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"The country’s 5G networks still lag compared to promises, with the average 5G download speed reaching 690.47 megabits per second (Mbps)." I assume most of the

"The country’s 5G networks still lag compared to promises, with the average 5G download speed reaching 690.47 megabits per second (Mbps)." I assume most of these people are using this speed for cell phones. 86 MB/s sounds really great for a phone, and better than a lot of people in the U.S. have in their homes. This should only get better as well. Assuming the technology is safe, this will be a major game changer for society.

capableweb 6y ago
> Assuming the technology is safe, this will be a major game changer for society. Will it really? 4G reaches 70 Mbps, how do you think that'll change society when we now can have a whole ~600 Mpbs? My guess is, people will stream videos faster, but that's about it.
- frabert 6y ago
  When you look at phones each as its own, I agree that more bandwidth is not really needed. I certainly never felt that I absolutely needed more that LTE bandwidth when on my phone. But 5G will improve _total_ bandwidth I assume, which is in fact going to improve the situation for very congested areas.
  - benbristow 6y ago
    The bandwidth would be quite useful for music festivals and large gatherings. I've been to music festivals in the centre of a city (Glasgow, Scotland, UK) where my phone usually works quite well, but at that festival I'd struggle to send a text. That's when festivals are allowed again, mind you.
- haar 6y ago
  I am unable to get a decent wired internet connection in the middle of a city center in the U.K. (13Mbps peak via ADSL). I’ve recently switched to using a 5G connection for home internet and whilst it’s very early days - a slight sacrifice in latency (ADSL isn’t great there either), and a daily modem restart, is a welcome price to pay for 250Mbps down/50Mbps up (at the same price point).
- avindroth 6y ago
  Improvement of boring things leads to interesting things. When we went from 2G to 3G/4G, we went from images to videos. 10x improvement in data transmission may lead to other forms of media becoming more readily accessible. If what is imagined is just “faster video loading”, that is an awful waste of data.
  - sn_master 6y ago
    yup, 480p videos from 2010 look very dated now when everything is 1080p.
    - capableweb 6y ago
      480p doesn't look bad now because you're used to 1080p, it looks bad now because you try to view it on a 4K monitor (or something else, but it's order of magnitude better than what you tried to use for 480p back in the day). Also, 480p vs 1080p is not a major game changer for society, at least in the society I live in.
  - esrauch 6y ago
    What are these "other forms of media" though? Video streaming didn't suddenly come into existence when we got to 3g, it was already common on wired internet and only became accessible on cellular internet.
    - MacsHeadroom 6y ago
      Realtime 3D video and virtual environments.
      - capableweb 6y ago
        Not exactly sure what "Realtime 3D video" is referring to, maybe this? https://dm.octonus.com/features/realtime-3d-video-capture https://dm.octonus.com/features/realtime-3d-video-capture Seems the "Extra high-quality, large file size" ends up being 87-160 MB per minute, hardly impossible to do with 4G... Virtual environment been possible to stream on the fly for a long time. Only thing that will change with going from 4G to 5G is that the quality will be higher, hardly a "major game changer for society" as liquidify put it.
- Symbiote 6y ago
  4G can go much faster. I get 175Mb/s: https://www.speedtest.net/result/a/6889068582 https://www.speedtest.net/result/a/6889068582 I wondered what I could possibly do with 600Mb/s, but I noticed that Telenor isn't charging any extra for a 5G connection (my phone doesn't support it). Isn't the main feature that the speed is still high even when there are lots of people using it, rather than my test at midnight in a city centre?
  - sn_master 6y ago
    and less towers/infra is needed, which makes it possible to give small towns fast internet that they couldn't do practically with 4g tech.
- ourcat 6y ago
  'Cloud computing'? People having remote access to much higher power machines than they do at home. And being able to use them with minimal lag? Cloud gaming companies are going to benefit a lot from 5G I think. Also Machine Learning on remote GPUs. I've also read that car manufacturers want to use 5G technology for cars to communicate with each other.
  - capableweb 6y ago
    > I've also read that car manufacturers want to use 5G technology for cars to communicate with each other. That sounds like a marketing statement from some car manufacturer who wants to sound like they on with the times. There are plenty of technologies and protocols they could deploy to allow cars to speak directly with each other (without any 3rd party infrastructure like antennas), no 5G needed here.
    - ourcat 6y ago
      All that car stuff came up in some of the various specification papers about 5G.
- ekianjo 6y ago
  Or stream very high resolution video which was unpractical with 4g.
danielheath 6y ago
> Assuming the technology is safe Whoever invented the 5G conspiracy theories is either having a laugh or is fundamentally disconnected from how radiation works. This pseudo-scientific nonsense has no place on HN. One of the key design features of 5G is to drop transmit power (instead having more sites, with lower range per site). Because signal strength drops off with the square of distance to the tower (technically the cube, but because they transmit a flat beam the relevant part of the graph is square), this results in dramatically less transmit radiation vs 4G. However, all of this is moot, because the radio frequency used isn't a frequency that could ionize anything even if the transmit power weren't negligible.
