5 ms·

Ignoring all the hype and BS, all the cell infrastructure really comes down to a battle between user bandwidth needs and available spectrum (multiplied by spect

Ignoring 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 ago
I 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.
- martinald 3y ago
  Not really - the sub 6GHz frequencies are often different and in many countries are significantly wider than the LTE ones. Eg 3UK has 120MHz of spectrum in the 3.6GHz-4GHz band. I think the absolute max LTE configuration in the UK was EE with 90MHz (but on 5CA, Bands 1+3+3+7+7). There is a lot more new spectrum on 5G. It is a major improvement for sure - not just totally marketing nonsense, but it's not the world changing impact that the carriers pushed.
WithinReason 3y ago
> There are virtually no new applications enabled IMO with 5G speeds vs LTE speeds/latency You can reasonably replace your home internet with 5G
- fsh 3y ago
  You could do that with LTE a decade ago. It is more than fast enough for 4K video streaming, and typical latencies are below 50 ms. Most users would not notice any difference between LTE and 5G.
  - shalmanese 3y ago
    It’s not about the speed, it’s about data limits. LTE had fairly restrictive data caps due to congestion constraints whereas more mature 5G deployment will allow for reasonable data caps and still acceptable service for enough people.
    - olabyne 3y ago
      In the US maybe. In Europe, at least here in France, there is plenty of 4G plan costing 25€-30 for 250Gb, 300Gb or even no limit
    - richij 3y ago
      Nope. Less than $20/month gets me unlimited 80/30 4G/LTE using a single 15 MHz band. If I got a 5G/NR modem, I could get unlimited 200/30 for the same price.
    - ska 3y ago
      Part of the parents point is that is isn’t true in general. The overall efficiency isn’t much better , so service level basically comes down to how you chop up available bandwidth. So if you happen to live somewhere with oversubscribed LTE and get in on a new 5G - it’s seems great. But a) it’s very locatiin dependeny and b) it probably won’t last
  - Crosseye_Jack 3y ago
    As someone who just went though a 3 month battle is one of the major ISP's in the UK to get a family members property connected I can suggest 1 big thing that many customers will notice a differnce between LTE and 5G. Gaming. First games are getting huge, so the extra speed is always a bonus for getting the title downloaded faster. At the family members property inquestion their old fixed line boardband connection was 20meg (That was the fastest they could get on VDSL2 because of line quality and distance to the street cab - no G.Fast and no current plans for Openreach fibre nor OFNL), with two teenage kids in the house with current gen consoles each and the parents also wanting to stream on demand video and on of the parents working from home a few days a week, their connection would get overwhelmed all the time. "Thankfully", their street is on the Virgin Media network however its only recently been added to the network and the property has a shared drive so the address was coming up as that VM was not avalable at the address even though there was a clear run of grass from the cable duct to the house. 3 months later we finally got VM to connect the house and now they have 500meg (did a cost benifit on the speed needed and opted for 500 over a gig cause for they also inisted on a phone line & calls, which was gonna add another £25 p/m on the bill for a gig and they should be fine with 500 - the kids are not contrubiting to the cost) and the kids love it and the parents like that the kids are not complaining about the net speed any more. 5G is rolling out in their area (Currently marked as avalable outdoors, weak indoors which I validated with a site visit), but had that been avaliable (and not over subscribed) it would have been a viable Home Boardband alt to their current fixed line providers as it would have provided the speeds the family required, a low latency so the kids can't complain while playing online