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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).

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
      (searching) - yes it can... https://venturebeat.com/2019/12/10/the-definitive-guide-to-5g-low-mid-and-high-band-speeds/ https://venturebeat.com/2019/12/10/the-definitive-guide-to-5... > One low band (600-700MHz) tower can cover hundreds of square miles with 5G service that ranges in speed from 30 to 250 megabits per second (Mbps). Though... I'm still going to be skeptical with the "there are still some significant areas that lack 4g coverage" https://fcc.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=6c1b2e73d9d749cdb7bc88a0d1bdd25b https://fcc.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=... Look at the "how many areas only have one provider" or that you can see the topography and valleys in the coverage map.
    - zw123456 5y ago
      The basics are this, the lower the frequency because lower frequencies propagate better (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-space_path_loss https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-space_path_loss) but... you will get less capacity, because at the lower frequencies there is less spectrum (it is simple arithmetic there is 1000Mhz of spectrum below 1Ghz, but there is 100Ghz of spectrum below 100Ghz (setting aside the details about how it gets allocated etc.) The amount of capacity you can achieve is based on Shannon limit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon%E2%80%93Hartley_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon%E2%80%93Hartley_theore... it's the classic engineering trade off, better propagation vs. more capacity. that is why the carriers want low, medium and high band in their inventory, low is considered < 1Ghz, medium is considered 1Ghz - 10Ghz, high is > 10Ghz, roughly speaking
      - powerapple 5y ago
        probably make sense in rural areas, fewer users, larger area.
  - selectodude 5y ago
- kingcharles 5y ago
  Not just rural. I'm in downtown Chicago and the cheapest wired connection I can get to my home is $71,000 install and $800/month from Comcast. Finally got T-Mobile Home Internet (5G). Shipped the access point overnight to me. Plugged in. 600Mbps peak. Never seen a slowdown that affects my heavyweight Net use (e.g. streaming HD).
  - selectodude 5y ago
    lol what part of downtown Chicago is that per chance? Comcast is required by law to serve every household in their franchise area so I’m extremely curious.
    - cozzyd 5y ago
      Yeah ... I think I have 3 choices for gigabit internet in my building, and it's probably one of the smallest unit count buildings in the loop.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
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.

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
    (searching) - yes it can... https://venturebeat.com/2019/12/10/the-definitive-guide-to-5g-low-mid-and-high-band-speeds/ https://venturebeat.com/2019/12/10/the-definitive-guide-to-5... > One low band (600-700MHz) tower can cover hundreds of square miles with 5G service that ranges in speed from 30 to 250 megabits per second (Mbps). Though... I'm still going to be skeptical with the "there are still some significant areas that lack 4g coverage" https://fcc.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=6c1b2e73d9d749cdb7bc88a0d1bdd25b https://fcc.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=... Look at the "how many areas only have one provider" or that you can see the topography and valleys in the coverage map.
  - zw123456 5y ago
    The basics are this, the lower the frequency because lower frequencies propagate better (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-space_path_loss https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-space_path_loss) but... you will get less capacity, because at the lower frequencies there is less spectrum (it is simple arithmetic there is 1000Mhz of spectrum below 1Ghz, but there is 100Ghz of spectrum below 100Ghz (setting aside the details about how it gets allocated etc.) The amount of capacity you can achieve is based on Shannon limit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon%E2%80%93Hartley_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon%E2%80%93Hartley_theore... it's the classic engineering trade off, better propagation vs. more capacity. that is why the carriers want low, medium and high band in their inventory, low is considered < 1Ghz, medium is considered 1Ghz - 10Ghz, high is > 10Ghz, roughly speaking
    - powerapple 5y ago
      probably make sense in rural areas, fewer users, larger area.
- selectodude 5y ago
kingcharles 5y ago
Not just rural. I'm in downtown Chicago and the cheapest wired connection I can get to my home is $71,000 install and $800/month from Comcast. Finally got T-Mobile Home Internet (5G). Shipped the access point overnight to me. Plugged in. 600Mbps peak. Never seen a slowdown that affects my heavyweight Net use (e.g. streaming HD).
- selectodude 5y ago
  lol what part of downtown Chicago is that per chance? Comcast is required by law to serve every household in their franchise area so I’m extremely curious.
  - cozzyd 5y ago
    Yeah ... I think I have 3 choices for gigabit internet in my building, and it's probably one of the smallest unit count buildings in the loop.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

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.