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The Disappointment of 5G
- thyrsus 3y agoMeanwhile, in this suburb of a modest city, I'm wondering if I'll ever see more than one bar of LTE. Thank goodness for Wi-Fi calling.
- Zealotux 3y ago>5G would enable doctors to perform surgery remotely from across the country I never, ever understood that argument; I simply can't imagine a hospital relying on a cellular network for such sensitive work.
- DeathArrow 3y ago> I never, ever understood that argument; I simply can't imagine a hospital relying on a cellular network for such sensitive work. Maybe the argument was more for government officials, not for people like you.
- blueflow 3y agoWhat does this tell us about government officials?
- OJFord 3y agoThat the majority are career politicians, not domain experts.
- soco 3y agoI expect those politicians should have advisory staff exactly for handling such cases, as there's never a domain expert in the lead (and there are different opinions also in every field). Now if that advisory works as expected, that's another story - maybe the politicians won't ask, maybe the advisors would represent some interests, maybe...
- hospitalhusband 3y agoThat they deal exclusively in propaganda, with no regard to the real world.
- throwawaylinux 3y agoNo, we already knew that.
- kotatsuyaki 3y agoNot for surgery per se (which is too high of a risk), but in my country people did manage to find a similar, reasonable use case. They equipped ambulances with high-res cameras and cellular network for senior medical technicians in hospitals to give advices to medical technicians on the ambulance in real-time, which seems like a nice addition.
- agumonkey 3y agoVery nice ps: reminds me that emergency team came with a broken 2G portable EKG that couldn't transmit data to the cardiologist when my mother had a spasm.. driver told me that the device was around 10000 euros, it was quite shocking.
- andrepd 3y ago4G can comfortably stream 1080p video with low latency. What does 5G being to this scenario?
- kotatsuyaki 3y agoNothing really special for 5G. The governmental bodies (and the tech firms involved) use the term "5G" just to gain visibility. I did see some of those ambulances running multiple streams from different perspectives, though. Is the bandwidth of 4G networks capable of doing that?
- richij 3y agoWider bands, lower latency, less congestion, the promise of switching off legacy in the future (with SA)
- nerfbatplz 3y agoNetwork slicing allows critical bandwidth usage to be prioritized absolutely. Can’t do that with LTE. Not to mention the sheer density of connections that can be serviced by a 5G radio over an LTE radio.
- nonethewiser 3y agoAnd couldn’t they already do it over the internet? Presumably they mean doctors can have an internet connection in remote places. But that’s not the same as being far from their patient.
- lupire 3y agoNot in remote unwired terrain. Examples for "wireless" (roadless) transport of physical packets https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipline_(drone_delivery_company)#:~:text=The%20company's%20drones%20deliver%20whole,of%20Kigali%20use%20Zipline%20drones https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipline_(drone_delivery_comp....
- dx034 3y agoIn remote areas, Starlink is probably a better bet than 5G to allow for low latency, high bandwidth use cases.
- hgsgm 3y agoThis arbitrary web site disagrees: 25ms vs 1ms latency. https://history-computer.com/starlink-vs-5g-which-is-better https://history-computer.com/starlink-vs-5g-which-is-better
- dx034 3y agobut which really remote area gives you 5G with 1ms latency? If it's worth to have that infrastructure you might as well have fiber at home.
- andrepd 3y agoIt's not an argument, it's marketing to non-techies. Put it simply you have to sell more phones than you did last year (selling less, or even the same amount, isn't enough). If you don't have features to justify that (which you don't, as the very fast smartphone evolution has mostly stagnated), you make them up. 5G being one of them.
- orev 3y agoBecause it’s not a real argument, it’s marketing fluff. “Oh, look how futuristic it is! If you (the government) approve all our demands for reduced regulation and subsidize our installation costs, you’ll get re-elected by your people who now live like the Jetsons!” They’ve been saying the same exact thing since cellular data was starting to be deployed 30 years ago. Search for the AT&T “you will” campaign from the 90s to see.
