6 ms·

> But to be sure, in my view, this is very good for the consumer of internet services This is one of the things I'm excited about. Even if 5G home internet won

by mdasen 5y ago

> But to be sure, in my view, this is very good for the consumer of internet services This is one of the things I'm excited about. Even if 5G home internet won't lure you away from your wired connection, it will lure enough customers away that your ISP will need to treat you better (for fear that you might be lured away). Lots of people with Verizon and AT&T would say that they would never switch to T-Mobile in the 2013-2020 time-range. Still, T-Mobile lured enough customers away that Verizon and AT&T started treating their customers a lot better.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
zw123456 5y ago
Yes, Tmo is catching up with ATT and VZ on quality, the main reason they bought Sprint (remember them) is because Sprint had a shit ton of spectrum but they weren't building it out because they were capital starved (for a bunch of reasons). So now, TMo has the most low and medium band spectrum and they are catching up on build out. Vz has the most spectrum if you include the mm-wave, but it's difficult to build out. All the bandwidth competition is a good thing for the consumer and hopefully some cool stuff gets developed to take advantage of it.
Seattle3503 5y ago
I prefer my fiber connection to a 5G connection. My fear is that they will do the math and find they can't compete (I don't know if this is actually the case). It could be the end of physical connections.
- zw123456 5y ago
  Me too, nothing beats fiber if you can get it. I used to have Fios where I used to live and nothing beats it, but where I live now, you cannot get any fiber to the home, but I can get the mm-wave 5G and that is a pretty close second, the speed on my mm-wave is actually faster than the Fios I had before but now there is NGPON2 which is the new tech behind it and that can actually get you to 10Gbps. Fiber will always be faster most likely.
- CameronNemo 5y ago
  A lot of people don't have fiber options to begin with (especially rural users). I wonder if 5G/NR will give them better service than 4G/LTE. I doubt wireless carriers will ever be able to seriously compete with built out fiber in the long run. Once it is there, the costs have been paid and the provider is mainly just raking in residuals while keeping the lights on.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - TreeInBuxton 5y ago
    Rural user here - yes, 5G is an absolute godsend, 4G was over congested and had extremely unreliable ping (the other option was 2mbit ADSL), I now have a fairly stable 250/100 Internet connection, with much lower latency
  - shagie 5y ago
    > A lot of people don't have fiber options to begin with (especially rural users). I wonder if 5G/NR will give them better service than 4G/LTE. The flip side to that is the "many rural users are at the edges of existing coverage networks". A 4G network can reach about 10 miles (16km) - a 5G network is about 1000 feet or 0.2 miles (about 300 meters). Unless the providers are placing these on every other power pole, most rural users aren't likely to see 5G coverage. For what it's worth, my parents' house is about 0.1 miles from the road and 0.5 miles from the next nearest neighbor. I believe that it is unlikely that wireless 5G will get out there (they don't have 4G service either - they're in a valley and use a femtocell for home phone use). They don't have cable or fiber either and switched from a load balanced pair of DSL lines to Starlink.
    - Osiris 5y ago
      I thought 5G in that 600mhz band has much better coverage. Isn't it only ultra wideband that's that low?
      - shagie 5y ago
- Spooky23 5y ago
