone display cap the max bitrate below 5G's speed. 1080p at 60fps is around 16mbps.
- chrisco255 6y ago
  Simple, they will be competing directly with cable for home internet once 5G is deployed.
- Foivos 6y ago
  If you are in a cell with low congestion, probably the 4G speed is enough. Since, the mobile data consumption is increasing rapidly though, cells will start to become congested. 5G ensures that more people will be able to stream video at the same time.
thelazydogsback 6y ago
I'm constantly amazed at how fast my 4G/LTE service is. I had to run my house off of my tethered phone the other day, and browsing seemed faster than cable -- obviously slower overall bandwidth, but good enough and very low latency. I have no desire for my phone to be faster in either processing power or bandwidth -- it would give me absolutely no benefit. I wish 5G, 8K video (and even 4k in many cases), etc., were not thrust upon consumers. Things are already good enough to be close to magic.
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  Increasing capacity via 5G will allow higher data caps too.
  - laksdjfkasljdf 6y ago
    those things are completely disconnected
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- blank_fan_pill 6y ago
  I bet we haven't even come close to realizing the potential of having extremely fast/high bandwidth cellular connections. Streaming 8k video to a phone seems silly but there are some brilliant and clever people out there who will find a use for that kind of mobile bandwith and apply it in ways you or I never thought of. Bill Gates infamously said sometime in the 80's "640K is more memory than anyone will ever need" , and for the scope of computer applications at the time he was correct.
  - chrisco255 6y ago
    Yeah, VR comes to mind. But also speed gets reduced even with a small deterioration in signal. If you're getting 10-20mbps at full strength, you might get 1-3 Mbps with a weak signal. I would presume that 5G would be faster in weaker signal scenarios.
deleted 6y ago
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jtdev 6y ago
I hope Apple buys AT&T...
throwaway287391 6y ago
I had an amazing experience with 5G home broadband in the UK...while it lasted. I paid £29/month and always got the promised 300+mbps (sometimes up to 500-600) down with ~10ms ping. It was 100% rock solid and seemed to be truly unlimited, e.g. in the first month I downloaded >500GB and never noticed any throttling whatsoever. Then they took down the tower nearest to my flat for "improvements" a couple months into the pandemic and from then on it basically didn't work at all (it was supposed to switch to 4G and it theoretically did but the best I got with that was an extremely flaky 10mbps). They originally said it'd be fixed in a week but it was completely unusable for at least a month. So now I'm back to a cable connection. I still miss the 5G though -- there was something pretty amazing about just plugging it into the mains and suddenly having super-fast wifi with 0 installation. I personally remain optimistic about its future, unlike pretty much everyone else in this thread I guess.
fwiwm2c 6y ago
Given how these companies think, AT&T's solution to solve this might be to slow down 4G vs. improving 5G speeds :-)
- deelawn 6y ago
  Ha. Exactly what I was thinking
silverlyra 6y ago
am I reading this right? High-bandwidth wireless data, even using the latest 5G technology, still literally requires ample bandwidth: wide enough radio frequency channel(s) over which to communicate. So far, two major US cellular providers (AT&T and T-Mobile) have allocated so little spectrum space to 5G, that 4G connections are still faster in almost every city tested. For example, on AT&T’s 4G network, phones can use up to seven radio bands simultaneously to increase speeds, but phones on 5G are still limited to a single 5MHz band. Sounds like this is what empirical testing of AT&T and T-Mobile networks would have expected to find. Verizon’s 5G network isn’t showing this issue because they’re using only millimeter-wave spectrum and equipment, with the trade-off being scant availability because of its tiny usable cell area.
- bluGill 6y ago
  I just drive through Iowa and had 5g almost all the way. A year ago I drove the same route and it was 2g the whole way. So t-mobile has clearly sped things up in rural areas for me. At home I still get 4g, but that is good enough
supernova87a 6y ago
Until I see the pricing of 5G, I don't believe a word of it being better or more useful to me. All I expect is that I'll burn through my monthly data sooner, and not see a dime of faster, cheaper technology improvement. Why should I be in favor of 5G?
ineedasername 6y ago
I'm looking for someone to explain why 5G is important for the average user. In my case, I can stream video with no problem, web pages load quickly, new apps download fast. The primary use case I can think of is to replace traditional cable broadband with it, but that would be impractically expensive given the cost of mobile data.
- at-fates-hands 6y ago
  Way back in the day 3G was supposed to solve every issue with mobile data. Then we had to have 4G because it was faster. This is just another step up. Just like when you got high speed internet. At some point why does someone need gigabyte speeds when a much slower speed will allow you to do 95% of what any normal user would need? I think wireless data speeds is the new arms race tbh. The interesting thing is Verizon is not upselling you for 5G and AT&T is. Plus AT&T was sued saying they had 5G in areas they really didn't and now this article claiming their speeds in certain cities are faster than they actually are. The real question is, how many people will switch because of this issue and over selling it on their part?
- apendleton 6y ago
  > but that would be impractically expensive given the cost of mobile data That needn't be the case with 5G -- there's a lot more bandwidth to go around, particularly with mmwave, so home broadband (with unlimited or near-unlimited service) are more feasible. Verizon is piloting a home 5G service in several cities for this reason, and it doesn't have a data cap.
- Foivos 6y ago
  Early versions of 5G, known as “non standalone”, are just glorified 4G. With the exception of the radio link, everything else is 4G. This means that the value proposition is that more people per base station (or per surface area) will be able to stream video, download fast etc. When stand alone 5G becomes available, the latency of the network will become comparable to the latency of wired networks, especially if it is combined with mobile edge computing. Then, you will have access to new services that are impossible now, such as game steaming and VR. I agree though that 5G is way more important for the public sector and the industry than the average consumer.
c1yd3i 6y ago
I bet we can all agree that any development of our nation's cellular network is a good thing :)
Wagmire 6y ago
i guess they couldnt get enough government money with all that they already sell