- reportgunner 3y agoLooking back I realized it felt similar hearing about 5G all the time just as it feels hearing about AI now.
- moritonal 3y agoOdd take, the 5G hype was talking about devices that _might_ exist in the future and _might_ solve problems. I have used AI (or ML at least) 4 times today to solve problems. One was hype and I might use, the other is in my hands and real.
- reportgunner 3y agoThere were people like you telling me how great 5G is and showing me a video of gigabit speed speedtest on their phone. Perhaps you talk about non-pop AI/ML - I mean GPT, LLMs and chatbots.
- moritonal 3y agoThat's a fair point, my apologies. I meant more in the sense that I have 5G on my phone, but don't use it because its not very great. Meanwhile I have CoPilot, use ChatGPT at work and am integrating Azure ML currently in side-projects. There is just so much material value I am getting today from AI which makes comparison to faster Internet moot.
- Nullabillity 3y agoWhat problems? Did it actually solve them, or just convince you that it did?
- qwertyuiop_ 3y ago5G and Metaverse are closely linked in hype.
- DeathArrow 3y agoIn my city 5G at the current provider is almost useless since it covers only the city center. At least, my 5G plan also allows using 4G.
- dale_glass 3y agoIt's a bit of a myth of the modern age that desire is unlimited. I think this is wrong. At some point our desire can be sated. Eg, I'm pretty sure Bill Gates or Elon Musk don't buy the newest, latest phone that comes out every single time. Because at some point you find something that works well enough, and just thinking of using something else involves effort. Even if V2 is theoretically faster or has more RAM, maybe you have no need for that yet. As tech improves, this happens more and more often. Back in the time of 4MB RAM, memory was an ever constant worry and constraint. Today I'm at the point where I only think about RAM or disk space is when something goes nuts and fills up the available space, otherwise it's just not an issue, and I just don't think of upgrading. I think 5G is pretty much there. After having smooth, quality playback on youtube on my phone, my needs are fully sated. There's just nothing I need that requires downloading stuff to my phone any faster, and in fact it's been a long time since I last thought about how quickly my phone downloads stuff.
- martinald 3y agoUntil 5G gets congested though. You wouldn't notice the difference between a uncongested LTE site with say 3CA, and a 5G site. The reason 5G feels good is that it isn't as congested (yet), unlike LTE.
- aziaziazi 3y agoSupporting the economic growth needs a country to produce and people to consume (= “buy new”, not “use existing”). When you’re stating you’ve got enough power and possibilities with the state of the art to be happy, you’re restraining your country GDP. Would you favor your own happiness instead of economic growth ? :)
- OJFord 3y ago> Eg, I'm pretty sure Bill Gates or Elon Musk don't buy the newest, latest phone that comes out every single time. Because at some point you find something that works well enough, and just thinking of using something else involves effort. Even if V2 is theoretically faster or has more RAM, maybe you have no need for that yet. I don't think you have to look to billionaires for that - surely for the majority of HN users what we spend and how often we spend it on a phone isn't limited by what we can afford? I've been using the same ~£150 phone for I think 4-5 years - I could have afforded however many top-spec iPhones or Pixels or whatever came out in that time, but I don't play games on my phone or do anything intensive that requires it, I just need to be able to message people and browse the web basically.
- FollowingTheDao 3y agoAll the BS hype about 5G was a red flag for me. They were always showing how doctors could operate on people in far away places (never mentioning the fact that the people in the far away places probably have no health care) and it is also all supposed to lead to everything from energy efficiency to higher efficiency. But all I get is a higher phone bill and no option to opt out of a 5G plan even though I turn it off on my phone. And what did we probably really get? More surveillance. You do know, don't you, that these mmWave can pinpoint you and your activity with an ever increasing exactness that should concern all of us. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8804831 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8804831 https://www.hindawi.com/journals/js/2021/6657709/ https://www.hindawi.com/journals/js/2021/6657709/ https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8645553 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8645553 https://www.fastcompany.com/90314058/5g-means-youll-have-to-say-goodbye-to-your-location-privacy https://www.fastcompany.com/90314058/5g-means-youll-have-to-...