- mminer237 6y ago
  When he said that, I assumed he was talking about China using the technology overhaul to sneak in spying capabilities through Huawei. I forgot people don't know how radio waves are the opposite side of the light spectrum from x-rays.
- fuzzybear3965 6y ago
  I think a common misconception is that the concern is about the ionization potential of the radiation. The way I've heard it explained is that microwave frequencies (including, but not limited to, 5G signals) affect the ion channels of cells, preventing normal cellular function and increasing the risk of a variety of disorders, particularly neurological.
  - zamadatix 6y ago
    The first part of the comment seems to cover this claim already, at least in relation to 5G rollout being bad, without getting into whether it's even a valid claim or not.
- oliv__ 6y ago
  Every time this is brought up, the only argument that comes up is that "radio frequency used isn't a frequency that could ionize anything even if the transmit power weren't negligible". This is absolutely true but fails to recognize that radio frequencies have harmful, non-ionizing effects on biological organisms.
themodelplumber 6y ago
That's the speed at which I'd start expecting my phone to natively allow multiple video streams on screen via different apps, a versatile audio mixer, and just a much better multitasking environment overall. I think/hope we're just getting started in this area on mobile. (I'm weird and people always ask if this creates focus issues, but personally I run about 6-8 video streams at once on the desktop, typically with only one stream given audio presence at a time. It's been great for extra energy and interest-deepening while working, which helps prevent burnout)
- jaflo 6y ago
  Out of curiosity, what streams do you have up? And how do you work without getting distracted?
  - themodelplumber 6y ago
    I usually stream a lecture, a few favorite TV shows on random playlists, some thriller or action movies, and maybe a favorite Youtuber. The scripts I use for this really randomize things into 200+ item playlists per window, so I can quickly flip through anything I don't want to watch right now. IMO distraction and healthy prospective activity (stimulation, personal interest, cool new stuff) have become tragically intertwined and confused. To me, distraction in the negative sense is the byproduct of a lack of what I call the "three C's", comfort, clarity, and confidence. Once I'm sailing through the day productively, singleminded focus is now a problem that can easily turn into productivity exhaustion. The streams help prevent this with entertaining mood support based on my core interests. (I wish everything I had to do at work was based on my core interests!) BTW I don't generally watch new material in this context. It's usually from my favorites I've already seen, unless I'm ready to take a break.
mhh__ 6y ago
The thing that really interests me is the potential to properly eliminate wires (especially when/if device to device becomes possible). For example, the Test and Measurement industry (see eevblogs interview with John Kenny - a really good one, seems like a great boss to have and a great engineer to) is apparently really looking forward to being able to having very high throughput links between devices such that they can synthesize and fuse data without having a literal maze of wires - e.g. You have a signal generator and an oscilloscope, you should be able to make a (not very good) SpecAn from it.
bouncycastle 6y ago
Consumer SSD drives only go up to around 500Mbps, and it's far less for SD card storage. So you won't be even able to download a file with 690.47Mbps! (To stream a video in HD, you only need about 5Mbps).
- MawKKe 6y ago
  Are you sure about those units? Typical SATA SSD can reach ~500 MegaBytes/s, not Megabits/s
  - bouncycastle 6y ago
    yeah, you're right! Seems like I'm even more confused about the specs than the average consumer...
- vel0city 6y ago
  Eh, consumer-quality SSDs these days can hit a good bit more than 500Mbps even with writes. This Inland NVMe drive lists 1,900MB/s write speeds (15.2Gbit/s). ~$60 for 512GB. Even if we take its rated speeds with a grain of salt for sustained writes and cut it in half, that's still >7Gbit. https://www.microcenter.com/product/600420/inland-premium-512gb-ssd-3d-nand-m2-2280-pcie-nvme-30-x4-internal-solid-state-drive https://www.microcenter.com/product/600420/inland-premium-51... That said, almost all phones are not using such an interface or controller for their storage and I do largely agree having a phone with a >1Gbps link is a bit overkill for a handheld mobile devices. Ultimately though once there's a bunch of clients on it your actual throughput in practice will be much slower. The big win is that the overall channel (or channel grouping) can now handle a ton more aggregate throughput meaning higher realized speeds per customer for the same amount of spectrum. Being able to get your slice of data faster means you can quit talking or quit listening sooner and someone else can talk or hear something they care about.
  - bouncycastle 6y ago
    "consumer grade", I meant SATA SSD. Although I acknowledge that NVMe drives are entering the consumer market these days with insane write speeds that you'd only find in the data center before. Also, good point about why speed is important - it can certainly help serve more customers!