513 points by LinuxBender 6y ago

Is 5G like 4G where it’s more spectrally efficient? So even if 5G is slower because it’s allocated fewer MHz, in aggregate, the network’s bandwidth is increased? While 20mbps vs 100mbps is nice to have the luxury of comparing on mobile, my bigger question is how many gb you can consume as a user before getting throttled. Canada has speedy mobile networks... and $5-$10/gb pricing. No wonder why it’s fast.

albertopv 6y ago
In Italy I pay 5€/month for 4G 40GB/month (WindTre operator). I tested this morning in Treviso, near Venice, (I was working remotely), download speed was about 40Mbit/sec. Vodafone is much faster but a bit more expensive.
- jefft255 6y ago
  That's just crazy to me. Similar 4G data caps in Canada would run you well over 100$ per month.
  - Scoundreller 6y ago
    Now now, OP’s 5 EUR plan includes a 22% sales tax. Your $100/month Canadian plan doesn’t.
- sirbutters 6y ago
  In France I signed up for an exclusive offer with Free Mobile operator where 100GB/month (in France) for 1 year only cost 1 EUR per month, and then would go back to 19.99 EUR per month. After 11 months, the company shat itself they would lose a ton of customers, so decided to give a 10 EUR a month discount... indefinitely. The kicker is that their roaming deal in the US is amazing: 25GB per month at HSPA+ speed. So now I pretty much have a $11/month bill for my data plan in the US. I use Google Voice for people to contact me. Best deal ever.
  - Scoundreller 6y ago
    That plan isn’t just data, I think it includes worldwide texting and LD calls to most major countries.
    - sirbutters 6y ago
      You're correct.
  - xxpor 6y ago
    HSPA+ will be turned off in the US in early 2022, FWIW. Unless you just meant HSPA+ speeds, not an actual HSPA+ connection.
    - sirbutters 6y ago
      Just HSPA+ speed (I think). In any case they wouldn't just remove the service, they'd transfer to another protocol. For the life of me I can't understand why anyone would need more speed. It's not like I need to download a 3GB game in X seconds in a spot where I don't have a wifi. This whole LTE and 5G is marketing bullshit. No one needs that much speed. IMHO.
  - brnt 6y ago
    Apart from the food, the thing I miss most from France. You can fibre hop indefinitly, because at any point in time someone's offering 100mbit or more at 10eur/mo. Currently 30 is the cheapest I can get fiber, at a measly 50mbit.
- ivalm 6y ago
  In the US with ATT I currently pay $90/month (15.2x more!) for "5Ge" (fake 5G, which is actually 4G). At home, with not quite full bars, I have 87Mbps down, 3.9Mbps up (higher than article says average for ATT 5G). The plan is "unlimited" data, but you lose priority if you use more than 22.5GB/month. I've went above that limit a few times but was never throttled (so that's good!). I guess another silver lining is that the plan works in similar unlimited fashion in Mexico/Canada.
hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
A big problem is the marketing around 5G is a total clusterfuck, to the great detriment of consumers. As I understand it, the "true" original definition of 5G was millimeter wave technology. From the PCMag article this is based on: > Millimeter-wave uses very weak, short-range panels that are easily blocked by obstacles. In our tests, millimeter-wave doesn't generally penetrate buildings, and even has trouble with glass; we had our drivers keep their windows down, with the phones facing out, so the network even had a chance. That is, this kind of 5G is essentially useless now, and will be for a long time until buildings/cars/subways etc. are built with repeaters that would make indoor coverage possible. However, I definitely don't understand all the various versions of "5G" so it's difficult for me to understand which tech is used by which phones and carriers.
- sroussey 6y ago