- ridgered4 3y agoI sometimes wonder if the dumber 5G conspiracies were seeded as part of a psyops campaign to paint anyone negative of 5G as a fringe lunatic.
- FollowingTheDao 3y agoI agree. What I said is completely valid and I am being DV'd. And the minute I start talking about just the possibility that 5G could be harmful or used against us people think I believe that they also have nanobots in vaccines. If someone wants to criticize the idea that 5G could be used for greater intelligence gathering please have at it. Otherwise, your DVs just make me more paranoid.
- scarface74 3y agoPhones have had GPS since the 2G era. 5G is the least of your problem.
- FollowingTheDao 3y ago
- martinald 3y agoIgnoring all the hype and BS, all the cell infrastructure really comes down to a battle between user bandwidth needs and available spectrum (multiplied by spectral efficiency and density of towers). Get this wrong and customer service tanks as cell sites get congestied. There are virtually no new applications enabled IMO with 5G speeds vs LTE speeds/latency, assuming they are both not congested. 100mbit/sec LTE with 20-30ms latency is fine for nearly everything; gigabit with 5ms latency on 5G doesn't really change much, at least for the next few years. 5G NR (the access layer of 5G) isn't hugely more spectrum efficient than LTE on a bitz/hz basis, at least on a downstream basis where the most demand is (upstream is really important too though, especially for TCP, I'm not discounting that). [1]. We are getting diminishing returns on spectrum efficiency. Which means more and more spectrum required to keep up with demands, which is really what 5G enables (more channel bonding, much wider channels). However, we are totally running out of spectrum to allocate to mobile services. The spectrum that is available in large quantities is extremely high frequency and can't really penetrate walls (it will even struggle with rain). So long term the only thing that carriers can do is densify their cell sites, which is extremely expensive from a capex perspective. Some carriers have realised this, some haven't (or don't have the funds to do it). In the UK 3UK is doing it; with thousands of planning applications to add new sites (with huge NIMBY backlash everywhere). 1: https://www.5g-networks.net/5g-technology/spectral-efficiency-5g-nr-and-4g-lte-compared/ https://www.5g-networks.net/5g-technology/spectral-efficienc...
- TheLoafOfBread 3y agoI agree with that. 5G is overhyped, probably due to the fact that sales guys were seeing speeds up to XY GB/s, but forget to mention that it is working only on wideband (mmWave) part of 5G, which might come later, but maybe never at all. So people either have "5G" which is just a marginally better LTE working on same frequencies as 3G used to or people have 5G mmWave, which works only when they are standing at one spot of a street and in a very specific body position. The moment when there is a wall, glass, tree or a even a mist, 5G mmWave does not work. 5G is disappointment, because it was senselessly overhyped yet its overall usability for end user is not much different from 4G.
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- darthrupert 3y ago5G gave me an incredible, almost magical, connection for in my home that's located 30km from the nearest city. On a good day, I'm getting 600/50Mbps with ~20ms latencies which is about 10-100 times better than the previous connection was giving me. It made my family's life possible in the lockdown times of Covid-19. Fiber will be soon available here, though, and I'll be replacing 5G with it, to get a more stable, less energy-hungry connection that is less tied to chinese suppliers of networking hardware and software. edit perhaps what I have is only some ultimate final form of 4G, I don't know nor care really.
- phoboslab 3y agoIn Germany you can pay 35€/mo for 5GB of data traffic (t-mobile) and then enjoy the bandwidth of 5G for a full 40 seconds. It's a total joke.
- secondcoming 3y agoThat's a problem with German Telcos, not 5G as a technology
- krisknez 3y agoWhy is Germany so expensive?
- riogordo2go 3y agoNot only expensive, the coverage is spotty too. Driving cross country, even along major highways often results in many dead spots.