capableweb 6y ago

> Assuming the technology is safe, this will be a major game changer for society. Will it really? 4G reaches 70 Mbps, how do you think that'll change society when we now can have a whole ~600 Mpbs? My guess is, people will stream videos faster, but that's about it.

frabert 6y ago
When you look at phones each as its own, I agree that more bandwidth is not really needed. I certainly never felt that I absolutely needed more that LTE bandwidth when on my phone. But 5G will improve _total_ bandwidth I assume, which is in fact going to improve the situation for very congested areas.
- benbristow 6y ago
  The bandwidth would be quite useful for music festivals and large gatherings. I've been to music festivals in the centre of a city (Glasgow, Scotland, UK) where my phone usually works quite well, but at that festival I'd struggle to send a text. That's when festivals are allowed again, mind you.
haar 6y ago
I am unable to get a decent wired internet connection in the middle of a city center in the U.K. (13Mbps peak via ADSL). I’ve recently switched to using a 5G connection for home internet and whilst it’s very early days - a slight sacrifice in latency (ADSL isn’t great there either), and a daily modem restart, is a welcome price to pay for 250Mbps down/50Mbps up (at the same price point).
avindroth 6y ago
Improvement of boring things leads to interesting things. When we went from 2G to 3G/4G, we went from images to videos. 10x improvement in data transmission may lead to other forms of media becoming more readily accessible. If what is imagined is just “faster video loading”, that is an awful waste of data.
- sn_master 6y ago
  yup, 480p videos from 2010 look very dated now when everything is 1080p.
  - capableweb 6y ago
    480p doesn't look bad now because you're used to 1080p, it looks bad now because you try to view it on a 4K monitor (or something else, but it's order of magnitude better than what you tried to use for 480p back in the day). Also, 480p vs 1080p is not a major game changer for society, at least in the society I live in.
- esrauch 6y ago
  What are these "other forms of media" though? Video streaming didn't suddenly come into existence when we got to 3g, it was already common on wired internet and only became accessible on cellular internet.
  - MacsHeadroom 6y ago
    Realtime 3D video and virtual environments.
    - capableweb 6y ago
      Not exactly sure what "Realtime 3D video" is referring to, maybe this? https://dm.octonus.com/features/realtime-3d-video-capture https://dm.octonus.com/features/realtime-3d-video-capture Seems the "Extra high-quality, large file size" ends up being 87-160 MB per minute, hardly impossible to do with 4G... Virtual environment been possible to stream on the fly for a long time. Only thing that will change with going from 4G to 5G is that the quality will be higher, hardly a "major game changer for society" as liquidify put it.
Symbiote 6y ago
4G can go much faster. I get 175Mb/s: https://www.speedtest.net/result/a/6889068582 https://www.speedtest.net/result/a/6889068582 I wondered what I could possibly do with 600Mb/s, but I noticed that Telenor isn't charging any extra for a 5G connection (my phone doesn't support it). Isn't the main feature that the speed is still high even when there are lots of people using it, rather than my test at midnight in a city centre?
- sn_master 6y ago
  and less towers/infra is needed, which makes it possible to give small towns fast internet that they couldn't do practically with 4g tech.
ourcat 6y ago
'Cloud computing'? People having remote access to much higher power machines than they do at home. And being able to use them with minimal lag? Cloud gaming companies are going to benefit a lot from 5G I think. Also Machine Learning on remote GPUs. I've also read that car manufacturers want to use 5G technology for cars to communicate with each other.
- capableweb 6y ago
  > I've also read that car manufacturers want to use 5G technology for cars to communicate with each other. That sounds like a marketing statement from some car manufacturer who wants to sound like they on with the times. There are plenty of technologies and protocols they could deploy to allow cars to speak directly with each other (without any 3rd party infrastructure like antennas), no 5G needed here.
  - ourcat 6y ago
    All that car stuff came up in some of the various specification papers about 5G.
ekianjo 6y ago
Or stream very high resolution video which was unpractical with 4g.

danielheath 6y ago

> Assuming the technology is safe Whoever invented the 5G conspiracy theories is either having a laugh or is fundamentally disconnected from how radiation works. This pseudo-scientific nonsense has no place on HN. One of the key design features of 5G is to drop transmit power (instead having more sites, with lower range per site). Because signal strength drops off with the square of distance to the tower (technically the cube, but because they transmit a flat beam the relevant part of the graph is square), this results in dramatically less transmit radiation vs 4G. However, all of this is moot, because the radio frequency used isn't a frequency that could ionize anything even if the transmit power weren't negligible.