  No, true 5G is a basket of technologies. Sub-6 is about beam-forming — instead of sending your signal in all directions, it sends only in the direction of your device (and visa-versa which is why antenna design is a larger cost on mobile than before). Now the base station can use the same bandwidth for another device located in a different direction. Over time this will get better and have compounding effects. And that’s just one item in the basket. mmWave is another. There are several.
  - newhouseb 6y ago
    LTE already has a fair bit of beam-forming standard, 5G dramatically increases the number of antennas used to do so (allowing you to beam-form more efficiently /precisely) Another bucket is coding schemes: LTE uses Turbo and Convolutional Coding, whereas 5G adds Polar and LDPC codes to the mix which bring us closer to the Shannon Limit (theoretical maximum data capacity given a certain SNR).
  - snovv_crash 6y ago
    On the tower side they've been using multiple directional antennas per base station since the 2G days. Beamforming is only going to help on the mobile side.
- 6y ago
toast0 6y ago
5g has several parts. If used on existing frequencies, I believe it's more efficient as you suggested. Which will be a clear win, once there's enough deployed equipment (base stations and mobile devices) It also is available on new frequencies. Lots of bandwidth on those frequencies, but a lot less signal propagation too. Helpful for sports stadiums, transit terminals, and other crowded situations, not so helpful for most situations. Carrier aggregation sounds like it could be useful too.
lloeki 6y ago
Just ran this test from my iPhone 7^. 60GB/mo 4G plan, 15€/mo. 115 Mbps down, 30 up, barely takes a dent inside buildings. 100GB plans are available. I’m looking at 5G developments with bewildered amusement :popcorn: (especially the beyond ridiculous marketing side) and honestly couldn’t care less right now. ^ mentioning iPhone 7 because I had a 8 that stupidly went MIA, and the 7’s connection definitely is “lousier” that the 8 was, which was able to maintain a solid connection (obviously not at the speeds above, but continuously usable) on a 350kph TGV. https://www.speedtest.net/my-result/i/4124020081 https://www.speedtest.net/my-result/i/4124020081
- zzapplezz 6y ago
  Does your 7 have the intel or qualcomm sku?
  - lloeki 6y ago
    A1778, so, Intel I guess?
    - zzapplezz 6y ago
      Bingo. That explains it.

criddell 6y ago

Here's a link to the original PC Mag story: https://www.pcmag.com/fastest-mobile-networks/2020 https://www.pcmag.com/fastest-mobile-networks/2020

axaxs 6y ago

I remember this being the case on the dawn of each new cellular technology. Edge vs 3g, HSPA(+) vs 4g, etc. It'll get better over time. That said, I am purposely avoiding 5g until that time. No sense in paying extra for the phone and service for features I -don't- want to use.

rsynnott 6y ago
5G is generally looking a good bit better than 4G in most markets (including in non-AT&T US markets). This would seem to be an AT&T problem. That said, I wouldn't go near a 5G phone right now; in a year or so the price and battery impact will be down a lot.
- axaxs 6y ago
  Yeah, power usage is going to be a hard one. One of the biggest things to drain battery, moreso than screen time even, is a super weak cell signal. I am curious how they are going to mitigate this effect, especially with mid band and mmwave 5g. I don't want my phone grabbing onto weak 5g and burning up when I'd be perfectly happy with existing low band LTE.
- fomine3 6y ago
  I avoid Snapdragon 865 generation because it requires external 5G modem thus not efficient, even thought Snapdragon 765G integrates 5G modem.
jdsully 6y ago
4G Was amazing before everyone switched and it got overloaded. I remember being astonished to get better download speeds on my phone than my wired home internet when it first came out.

mensetmanusman 6y ago

High frequency is hard, because fewer materials are transparent, so you have to deal with impedance matching and reflections.

grishka 6y ago

So what's the point of 5G again?