- rsynnott 3y agoIt's _really_ hard to come up with a coherent theory of European telecom pricing; it is just all over the place. For instance, Ireland is more expensive than the UK thing... So it's a density thing, right? Not so fast; Germany (denser than Ireland) is also more expensive than Ireland... There are some general _trends_, but big exceptions to all of them.
- fomine3 3y agoInteresting quote: > The prevalent means of connecting to the Internet in Germany is DSL, introduced by Deutsche Telekom in 1999. Other technologies such as Cable, FTTH and FTTB (fiber), Satellite, UMTS/HSDPA (mobile) and LTE are available as alternatives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_Germany
- meinheld111 3y agoIt’s not anymore. For 30-50€ you can get more or less unlimited data plans on all three networks
- daneel_w 3y agoIt's curious how telcos' incessant blabbering about 5G ended up getting so deep into people's heads that they began thinking it was something that would make every interaction on their smartphones instantaneous. 5G was never about the individual user. It was always about the grid; the ability to provide expected bandwidth/connectivity to more users at the same time.
- nerfbatplz 3y agoFinally someone who understands. The benefits of 5G have nothing to do with your cellphone service and everything to do with enabling connected infrastructure that could not be done with LTE.
- OJFord 3y agoIt reminds me of 3G - at least in the UK, the rollout/marketing of it seemed synonymous with video calling.
- daneel_w 3y agoSame marketing style played out in Sweden. Endless advertisements showing manically laughing people overcome by joy from doing video calls on flip-phones without cameras.
- MichaelZuo 3y agoThis sounds a bit too absurd, do you have a link to an example video?
- iamben 3y agoRolling backwards slightly, here's a good one for "Internet on your phone" I remember from about the year 2000: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkvNW3do-9g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkvNW3do-9g I did my dissertation project in WAP. This ad grossly oversold the concept of "Internet on your phone" (which properly kicked off in a way that the 'regular person' would embrace the UK around 2007, I think). The 'future' is always mis-sold.
- NDizzle 3y agoI for one am enjoying 500 mbit service at my rural home for $30/month with T-Mobile 5g home internet.
- yawnxyz 3y agoI’m in Sydney and the 5G is pretty good. Definitely better than or at least similar to the terrible internet options Verizon and other providers ever had back in the US (ignoring FIOS if you’re lucky enough to get it.
- secondcoming 3y ago5G has been great for me (UK), although I am fortunate enough to be close to a mast. - at the time I moved to it, it gave higher speeds than fibre - I have a 30-day rolling contract instead of a year-long one - It's cheaper than fibre - No data limits - I can take it with me if I move The only thing it's not great for is gaming. Also, the only home routers you easily get are Chinese. The Nokia LastMile seems to be invitation-only.
- hitchdev 3y agoI believed this would apply to me too but it ended up slower than 4g. Modems also appear to range from £250-£900 on amazon.
- krisknez 3y agoI have good experience with 5G. The speeds are great. On 4G and 4G+ I've been getting speeds of 20-30mbps even though ISP's were advertising 200+mbps speeds (theoretical maximums) On 5G I easily get 100+mbps, majority of times around 500mbps. Where I live we get unlimited usage 5G for around $25-30
- rhn_mk1 3y agoFrom the article: The introduction of the new spectrum has relieved the pressure on overloaded cell sites, and we’ve seen cellular speeds rise significantly.
- eli 3y ago> No wireless technology has been a bigger flop than 5G when comparing the hype to the eventual reality. Well that’s obviously not true. I was at the launch event for WiMAX which had huge hype and now you’ve probably never heard of it. 5G actually exists and works. In my home (admittedly near a tower) it’s faster than my gigabit Fios over wifi.
- soco 3y agoMaybe it was a flop as seen by people who expected it to make them grow a third arm or get mind-controlled by the secret government. That plan flopped greatly. /s
- kjellsbells 3y agoIronically, T-mobile is sitting pretty for 5G spectrum because the acquisition of Sprint gave them a boatload of spectrum that Sprint in turn got when they acquired Clearwire...who acquired the spectrum for WiMax. Funny how life turns out.