  The key difference is that wireless is completely federally regulated, and the FCC doesn’t hold them to the same rules as wired providers. They don’t have the same net neutrality requirements and can and do rate limit based on a variety of factors. For 5G, home wireless is bottom of the line and gets de-prioritized behind phone customers. The playbook is pretty obvious based on Verizon’s behavior. They’ve halted most fiber deployments in urban areas in favor of mm-wave 5G. The FCC declared mm-wave a national defense priority and it is not subject to any local regulation. Spectrum and Comcast suck, but they are the lesser evil compared to telcos imo.
  - zw123456 5y ago
    Both wired and wireless are regulated by the FCC, neither have net neutrality restrictions anymore, the went bye bye in the U.S. at least, a couple years ago and I seriously doubt it will come back ever. > The FCC declared mm-wave a national defense priority and it is not subject to any local regulation. I am not sure where you are getting that but mm-wave is absolutely still regulated locally just like anything else. The main difference is the size of the radios for mm-wave are small and go on poles and the FCC did set a price ceiling on what utilities can charge for pole space. But there are also low and mid-band small cells that go on poles as well. But the wireless companies absolutely still have to get local permits to install any wireless system on poles or pretty much anything.
    - Spooky23 5y ago
      The permitting process is essentially, apply for a permit, the city has 30 days to make aesthetic suggestions and cannot deny the permit. In my city they are placed in all sorts of bizarre locations that the zoning board would not approve such as, in the middle of lawns, within 8 feet of an existing pole owned by a competing utility, in the middle of a sidewalk, etc.
  - catlifeonmars 5y ago
    There is one silver lining: mmWave 5G has a much shorter range and therefore reduced light pollution compared with the spectrum of 4G. This is good collectively good for users of the network.
- Osiris 5y ago
  My neighborhood is less than 15 years old and CenturyLink has no plans to run fiber to my neighborhood. New subdivisions being built are including fiber. The 5G home internet options can be good for people in older homes or neighborhoods or even rural area which have garbage internet.
  - Seattle3503 5y ago
    > New subdivisions being built are including fiber. This is good to hear, as that was my main concern. That the deployment of fiber would freeze in the state it was in 2020.
- vgeek 5y ago
  5g home internet probably isn't as good as fiber, but so far with T-Mo‘s $50/mo plan I average 250/30mbit with around 30ms latency. In a relatively dense newer suburb, Att only offers 50/10 "advertised speed" DSL and the cable company's 100/15 is over $70 plus rental fees. The biggest drawback of 5g is CG-NAT which requires tunneling if you want to host web services.
Nextgrid 5y ago
> it will lure enough customers away that your ISP will need to treat you better (for fear that you might be lured away). I'm worried that the end-game is that you'll still be stuck with equally-shitty providers, just that instead of having to take one turd you'll be able to pick between two equally-smelly ones. It's not like Comcast support or billing is any better in areas where they have competition, and outside of rare areas where there are local competitors (municipal broadband, etc), Comcast's competition in the form of Verizon/Cox/Spectrum isn't any better and has exactly the same flaws. The only thing they can potentially compete on is price, but my understanding is that price is never really the problem, it's all the hidden costs such as surcharges/billing issues, technical issues where tech support is horrible and you end up with no internet for days/weeks, etc - something you can't predict in advance when choosing a provider. As someone who's dealt with a number of providers across multiple countries, my takeaway is that the entire telecoms industry is rotten and the only solution is to expect them to be shit, plan in advance for when they screw you over (such as maintaining a backup connection) and not give them any leverage (no long-term contracts) so that you can just walk away when they become a problem.
pessimizer 5y ago
If your ISP is AT&T or Verizon, switching to 5G is not switching ISPs.