mminer237 6y ago
When he said that, I assumed he was talking about China using the technology overhaul to sneak in spying capabilities through Huawei. I forgot people don't know how radio waves are the opposite side of the light spectrum from x-rays.
fuzzybear3965 6y ago
I think a common misconception is that the concern is about the ionization potential of the radiation. The way I've heard it explained is that microwave frequencies (including, but not limited to, 5G signals) affect the ion channels of cells, preventing normal cellular function and increasing the risk of a variety of disorders, particularly neurological.
- zamadatix 6y ago
  The first part of the comment seems to cover this claim already, at least in relation to 5G rollout being bad, without getting into whether it's even a valid claim or not.
oliv__ 6y ago
Every time this is brought up, the only argument that comes up is that "radio frequency used isn't a frequency that could ionize anything even if the transmit power weren't negligible". This is absolutely true but fails to recognize that radio frequencies have harmful, non-ionizing effects on biological organisms.

themodelplumber 6y ago

That's the speed at which I'd start expecting my phone to natively allow multiple video streams on screen via different apps, a versatile audio mixer, and just a much better multitasking environment overall. I think/hope we're just getting started in this area on mobile. (I'm weird and people always ask if this creates focus issues, but personally I run about 6-8 video streams at once on the desktop, typically with only one stream given audio presence at a time. It's been great for extra energy and interest-deepening while working, which helps prevent burnout)

jaflo 6y ago
Out of curiosity, what streams do you have up? And how do you work without getting distracted?
- themodelplumber 6y ago
  I usually stream a lecture, a few favorite TV shows on random playlists, some thriller or action movies, and maybe a favorite Youtuber. The scripts I use for this really randomize things into 200+ item playlists per window, so I can quickly flip through anything I don't want to watch right now. IMO distraction and healthy prospective activity (stimulation, personal interest, cool new stuff) have become tragically intertwined and confused. To me, distraction in the negative sense is the byproduct of a lack of what I call the "three C's", comfort, clarity, and confidence. Once I'm sailing through the day productively, singleminded focus is now a problem that can easily turn into productivity exhaustion. The streams help prevent this with entertaining mood support based on my core interests. (I wish everything I had to do at work was based on my core interests!) BTW I don't generally watch new material in this context. It's usually from my favorites I've already seen, unless I'm ready to take a break.

mhh__ 6y ago

The thing that really interests me is the potential to properly eliminate wires (especially when/if device to device becomes possible). For example, the Test and Measurement industry (see eevblogs interview with John Kenny - a really good one, seems like a great boss to have and a great engineer to) is apparently really looking forward to being able to having very high throughput links between devices such that they can synthesize and fuse data without having a literal maze of wires - e.g. You have a signal generator and an oscilloscope, you should be able to make a (not very good) SpecAn from it.

bouncycastle 6y ago

Consumer SSD drives only go up to around 500Mbps, and it's far less for SD card storage. So you won't be even able to download a file with 690.47Mbps! (To stream a video in HD, you only need about 5Mbps).

MawKKe 6y ago
Are you sure about those units? Typical SATA SSD can reach ~500 MegaBytes/s, not Megabits/s
- bouncycastle 6y ago
  yeah, you're right! Seems like I'm even more confused about the specs than the average consumer...
vel0city 6y ago
Eh, consumer-quality SSDs these days can hit a good bit more than 500Mbps even with writes. This Inland NVMe drive lists 1,900MB/s write speeds (15.2Gbit/s). ~$60 for 512GB. Even if we take its rated speeds with a grain of salt for sustained writes and cut it in half, that's still >7Gbit. https://www.microcenter.com/product/600420/inland-premium-512gb-ssd-3d-nand-m2-2280-pcie-nvme-30-x4-internal-solid-state-drive https://www.microcenter.com/product/600420/inland-premium-51... That said, almost all phones are not using such an interface or controller for their storage and I do largely agree having a phone with a >1Gbps link is a bit overkill for a handheld mobile devices. Ultimately though once there's a bunch of clients on it your actual throughput in practice will be much slower. The big win is that the overall channel (or channel grouping) can now handle a ton more aggregate throughput meaning higher realized speeds per customer for the same amount of spectrum. Being able to get your slice of data faster means you can quit talking or quit listening sooner and someone else can talk or hear something they care about.
- bouncycastle 6y ago
  "consumer grade", I meant SATA SSD. Although I acknowledge that NVMe drives are entering the consumer market these days with insane write speeds that you'd only find in the data center before. Also, good point about why speed is important - it can certainly help serve more customers!