- lupire 3y agoI don't think OP is wrong, but it more of a rambling comment than an article. To understand what's going on, we need equivalent of table of 5G spec features, with columns for: * what use case the feature enables for users * how widely the feature is implemented, * what extra cost it would could incur to include the feature in a device or connection. The article says that "extra speed is wasted" but also says that it "enables watching video" (and I presume sending video too). That's a huge win, isn't it? OP also forgot to mention, in the complaint about 8G, that we already have Fake G in "4G LTE" which isn't full 4G.
- malshe 3y agoI had the same feeling after reading the article. I think the problem is in writing. For example, consider these two lines: Cellular customers are generally pleased that speeds have increased since this means stronger coverage indoors and in outdoor dead spots. But surveys have shown that only a minuscule percentage of people are willing to pay more for faster cellular speeds. So people are generally happy because of the faster speeds of 5G, which is a statement about the technology. The next line is about its affordability, which does not negate the fact that people are happy about the high speeds. That "But" in the second line threw me off a bit.
- quonn 3y agoIt was the same with the initial rollout of 3G. There were all kind of crazy ideas for what this would enable, strange form factors of phones and so on. It usually takes a decade and turns out more boring, but in the end it _will be_ a better network. Nobody wants to go back to EDGE and many application now do rely on robust LTE.
- agapon 3y agoYeah, because it was before smartphones (phones having "normal" internet access, full featured browsers and all other things being done on top of that). A lot of effort was spent on things like Broadcast and Multicast Service (BCMCS), etc back then.
- darealmistered 3y agoIMHO - from business perspective 5G is just a feature gate to extract more value out of consumers through price discrimination. Both from oem and carrier perspective
- totetsu 3y ago5G is being rolled out little by little. If it's disappointing, its because it's not actually all delivered yet. It also has benefits that go beyond just Download speeds, like much better power efficiency.
- est 3y ago5G is really rebranded 4G LTE Advanced +++++++++++ and a plot twist with Chinese teleco vendors.
- KomoD 3y agoI find 5G to be pointless personally, the speeds and latency I get on 4G is already good enough, 166mbps down, 30mbps up, all the operators here cap the speeds of 5G or just don't offer it unless you pay for unlimited data
- tuyiown 3y agoEfficiency improvements are good for everyone, even if you don't see it on your bill.
- Saris 3y agoIt's pretty funny how T-Mobile has rolled out 5G in my small town (with a single cell tower), but have not bothered to upgrade the connection to the tower so we still only get about 2mbps on a good day. Even better is the local ISP offers 10gbps fiber service and has lines directly next to the tower, but the cell tower doesn't use that, and instead has some long range microwave backhaul. I always wonder what the point of spending the money to upgrade the tower to 5G was.
- efields 3y agoIf tech hype is more or less marketing + effective PR (tons of articles and blog post written about said tech), I've felt this author's sentiment toward the hype viz. reality of 5G with AR/VR, blockchain, and the current wave of AI as well. So much of the 2010's internet UX is fully baked. We can communicate with voice, audio and video with the world from anywhere on cheap pocket devices. It would be harder to make this any more frictionless without some sort of new HCI paradigm. We've got wireless comms going wherever it made commercial sense, "enabling" workers to get directives and do business from their morning commutes. You can shop from the toilet. You can also make original music in the palm of your hand for the cost of a used iPhone. What I'm getting at is the digital revolution is here if not already over. We're in our cyberpunk future already, but surprise humans don't need too much to be absolutely sated if not overwhelmed by technology and I don't think they're itching for more of it. The business of selling tech right now is hard because so many of the jobs are _done_. All that you can do is generate hype. I don't doubt I'm missing some of the forest through the hype trees here, but tech in the 2020's has a lot to prove to me.