by mdasen 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

zw123456 5y ago

Yes, Tmo is catching up with ATT and VZ on quality, the main reason they bought Sprint (remember them) is because Sprint had a shit ton of spectrum but they weren't building it out because they were capital starved (for a bunch of reasons). So now, TMo has the most low and medium band spectrum and they are catching up on build out. Vz has the most spectrum if you include the mm-wave, but it's difficult to build out. All the bandwidth competition is a good thing for the consumer and hopefully some cool stuff gets developed to take advantage of it.

Seattle3503 5y ago

I prefer my fiber connection to a 5G connection. My fear is that they will do the math and find they can't compete (I don't know if this is actually the case). It could be the end of physical connections.

zw123456 5y ago
Me too, nothing beats fiber if you can get it. I used to have Fios where I used to live and nothing beats it, but where I live now, you cannot get any fiber to the home, but I can get the mm-wave 5G and that is a pretty close second, the speed on my mm-wave is actually faster than the Fios I had before but now there is NGPON2 which is the new tech behind it and that can actually get you to 10Gbps. Fiber will always be faster most likely.
CameronNemo 5y ago
A lot of people don't have fiber options to begin with (especially rural users). I wonder if 5G/NR will give them better service than 4G/LTE. I doubt wireless carriers will ever be able to seriously compete with built out fiber in the long run. Once it is there, the costs have been paid and the provider is mainly just raking in residuals while keeping the lights on.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- TreeInBuxton 5y ago
  Rural user here - yes, 5G is an absolute godsend, 4G was over congested and had extremely unreliable ping (the other option was 2mbit ADSL), I now have a fairly stable 250/100 Internet connection, with much lower latency
- shagie 5y ago
  > A lot of people don't have fiber options to begin with (especially rural users). I wonder if 5G/NR will give them better service than 4G/LTE. The flip side to that is the "many rural users are at the edges of existing coverage networks". A 4G network can reach about 10 miles (16km) - a 5G network is about 1000 feet or 0.2 miles (about 300 meters). Unless the providers are placing these on every other power pole, most rural users aren't likely to see 5G coverage. For what it's worth, my parents' house is about 0.1 miles from the road and 0.5 miles from the next nearest neighbor. I believe that it is unlikely that wireless 5G will get out there (they don't have 4G service either - they're in a valley and use a femtocell for home phone use). They don't have cable or fiber either and switched from a load balanced pair of DSL lines to Starlink.
  - Osiris 5y ago
    I thought 5G in that 600mhz band has much better coverage. Isn't it only ultra wideband that's that low?
    - shagie 5y ago
Spooky23 5y ago
The key difference is that wireless is completely federally regulated, and the FCC doesn’t hold them to the same rules as wired providers. They don’t have the same net neutrality requirements and can and do rate limit based on a variety of factors. For 5G, home wireless is bottom of the line and gets de-prioritized behind phone customers. The playbook is pretty obvious based on Verizon’s behavior. They’ve halted most fiber deployments in urban areas in favor of mm-wave 5G. The FCC declared mm-wave a national defense priority and it is not subject to any local regulation. Spectrum and Comcast suck, but they are the lesser evil compared to telcos imo.
- zw123456 5y ago
  Both wired and wireless are regulated by the FCC, neither have net neutrality restrictions anymore, the went bye bye in the U.S. at least, a couple years ago and I seriously doubt it will come back ever. > The FCC declared mm-wave a national defense priority and it is not subject to any local regulation. I am not sure where you are getting that but mm-wave is absolutely still regulated locally just like anything else. The main difference is the size of the radios for mm-wave are small and go on poles and the FCC did set a price ceiling on what utilities can charge for pole space. But there are also low and mid-band small cells that go on poles as well. But the wireless companies absolutely still have to get local permits to install any wireless system on poles or pretty much anything.
  - Spooky23 5y ago
    The permitting process is essentially, apply for a permit, the city has 30 days to make aesthetic suggestions and cannot deny the permit. In my city they are placed in all sorts of bizarre locations that the zoning board would not approve such as, in the middle of lawns, within 8 feet of an existing pole owned by a competing utility, in the middle of a sidewalk, etc.
- catlifeonmars 5y ago
  There is one silver lining: mmWave 5G has a much shorter range and therefore reduced light pollution compared with the spectrum of 4G. This is good collectively good for users of the network.
Osiris 5y ago
My neighborhood is less than 15 years old and CenturyLink has no plans to run fiber to my neighborhood. New subdivisions being built are including fiber. The 5G home internet options can be good for people in older homes or neighborhoods or even rural area which have garbage internet.
- Seattle3503 5y ago
  > New subdivisions being built are including fiber. This is good to hear, as that was my main concern. That the deployment of fiber would freeze in the state it was in 2020.
vgeek 5y ago
5g home internet probably isn't as good as fiber, but so far with T-Mo‘s $50/mo plan I average 250/30mbit with around 30ms latency. In a relatively dense newer suburb, Att only offers 50/10 "advertised speed" DSL and the cable company's 100/15 is over $70 plus rental fees. The biggest drawback of 5g is CG-NAT which requires tunneling if you want to host web services.

Nextgrid 5y ago

> it will lure enough customers away that your ISP will need to treat you better (for fear that you might be lured away). I'm worried that the end-game is that you'll still be stuck with equally-shitty providers, just that instead of having to take one turd you'll be able to pick between two equally-smelly ones. It's not like Comcast support or billing is any better in areas where they have competition, and outside of rare areas where there are local competitors (municipal broadband, etc), Comcast's competition in the form of Verizon/Cox/Spectrum isn't any better and has exactly the same flaws. The only thing they can potentially compete on is price, but my understanding is that price is never really the problem, it's all the hidden costs such as surcharges/billing issues, technical issues where tech support is horrible and you end up with no internet for days/weeks, etc - something you can't predict in advance when choosing a provider. As someone who's dealt with a number of providers across multiple countries, my takeaway is that the entire telecoms industry is rotten and the only solution is to expect them to be shit, plan in advance for when they screw you over (such as maintaining a backup connection) and not give them any leverage (no long-term contracts) so that you can just walk away when they become a problem.

pessimizer 5y ago

If your ISP is AT&T or Verizon, switching to 5G is not switching ISPs.