MBCook 6y ago
To buy new phones! More seriously, as more 5G is deployed it should speed up. Also I believe 5G allows more phones to use a single tower at once which should make the carriers job easier. Especially at very busy places like festivals and sporting events.
- grishka 6y ago
  I live in a country that won't see 5G soon, if ever (that is, not in the US). My point is that the existing LTE networks are plenty fast for all intents and purposes. I don't always notice the difference even between 3G and 4G. So, then, it comes naturally to ask what is the exact problem that 4G has but 5G aims to solve, besides all the marketing and change for its own sake. Especially that weird kind of 5G that can't go through your hand and has coverage area of a single tower smaller than that of a WiFi access point.
  - MBCook 6y ago
    My understanding is there are two forms of 5G. One works like 4G but faster, and the other (millimeter wave) has the limitations you mentioned but crazy high bandwidth. We’ll probably get a mix of the two deployed depending on topography, density, cost, etc.
  - goihoiholi 6y ago
    actual development and standardization uses shorter cycles than the 5G hype cycle. release 8 is slow. your phone would show 4G release 14 is super fast. your phone would show 4G release 15 will show 5G but it's just one iteration away from fast 4G. it brings some cool techniques that boost efficiency (more people in the same cell can download things, increasing the average speed) -- and other stuff. peak download rate is one of the less interesting features, but most prominent.
6y ago

gok 6y ago

Good news got buried from the original story: "All three US carriers showed significantly higher download speeds and better broadband reliability than they did in our 2019 tests."

ur-whale 6y ago

Must be all those chines 5g chips eating up bandwidth when they send everything back to beijing :D

kayson 6y ago

I really believe that for commercial cellular in urban areas, 5G is more of a benefit for the carriers than the consumers. While low band spectrum (850MHz) has decent penetrating power, the majority of 5G is deployed at ~5GHz and mm-Wave frequencies, where you won't get much of any signal through a wall, or even on the other side of the building. This is why so many 5G base stations have to be deployed; the coverage just isn't as good. But the improvements in base station handoffs and spectral efficiency will increase a carrier's total capacity, even if the end user doesn't see a massive benefit. There are scenarios where you might see massive speeds, though. 5G heavily leverages Carrier Aggregation, where a client can connect to multiple channels at once, increasing bandwidth, and beam-forming, where the "shape" of the signal is modified to steer maximum power to the physical location of a client. If you happen to be near a base station with good Signal to Noise Ratio while downloading something large, the base station can allocate multiple channels and use beamforming to finish your download at Gbps speeds and get you off the network faster, freeing up spectrum time for more users at lower SNR's and bandwidths. There is potential for much more impactful deployment of 5G cellular in rural areas where there aren't many buildings or walls blocking high frequency signal. The same goes for point-to-point links such as inter-building WAN or low latency self driving car to self driving car communication.