- tuatoru 3y ago5G was really all about software-defined cell sites, reconfigurable remotely. It was designed to save costs for network operators. Of course they couldn't market that: customers would expect cheaper plans. Hence the hype cycle.
- t43562 3y agoIn the UK whenever I go to some public event - e.g. some of the anti-Brexit marches or something like the Fully Charged EV show or any other big event I start to have trouble connecting and when I am able to move away from the crowd far enough I can use my phone again. This is dangerous - when you're in a crowd you need your phone more to be able to find out what's happening and where your friends or family are if you get separated. So if 5G started to fix that I'd say it was an excellent thing.
- ddol 3y agoI used to have connectivity and data speed issues at music festivals and large conventions, but both permanent infrastructure at convention centres and temporary towers at parks used for festivals have mitigated this (in my experience). In both cases the event is planned many months in advance, and there are incentives for both event organisers and telcos to ensure phone subscribers have a good experience (avoids “reception was terrible at Glastonbury” or “I couldn’t make any calls on Vodafone, I should switch network”). But protests typically lack the timeframe, and (I expect) a sympathetic ear from the telcos. Even if the timeframe is know well in advance, gaining permits to stand up towers (and associated labour, equipment rental) costs money, and spending the money signals implicit support for the cause. While load sharing among neighbouring towers could alleviate minor increases in traffic (maybe 2x) I can’t see the networks over provisioning the radio and back haul for permanent infrastructure to support a possible 10x surge and then let it sit 90% idle. Dedicated fiber leased lines are expensive. Maybe protests should instead be organised near convention centres which already have capacity for surge traffic?
- t43562 3y agoProtests are organised to do what they have to do and they're not done with oodles of cash. The marches had hundreds of thousands of people in them stretching over a long distance. It wasn't even possible to fit in the final destination. In fact my local Turkish society shindig for April 23 had connection problems despite only having 500 people in a hall and those people are collecting for earthquake victims so there's no money for luxuries. If, however, 5G helped make this problem go away then hurray. It would be worth it.
- mensetmanusman 3y agoMy phone has measured 2 gbps in very rare locations on earth. As they say, the future is now but it is sparsely distributed. 5G has only arrived in the minds of marketers.
- GuB-42 3y ago> The introduction of the new spectrum has relieved the pressure on overloaded cell sites That's all I expected from 5G. 4G is more than good enough for what I do with it, in fact, I can easily watch HD video and burn through my data plan at 3G (H+) speeds, I don't really need more. The only thing is that I assume great signal and no congestion, which is far from what we get in practice. The only reason I want 5G, and even 4G is that I can get the equivalent of full 3G speed in places where I couldn't before. Hopefully, it will also mean bigger data plans at an equivalent price with the extra bandwidth operators get.
- thworp 3y agoDoes anyone here have any hands-on experience and can tell me if the claimed 5ms latency for 5G is anyhwere close to reality? As in, can it reach the 5ms only if you're next to the tower, are they not including processing time at the tower and modem etc.
- runlaszlorun 3y agoI used get high enough speeds from Tmobile that I didn’t bother with home internet. Then again, I was literally living across the street from the AT&T world hq in Dallas. Coincedence? Then again, that was only until I hit my GB cap.
- harry105 3y agoI don't know how it is in other countries. But in congested areas like London my girlfriend often gets faster speeds than me on her iphone 11 switching to 3G than I do on 5G.
- helf 3y ago[dead]
- chankstein38 3y agoSpeeds don't matter when your data caps are ridiculously low. Can't use 5G for anything without zapping that up. The other half of the equation is now in rural areas I notice way less coverage area. They seem to have shut off 4G towers in favor of "5G" and now there are several places I used to get strong 4G coverage that I get 1 bar strength of 5G that is basically non-functional. In those areas my phone shows connected but won't load anything. One of the main ones I notice it is within my local walmart. Used to have full 4G LTE there but now that 5G is "available" I can barely load websites while inside. 5G wasn't worth the hype.
