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> 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 w

> 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.

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.