sroussey 6y ago
The majority is at mm wave? Citation? I think only Verizon in the US went this path.
- joecool1029 6y ago
  T-Mobile has been doing mmwave on 2 different bands for over a year now in various cities, airports, venues[1][2]. The difference between T-Mobile and Verizon was the launch strategy. T-Mobile played it right by not hyping technologies most of the country can't use like LAA (5GHZ) and mmwave. Verizon arguably had the best LTE launch strategy years ago, but yeah... I guess they could afford to botch this. Come to think of it, pre-merger Sprint probably had the best launch strategy which was to launch 5G on mid-band where they had enough spectrum to service both LTE and 5G NR users. Masayoshi Son was too busy flushing his money down other toilets like WeWork and Uber to cut the checks Sprint needed to get it completed nationwide. Sprint also suffered from having 5 or 6 different equipment vendors across the country... where T-Mobile had two. They have been ripping out the NSN 5G equipment from NYC post-merger, because this is a T-Mobile Ericsson market and they don't want to deal with it. AT&T meanwhile got a $100 billion 25yr contract from the post-9/11 telecom pork project, FirstNet[2]. So they've been throwing up tons of new sites with that money over the past year or two. I don't think anyone was thinking about 5G or spectrum planning over there, just focusing on acquiring consumers through acquisitions (Directtv, some crappy Mexican carriers) and getting government contracts. Gov M2M stuff moves slower than Apple at acquiring new modem technologies for their devices, so there's not a huge rush to ramp up 5G. https://www.t-mobile.com/support/coverage/t-mobile-network#tech https://www.t-mobile.com/support/coverage/t-mobile-network#t... < [1] tmo band listing https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/t-mobile-revs-up-5g-6-cities-using-mmwave-spectrum https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/t-mobile-revs-up-5g-... < [2] News coverage of tmo bandwidth deployment over a year ago. https://washingtontechnology.com/blogs/editors-notebook/2017/03/att-firstnet-award.aspx https://washingtontechnology.com/blogs/editors-notebook/2017... [3] Firstnet contract

leptoniscool 6y ago

The article says they only gave 5G 5MHz of spectrum. Of course this makes it slower.. In 4G LTE it's common to use multiple blocks of spectrum (carrier aggregation) to provide even higher data throughput.

mdasen 6y ago
Yea, 5G does support carrier aggregation with LTE. It looks like the big difference is in LAA (License Assisted Access). LAA allows the use of unlicensed spectrum which can be added to the licensed spectrum that carriers use. 5G NR Release 15 (which is what networks are almost assuredly running since Release 16 just came out in July) doesn't have the ability to use unlicensed spectrum. One of the images in the PCMag article (linked below) shows the different combinations. You can see how LTE with LAA just has a lot of spectrum dedicated to it. 5G ends up with almost the same amount of spectrum as LTE for non-LAA LTE. And it's important to note that right now, 5G isn't that much more efficient than LTE. Remember, when LTE came out, it was advertised as 5-8Mbps which we'd consider slow today. 5G NR will get better as it evolves. However, right now it looks like it'll be around 20% more efficient in low-band deployments and 50% more efficient in mid-band deployments (T-Mobile had numbers similar to that in some FCC filings during their merger proceedings, IIRC). Things like higher-order MIMO will help mid-band and higher applications more. Given the chart of relative 5G/4G download speeds and the fact that T-Mobile usually beats their 4G network, it seems likely that AT&T is leaning heavily on LAA for their LTE performance and that's the difference-maker. As Release-16 becomes what networks and phones are using, that will likely change. https://i.pcmag.com/imagery/fastest-networks/03efBScpy2I3SSVCIHR6erM-7.fit_lim.size_1600x99999.jpg https://i.pcmag.com/imagery/fastest-networks/03efBScpy2I3SSV... https://www.pcmag.com/fastest-mobile-networks/2020 https://www.pcmag.com/fastest-mobile-networks/2020
- fulafel 6y ago
  wasn't 4G supposed to be 1 Gbps originally? Eg first para at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4G#Technical_overview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4G#Technical_overview

Apofis 6y ago

I'm amazed that Verizon is getting 2000mbps/10ms with 5G in certain places. I assume that's why they and Google pretty much ceased fiber roll-out.

londons_explore 6y ago
To get those kind of speeds, you need fiber to every base station. And you need base stations on every street. So you need fiber to every street anyway.
- ninkendo 6y ago
  This is the difference between Fiber-to-the-Node and Fiber-to-the-Premises. FttN is already something that ISP's do without it being too newsworthy, but FttP is a much more expensive thing in general, because this last little bit of infrastructure is much more expensive per-customer than just running it to the Node and using existing cable or phone lines to reach your customer. Google/Verizon's "fiber roll-out" was FttP, and what GP was talking about, and it's very understandable to abandon that approach to just FttN plus 5G.
mdasen 6y ago
Verizon often has 1,000MHz+ of millimeter-wave spectrum and there's virtually no one using it. T-Mobile is getting 300Mbps speeds using only 40-60MHz of spectrum. Even LTE, when no one is using it, can easily hit a few hundred Mbps (and sometimes more) with traditional spectrum. As carriers are able to use double or triple the spectrum for 5G, we're going to get faster speeds. I think you're right that some halt of the fiber rollout is likely due to the impact that 5G will have. Even if mmWave spectrum can't go very far, it probably offers a good last-few-hundred-feet option. Instead of having to run fiber into someone's home, they can run fiber to their street and let a wireless link handle the last bit. They don't have to deal with construction permits, digging, coordinating with homeowners, etc. However, I don't know what the costs of 5G equipment are right now and there might be resistance from neighborhoods that don't want a 5G cell-site on top of a bunch of lamp-posts in their area. I don't find them that intrusive, but many people have strong aesthetic opinions on their neighborhoods. It'll be interesting to see how things turn out.