- formvoltron 3y agofor about 2 days I was using it in 5G, thinking... this is cool. Then my phone started to get very hot and shut itself down. Battery life became ridiculously bad. This was on a pixel 6a. back on 4g and not really noticing any difference.
- systemtest 3y agoI was on 3G until a couple of years ago, currently on 4G. Limited to 14 megabit per second (but no datacap). 3G to 4G was a big step. But I don't have a need for 5G. I guess more people are in that position.
- miohtama 3y agoWe can crank it up all the way 11G.
- causi 3y agoThe way 5G is implemented by carriers/devices is such garbage. Unless I disable 5G entirely, my phone will refuse to switch to 4G even when 5G is so weak my speed is under 2mbit and 4G is testing at 45+mbit. It even takes over a minute of no connection at all before it will connect to 4G.
- robdar 3y agoAs someone in Canada the only thing 5G lets me do is use up my incredibly expensive bandwidth limit in seconds instead of minutes.
- nologic01 3y ago> The big winner from the marketing hype has been the handset manufacturers, which have convinced customers that they must have 5G phones - without really telling them why Its is a fact that much of recent tech development has been skewed by the explosion of mobile. It also feels as if this era is finally saturating and that might not be a bad thing. Mobile computing is obviously an amazing new dimension but it is also intrinsically a dumbed-down version of what fixed lines and more serious hardware (desktops etc) can offer. Visions of a what a good digital society looks like vary, but resilient, high capacity fiber networks combined with a shift to more client-heavy computing would my preference. Imagine upgrading homes to be real digital hubs (e.g. supporting self-hosted clouds) offering a stark alternative to the remote mega datacenter plus puny touch screens.
- pirate787 3y agoCounter point: 5G has been the most important technological innovation for my family in a decade. We live in the US but our home had no unmetered broadband access prior to 5G rollout. (No DSL (for BS "technical line reasons) and no StarLink or cable video)
- lordfrito 3y agoI think one of the biggest improvement points of 5G, which most people don't notice, is that it improves the number of devices that can connect to the local cell tower. With 4G, you get 100k device connections per 1 sq kilometer. With 5G, this number becomes 1 million connections per square kilometer. This is a very big deal if you are in a heavily congested area (big cities, major league sporting events). Also a very big deal to high priority services (like police radios, emergency services, etc), as it goes a long way to ensuring connections are available. Also goes a long way to delivering on the promise of IoT... with 1 million connections a lot more things become possible. It's more of an evolutionary tech, than revolutionary. Then again, 5G means means 5th generation... implying the evolutionary process. The average user won't notice it, but its still important nonetheless.
- CivBase 3y ago5G is definitely a cool tech. What's not cool is how carriers trick people into thinking they're using "5G" (or even "6G") just because their phone's cellular data connection is operating on the 5G spectrum. What's also not cool is how carriers market their 5G services with claims of speeds that a normal user will never achieve. I've never seen a carrier market 5G as a solution for maintaining connections in congested areas, even though that realistically seems to be the big ticket item.
- lordfrito 3y agoSee my other comment here, this solves carrier problems not so much consumer problems. Yeah it's a trick. Marketing being what it is, it's hard to sell it any other way, they have to fallback on "buy this new shiny thing".
- bradgessler 3y agoThis perfectly illustrates why 5G is a disappointment for consumers—increasing the number of devices each tower can support is a carrier problem, not a customer problem. I've never in my life heard somebody on 4G LTE say, "Eugh, my connection is too slow!". It's always "fast enough" to browse the web at reasonable speeds, watch videos, or have an OK-quality FaceTime call.
- _ph_ 3y agoI never bought into most of the hype and sci-fi applications pitched for 5G, but from my (German) perspective, 5G has delivered a lot. For me it mostly behaves close to WIFI performance. 4G often had way worse latency and the data speed has gone up too. On top of that, contracts with reasonable amount of data (50G/month in my case) have become available. This is quite some benefit. 5G basically enables me to treat mobile data like I used to use land line based data.
