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Another anecdote — at my house, on Verizon Wireless: LTE: Consistently 5-20Mbps down. In the first couple of months after LTE went online here (5ish? years ago

Another anecdote — at my house, on Verizon Wireless: LTE: Consistently 5-20Mbps down. In the first couple of months after LTE went online here (5ish? years ago), I could get more like 90-100. It dropped into the 20-ish range and never went back up. 5G: I have UltraWideband coverage at my house, and I can get 200-500Mbps download speeds. Will 5G just drop down over time (as usage goes up) like LTE did? I dunno, maybe. But, for now at least, 5G(UW) has been much, much faster for me.

pkulak 5y ago
Well, that's almost entirely due to Verizon's C-Band being pretty empty right now (5G phones are only a couple years old) and it being 2-5x the frequency and bandwidth of the bands they put 4g on. If they had put 4g on C-band, you'd probably be seeing the exact same performance. So, I guess what I'm saying is, if by "5g", you mean "the giant new swaths of high-frequency spectrum that carriers are building out", then 5g is amazing. Otherwise, it's nothing to even bother noticing, as a consumer.
- cogman10 5y ago
  Definitely the biggest boon of 5g is the high frequency spectrum.
- sparker72678 5y ago
  I guess that’s kinda my point — for me, “giant new swaths of spectrum” is my 5G experience. (Just a part of how muddy the waters of this topic are.)
  - pkulak 5y ago
    Yeah, for me too. I'm excited about mobile again for the first time since LTE got turned on.
cogman10 5y ago
Agreed. We have a limited backend that appears to be expanding at a snails pace. There's a stretch of driving I've regularly done which goes through an unpopulated stretch of the US. I've watched the tech tick up from 2g, 3g, 4g, LTE, and now 5g. Yet the download speed remains at sub 1Mbps speeds. My assumption is they are still running the same copper/fiber that was buried to the tower 20 years ago while updating the receivers.
- BenjiWiebe 5y ago
  If they are running 20 year old copper that will slow things down, and your only solution is to replace it. 20 year old fiber? Upgrade the optics on both ends for a couple grand and you are up to date again.
zw123456 5y ago
Hi, another 5G UW user here, I am getting pretty consistently 1.8Gbps to 2.1Gbps on mine. But I played around with the CPE placement quite a bit. I don't know if you are able to try that. UW will drop you down to lower speeds or a lower band if the mm-wave signal is not good. mm-wave is really touchy dues to the small beam size.

pkulak 5y ago

Well, that's almost entirely due to Verizon's C-Band being pretty empty right now (5G phones are only a couple years old) and it being 2-5x the frequency and bandwidth of the bands they put 4g on. If they had put 4g on C-band, you'd probably be seeing the exact same performance. So, I guess what I'm saying is, if by "5g", you mean "the giant new swaths of high-frequency spectrum that carriers are building out", then 5g is amazing. Otherwise, it's nothing to even bother noticing, as a consumer.

cogman10 5y ago
Definitely the biggest boon of 5g is the high frequency spectrum.
sparker72678 5y ago
I guess that’s kinda my point — for me, “giant new swaths of spectrum” is my 5G experience. (Just a part of how muddy the waters of this topic are.)
- pkulak 5y ago
  Yeah, for me too. I'm excited about mobile again for the first time since LTE got turned on.

cogman10 5y ago

Agreed. We have a limited backend that appears to be expanding at a snails pace. There's a stretch of driving I've regularly done which goes through an unpopulated stretch of the US. I've watched the tech tick up from 2g, 3g, 4g, LTE, and now 5g. Yet the download speed remains at sub 1Mbps speeds. My assumption is they are still running the same copper/fiber that was buried to the tower 20 years ago while updating the receivers.

BenjiWiebe 5y ago
If they are running 20 year old copper that will slow things down, and your only solution is to replace it. 20 year old fiber? Upgrade the optics on both ends for a couple grand and you are up to date again.

zw123456 5y ago

Hi, another 5G UW user here, I am getting pretty consistently 1.8Gbps to 2.1Gbps on mine. But I played around with the CPE placement quite a bit. I don't know if you are able to try that. UW will drop you down to lower speeds or a lower band if the mm-wave signal is not good. mm-wave is really touchy dues to the small beam size.