mrfusion 6y ago

Is it worth waiting to buy a new phone until they support 5g?

DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
The answer undoubtedly depends on your requirements and financial situation.
Foivos 6y ago
It depends on how often you change phones. If you change phone, keep your phones more than 3 years I would wait. If not, by the time you will really need to have 5G you would be about to buy the next phone, which will certainly have 5G.

inetsee 6y ago

A quick search leads me to believe that the majority of people use their smartphones as phones; they make calls, they send text messages, they may use apps to buy movie tickets, check their mail, play games. Most of these uses don't really demand a lot of bandwidth. Why should I watch a video on my smartphones 5" screen when I could watch on my 55" TV. I think the cellular carriers should invest more in improving their coverage, especially in rural areas. Of course, that'll never happen because the carriers would rather focus their investments in the big cities, where people are willing to buy a $1000 smartphone every year.

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mynameisvlad 6y ago
Have fun carrying your 55" TV around town. The appeal of smartphones is the ability to watch videos, play games, etc anywhere you are (within the coverage areas, of course). > I think the cellular carriers should invest more in improving their coverage, especially in rural areas I would say coverage is generally pretty good, especially in the Eastern half of the country. There's very little benefit to providing service in the middle of nowhere when the majority of their subscriber base is going to be in bigger cities.
samatman 6y ago
One of my 'smartphones' has a screen the same size as most of the laptops I've ever owned, 13" rounded up. Also, you're way out of touch with how 'the youth' (anyone under 30) use the Internet. It's highly video-centric, and sure, depending on the market, keeping that video feed alive away from WiFi can get expensive: but I would rather pay than go without, and I suspect this is often true for most youngsters as well. Cell carriers spend money where they can make money, and that isn't rural bandwidth. If we want to change that, and I think it's worthwhile to do so, it will take legislation.

gzu 6y ago

Give me rock solid and cheaper 4G before jumping the gun to 5G. How will going from say 40mbps to 250mbps+ on a phone help me in any way over the next 2 years? For video, the limits of a phone display cap the max bitrate below 5G's speed. 1080p at 60fps is around 16mbps.

chrisco255 6y ago
Simple, they will be competing directly with cable for home internet once 5G is deployed.
Foivos 6y ago
If you are in a cell with low congestion, probably the 4G speed is enough. Since, the mobile data consumption is increasing rapidly though, cells will start to become congested. 5G ensures that more people will be able to stream video at the same time.

thelazydogsback 6y ago

I'm constantly amazed at how fast my 4G/LTE service is. I had to run my house off of my tethered phone the other day, and browsing seemed faster than cable -- obviously slower overall bandwidth, but good enough and very low latency. I have no desire for my phone to be faster in either processing power or bandwidth -- it would give me absolutely no benefit. I wish 5G, 8K video (and even 4k in many cases), etc., were not thrust upon consumers. Things are already good enough to be close to magic.

sudosysgen 6y ago
Increasing capacity via 5G will allow higher data caps too.
- laksdjfkasljdf 6y ago
  those things are completely disconnected
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blank_fan_pill 6y ago
I bet we haven't even come close to realizing the potential of having extremely fast/high bandwidth cellular connections. Streaming 8k video to a phone seems silly but there are some brilliant and clever people out there who will find a use for that kind of mobile bandwith and apply it in ways you or I never thought of. Bill Gates infamously said sometime in the 80's "640K is more memory than anyone will ever need" , and for the scope of computer applications at the time he was correct.
- chrisco255 6y ago
  Yeah, VR comes to mind. But also speed gets reduced even with a small deterioration in signal. If you're getting 10-20mbps at full strength, you might get 1-3 Mbps with a weak signal. I would presume that 5G would be faster in weaker signal scenarios.