and decent video calling for the WFM parent and saved the hassle of getting the property connected to the network (which I kind of expect to happen again once OpenReach finally plan the fibre build for their street, the current copper phone lines are underground not on telegraph poles and I'm not sure of the quality of the duct work that line runs though so it might be a PITA to get OpenReach - prob the reason the area is currently not on the plans) and would be cheaper per month than Virgin Media. I used to use LTE for my home boardband for a while (was in temp accommodation helping with a family illness, landlord didn't want me putting in a fixed line and no 5G at the time), the speed was fine for me alone (about 100meg iirc, I just had to wait for big downloads), the kicker was the 100ms+ latency I was getting on LTE, which was a PITA esp playing first person shooters online. (EDIT: That and also being CGNAT'ed - not the end of the world, but gaming still preferes not being CGNAT'ed - but the shift to IPv6 _should_ fix that.) If all you can get is LTE its "ok", but I wouldn't recommend it if you have alt's such as 5G or (decent) fixedline.
pokstad 3y ago
Don’t forget backhaul bandwidth. All of the 5G cell sites need their backhauls upgraded to realize that the spectrum can support.
- martinald 3y ago
  In the UK at least, most backhaul is fibre, and probably 10gigE already given LTE can push way more than 1gig with multiple sectors. But yes, some more remote sites may need upgraded.
mgrund 3y ago
> There are virtually no new applications enabled IMO with 5G speeds vs LTE speeds/latency, assuming they are both not congested. I think 5G latency requirements are currently very academically driven without much practical validation, see e.g. Tactile Internet.
- gsich 3y ago
  Latency is also "only" improved to and from a tower, the rest stays the same.
  - mgrund 3y ago
    Absolutely, this is a central subject of study in Tactile Internet from what I’ve heard; next-gen backhaul/WAN technology. It starts with first hop to support local Tactile Internet networks. Private, ultra low latency 5G LANs are already being used in e.g. some production facilities.
RC_ITR 3y ago
>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). This was something anyone could see from a mile away. Generations 1-4 were about multi-plexing signals on the same spectrum (1 was frequency channels, 2 was time channels, 3 started to include multiple simultaneous access via clever math, and 4G used orthogonal frequencies to really amp up the simultaneous access). Problem with 5G is that orthogonal frequencies are pretty much the best way we know how to multiplex, even over wires, so we had to look elsewhere for things like new frequency bands and multiple antennae, etc. These were never going to feel as impactful as the multiplexing changes did, but there was too much at stake for marketing departments, so they just plowed ahead with hype.
542458 3y ago
> 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. I'd say few new consumer applications (other than replacing home internet). In commercial applications like TV production being being able to pack 10x as much data into a connection at lower latency is interesting and enables some things that previously required complex/unreliable cellular bonding or wildly expensive satellite connections.
thomastjeffery 3y ago
> 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. This goes both ways: how can anyone possibly make (let alone sell) new applications when practically no consumer has a good enough connection to use them?
VagueMag 3y ago
> There are virtually no new applications enabled IMO with 5G speeds vs LTE speeds/latency, assuming they are both not congested. 5G will enable the sorts of edge computing needed for stuff like facial recognition. It's fundamentally a policing/military/counterinsurgency technology being laundered as consumer tech. https://twitter.com/2youngBadazz/status/1364621468999409666?t=FVoWM5o7B6_OtKuR1fNRcw&s=19 https://twitter.com/2youngBadazz/status/1364621468999409666?...