- grishka 3y agoIt's interesting that the hypeness of 5G varies greatly depending on the country. In the US, where carriers have a say in what phones people use on their networks, the 5G hype seems to have been through the roof. In UAE where I visit sometimes, both carriers did buy some billboards to advertise their 5G service, and that's it. I have no idea what it's like because I don't have a compatible phone. In Russia though, where I live most of the time, 5G has never launched and none of the four carriers have any plans to launch it (especially now with all those sanctions). Everyone seems fine with LTE.
- latchkey 3y ago> Everyone seems fine with LTE. Do they have a choice otherwise though?
- grishka 3y agoWi-Fi? I meant that people rarely, if ever, complain about it. It's mobile data. You use it for apps and to browse the web. That's it. 3G was already fast enough for this purpose. I say that as someone who was relatively late to get an LTE-capable phone. It's also a common understanding that cell towers have limited capacity and if there are many people in one place, your data connection might not work.
- grumpy_coder 3y agoThe most depressing part of it for me was all the people pushing the lies and getting a big bonus/promoted. There has been zero downside for them. We really need government to get involved and stop the blatant fraud in marketing.
- jurschreuder 3y ago5g is a name for a collection of hundreds of improvements to the cellular network I have been told, yes by people wanting us to make applications where you needed low latency for marketing purpose. In the end they made something that bragged about low latency that actually did not even need low latency. They know themselves there is no such thing as "5g" but try to explain that to the public. They said the low latency and the high bandwidth is also possible with 4g but they're just upgrading a lot of stuff. I don't think they're selling a lie, they're just upgrading a network and have some breaking changes.
- pie_flavor 3y ago> It seems like the industry has embarked on subdividing what was originally considered as 5G spectrum into small chunks so that the carriers roll out subsequent generations of 6G, 7G, and 8G—all of which were supposedly part of the original 5G revolution. 4G proved too hard, so the industry instead adopted what they called 4G Long Term Evolution, or LTE for short, where they'd start with a minor improvement over 3G and keep improving over time. Then they forgot to improve over time. 5G was transparently just 4G again. Then it proved too hard, so etc etc. Sigh
- ksec 3y agoWas it really the carrier generating those hype? My biggest problem is Tech / Media / people who believed in those hype and continue to spread it, plenty of them on HN saying "true" 5G is mmWave. Or 5G is all about capacity ( that was my tagline ) which they used but then suggest the capacity is all because of mmWave ( no it is not ). And people became disappointed because mmWave never came.
- speedbird 3y agoDon’t know about 5G, haven’t experienced a personal need for it, but in contrast to the position taken in the articles the 3G to 4G upgrade has been huge where it’s reliably available. Can now easily web conf while commuting, whereas with 3G would be waiting tens of seconds for web pages to load.
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- lmpdev 3y agoThe worst thing the Australian government has done in recent years is backflip on the onus being on them to connect you to fibre via their National Broadband Network (NBN) programme, now the onus is on the consumer to spend thousands to connect to 5G instead. I've been doing up my mother's connection 25 mins away from a city CBD (I live in another state). I have had to purchase a $1,000 5G modem, 2x2 MIMO directional antennae, rewired the property myself with Cat6 and an old Cisco switch and waps. I got a 22-26x increase in download off peak and 30x increase in upload (up to about 600-700mb/s off peak) Would've been wonderful if they just gave them the fibre they promised, though Fixed wireless 5G is definitely faster but the medium's line of sight requirement means I'd really prefer slow 250mb/s fibre to volatile 100-750mb/s 5G I've worked out I could hit about 2.5-3gb/s if I went 4x4 MIMO with a 10m mast and aimed it perfectly (tower is 300m away) - but there's no way to control who else is connected and taking the bandwidth - so I'm not investing anymore in her property
- lmpdev 3y agoKeep in mind Americans reading this that in Australia we have more and different 5G bands to you so YMMV if you reconstructed this setup