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jtdev 6y ago

I hope Apple buys AT&T...

throwaway287391 6y ago

I had an amazing experience with 5G home broadband in the UK...while it lasted. I paid £29/month and always got the promised 300+mbps (sometimes up to 500-600) down with ~10ms ping. It was 100% rock solid and seemed to be truly unlimited, e.g. in the first month I downloaded >500GB and never noticed any throttling whatsoever. Then they took down the tower nearest to my flat for "improvements" a couple months into the pandemic and from then on it basically didn't work at all (it was supposed to switch to 4G and it theoretically did but the best I got with that was an extremely flaky 10mbps). They originally said it'd be fixed in a week but it was completely unusable for at least a month. So now I'm back to a cable connection. I still miss the 5G though -- there was something pretty amazing about just plugging it into the mains and suddenly having super-fast wifi with 0 installation. I personally remain optimistic about its future, unlike pretty much everyone else in this thread I guess.

fwiwm2c 6y ago

Given how these companies think, AT&T's solution to solve this might be to slow down 4G vs. improving 5G speeds :-)

deelawn 6y ago
Ha. Exactly what I was thinking

silverlyra 6y ago

am I reading this right? High-bandwidth wireless data, even using the latest 5G technology, still literally requires ample bandwidth: wide enough radio frequency channel(s) over which to communicate. So far, two major US cellular providers (AT&T and T-Mobile) have allocated so little spectrum space to 5G, that 4G connections are still faster in almost every city tested. For example, on AT&T’s 4G network, phones can use up to seven radio bands simultaneously to increase speeds, but phones on 5G are still limited to a single 5MHz band. Sounds like this is what empirical testing of AT&T and T-Mobile networks would have expected to find. Verizon’s 5G network isn’t showing this issue because they’re using only millimeter-wave spectrum and equipment, with the trade-off being scant availability because of its tiny usable cell area.

bluGill 6y ago
I just drive through Iowa and had 5g almost all the way. A year ago I drove the same route and it was 2g the whole way. So t-mobile has clearly sped things up in rural areas for me. At home I still get 4g, but that is good enough

supernova87a 6y ago

Until I see the pricing of 5G, I don't believe a word of it being better or more useful to me. All I expect is that I'll burn through my monthly data sooner, and not see a dime of faster, cheaper technology improvement. Why should I be in favor of 5G?

ineedasername 6y ago

I'm looking for someone to explain why 5G is important for the average user. In my case, I can stream video with no problem, web pages load quickly, new apps download fast. The primary use case I can think of is to replace traditional cable broadband with it, but that would be impractically expensive given the cost of mobile data.

at-fates-hands 6y ago
Way back in the day 3G was supposed to solve every issue with mobile data. Then we had to have 4G because it was faster. This is just another step up. Just like when you got high speed internet. At some point why does someone need gigabyte speeds when a much slower speed will allow you to do 95% of what any normal user would need? I think wireless data speeds is the new arms race tbh. The interesting thing is Verizon is not upselling you for 5G and AT&T is. Plus AT&T was sued saying they had 5G in areas they really didn't and now this article claiming their speeds in certain cities are faster than they actually are. The real question is, how many people will switch because of this issue and over selling it on their part?
apendleton 6y ago
> but that would be impractically expensive given the cost of mobile data That needn't be the case with 5G -- there's a lot more bandwidth to go around, particularly with mmwave, so home broadband (with unlimited or near-unlimited service) are more feasible. Verizon is piloting a home 5G service in several cities for this reason, and it doesn't have a data cap.
Foivos 6y ago
Early versions of 5G, known as “non standalone”, are just glorified 4G. With the exception of the radio link, everything else is 4G. This means that the value proposition is that more people per base station (or per surface area) will be able to stream video, download fast etc. When stand alone 5G becomes available, the latency of the network will become comparable to the latency of wired networks, especially if it is combined with mobile edge computing. Then, you will have access to new services that are impossible now, such as game steaming and VR. I agree though that 5G is way more important for the public sector and the industry than the average consumer.

c1yd3i 6y ago

I bet we can all agree that any development of our nation's cellular network is a good thing :)

Wagmire 6y ago

i guess they couldnt get enough government money with all that they already sell