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I (UK) use 5G for all my internetting. Great speeds but iffy pings for gaming but this isn't a huge deal for me. I only got it because I had to move house duri

I (UK) use 5G for all my internetting. Great speeds but iffy pings for gaming but this isn't a huge deal for me. I only got it because I had to move house during covid and didn't want to risk having to wait weeks for a connection. However I didn't expect it to be as good as it is. So good that I never bothered with getting fibre. I can also just take my 5G router if I move house again, or use the 5G SIM in my dual SIM phone if I'm travelling.

g_p 5y ago
Yeah - of the 3 use cases heralded for 5G, enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) is the one that has materialised so far. The other two (massive machine to machine communications, and ultra reliable low latency communications) were more intended for buzzword-laden visions of robotic surgery and internet of everything. Neither has really materialised like in the brochure. As you say, the speeds for consumer services are great - likely you'd get similarly good speeds with properly deployed 4G, since it can deliver 1 Gbit in theory with enough carrier aggregation. The new 5G spectrum helps a bit if you're in an urban area. Nobody is going to use 5G to carry out surgery - you'll need real backhaul for any serious distance to get to the place the doctor is (otherwise they could do the surgery directly or using existing robotic equipment in the room), and if you are relying on backhaul, why not just lay fibre to the robot and avoid the risks. You really don't want a latency spike or jamming attack when operating on someone! Many of the benefits claimed from massive machine to machine communications will need standalone 5G to come about - then slicing and other industrial facing features will start to emerge. In the meantime though, you rightly point out that 5G serves as effective competition for fixed line connectivity, and that is no bad thing to stimulate roll-out and give some market price pressure.
- ng55QPSK 5y ago
  We (i work at a network vendor) see a lot of (testing) campus networks with local spectrum licenses (EU and especially in DE). ultra-low-latency with edge computing is already something you can buy to get down to 2...5ms latency.
  - p_l 5y ago
    Peer to peer LTE/5G at local scales is quite interesting in fact. Though I LOL'd hard finding out some of the deployments are tactical comms in us military

g_p 5y ago

Yeah - of the 3 use cases heralded for 5G, enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) is the one that has materialised so far. The other two (massive machine to machine communications, and ultra reliable low latency communications) were more intended for buzzword-laden visions of robotic surgery and internet of everything. Neither has really materialised like in the brochure. As you say, the speeds for consumer services are great - likely you'd get similarly good speeds with properly deployed 4G, since it can deliver 1 Gbit in theory with enough carrier aggregation. The new 5G spectrum helps a bit if you're in an urban area. Nobody is going to use 5G to carry out surgery - you'll need real backhaul for any serious distance to get to the place the doctor is (otherwise they could do the surgery directly or using existing robotic equipment in the room), and if you are relying on backhaul, why not just lay fibre to the robot and avoid the risks. You really don't want a latency spike or jamming attack when operating on someone! Many of the benefits claimed from massive machine to machine communications will need standalone 5G to come about - then slicing and other industrial facing features will start to emerge. In the meantime though, you rightly point out that 5G serves as effective competition for fixed line connectivity, and that is no bad thing to stimulate roll-out and give some market price pressure.

ng55QPSK 5y ago
We (i work at a network vendor) see a lot of (testing) campus networks with local spectrum licenses (EU and especially in DE). ultra-low-latency with edge computing is already something you can buy to get down to 2...5ms latency.
- p_l 5y ago
  Peer to peer LTE/5G at local scales is quite interesting in fact. Though I LOL'd hard finding out some of the deployments are tactical comms in us military