TheLoafOfBread 3y ago

I 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.

martinald 3y ago
Not really - the sub 6GHz frequencies are often different and in many countries are significantly wider than the LTE ones. Eg 3UK has 120MHz of spectrum in the 3.6GHz-4GHz band. I think the absolute max LTE configuration in the UK was EE with 90MHz (but on 5CA, Bands 1+3+3+7+7). There is a lot more new spectrum on 5G. It is a major improvement for sure - not just totally marketing nonsense, but it's not the world changing impact that the carriers pushed.

WithinReason 3y ago

> There are virtually no new applications enabled IMO with 5G speeds vs LTE speeds/latency You can reasonably replace your home internet with 5G

fsh 3y ago
You could do that with LTE a decade ago. It is more than fast enough for 4K video streaming, and typical latencies are below 50 ms. Most users would not notice any difference between LTE and 5G.
- shalmanese 3y ago
  It’s not about the speed, it’s about data limits. LTE had fairly restrictive data caps due to congestion constraints whereas more mature 5G deployment will allow for reasonable data caps and still acceptable service for enough people.
  - olabyne 3y ago
    In the US maybe. In Europe, at least here in France, there is plenty of 4G plan costing 25€-30 for 250Gb, 300Gb or even no limit
  - richij 3y ago
    Nope. Less than $20/month gets me unlimited 80/30 4G/LTE using a single 15 MHz band. If I got a 5G/NR modem, I could get unlimited 200/30 for the same price.
  - ska 3y ago
    Part of the parents point is that is isn’t true in general. The overall efficiency isn’t much better , so service level basically comes down to how you chop up available bandwidth. So if you happen to live somewhere with oversubscribed LTE and get in on a new 5G - it’s seems great. But a) it’s very locatiin dependeny and b) it probably won’t last
- Crosseye_Jack 3y ago
  As someone who just went though a 3 month battle is one of the major ISP's in the UK to get a family members property connected I can suggest 1 big thing that many customers will notice a differnce between LTE and 5G. Gaming. First games are getting huge, so the extra speed is always a bonus for getting the title downloaded faster. At the family members property inquestion their old fixed line boardband connection was 20meg (That was the fastest they could get on VDSL2 because of line quality and distance to the street cab - no G.Fast and no current plans for Openreach fibre nor OFNL), with two teenage kids in the house with current gen consoles each and the parents also wanting to stream on demand video and on of the parents working from home a few days a week, their connection would get overwhelmed all the time. "Thankfully", their street is on the Virgin Media network however its only recently been added to the network and the property has a shared drive so the address was coming up as that VM was not avalable at the address even though there was a clear run of grass from the cable duct to the house. 3 months later we finally got VM to connect the house and now they have 500meg (did a cost benifit on the speed needed and opted for 500 over a gig cause for they also inisted on a phone line & calls, which was gonna add another £25 p/m on the bill for a gig and they should be fine with 500 - the kids are not contrubiting to the cost) and the kids love it and the parents like that the kids are not complaining about the net speed any more. 5G is rolling out in their area (Currently marked as avalable outdoors, weak indoors which I validated with a site visit), but had that been avaliable (and not over subscribed) it would have been a viable Home Boardband alt to their current fixed line providers as it would have provided the speeds the family required, a low latency so the kids can't complain while playing online and decent video calling for the WFM parent and saved the hassle of getting the property connected to the network (which I kind of expect to happen again once OpenReach finally plan the fibre build for their street, the current copper phone lines are underground not on telegraph poles and I'm not sure of the quality of the duct work that line runs though so it might be a PITA to get OpenReach - prob the reason the area is currently not on the plans) and would be cheaper per month than Virgin Media. I used to use LTE for my home boardband for a while (was in temp accommodation helping with a family illness, landlord didn't want me putting in a fixed line and no 5G at the time), the speed was fine for me alone (about 100meg iirc, I just had to wait for big downloads), the kicker was the 100ms+ latency I was getting on LTE, which was a PITA esp playing first person shooters online. (EDIT: That and also being CGNAT'ed - not the end of the world, but gaming still preferes not being CGNAT'ed - but the shift to IPv6 _should_ fix that.) If all you can get is LTE its "ok", but I wouldn't recommend it if you have alt's such as 5G or (decent) fixedline.

pokstad 3y ago

Don’t forget backhaul bandwidth. All of the 5G cell sites need their backhauls upgraded to realize that the spectrum can support.

martinald 3y ago
In the UK at least, most backhaul is fibre, and probably 10gigE already given LTE can push way more than 1gig with multiple sectors. But yes, some more remote sites may need upgraded.

mgrund 3y ago

> There are virtually no new applications enabled IMO with 5G speeds vs LTE speeds/latency, assuming they are both not congested. I think 5G latency requirements are currently very academically driven without much practical validation, see e.g. Tactile Internet.

gsich 3y ago
Latency is also "only" improved to and from a tower, the rest stays the same.
- mgrund 3y ago
  Absolutely, this is a central subject of study in Tactile Internet from what I’ve heard; next-gen backhaul/WAN technology. It starts with first hop to support local Tactile Internet networks. Private, ultra low latency 5G LANs are already being used in e.g. some production facilities.

RC_ITR 3y ago

>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). This was something anyone could see from a mile away. Generations 1-4 were about multi-plexing signals on the same spectrum (1 was frequency channels, 2 was time channels, 3 started to include multiple simultaneous access via clever math, and 4G used orthogonal frequencies to really amp up the simultaneous access). Problem with 5G is that orthogonal frequencies are pretty much the best way we know how to multiplex, even over wires, so we had to look elsewhere for things like new frequency bands and multiple antennae, etc. These were never going to feel as impactful as the multiplexing changes did, but there was too much at stake for marketing departments, so they just plowed ahead with hype.

542458 3y ago

> 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. I'd say few new consumer applications (other than replacing home internet). In commercial applications like TV production being being able to pack 10x as much data into a connection at lower latency is interesting and enables some things that previously required complex/unreliable cellular bonding or wildly expensive satellite connections.

thomastjeffery 3y ago

> 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. This goes both ways: how can anyone possibly make (let alone sell) new applications when practically no consumer has a good enough connection to use them?

VagueMag 3y ago

> There are virtually no new applications enabled IMO with 5G speeds vs LTE speeds/latency, assuming they are both not congested. 5G will enable the sorts of edge computing needed for stuff like facial recognition. It's fundamentally a policing/military/counterinsurgency technology being laundered as consumer tech. https://twitter.com/2youngBadazz/status/1364621468999409666?t=FVoWM5o7B6_OtKuR1fNRcw&s=19 https://twitter.com/2youngBadazz/status/1364621468999409666?...