10 ms·

> 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.
neurobama 3y ago
The GP comment highlights 5G as a mitigation for spectrum congestion. Driving wireless home Internet adoption seems like it'd make that problem worse, not better, where wired alternatives exist.
Yizahi 3y ago
The problem is fluctuations of the load on the tower and random signal outages which can happen at any time. Also in my experience LTE links sometimes drops when working for long periods on it, meaning I need to reconnect VPN and do other annoying actions. And that's not even starting on the problem of coverage. Especially in the apartment blocks with a lot of rebar in the walls. And 5G higher frequencies have even worse coverage that 4G. If I have a problem with Wifi inside my home I simply buy repeaters or wire a new AP with a cable. WIth cell network I can't do this. We are a long way from using cell network as a primary one (if alternative is available of course).
- meinheld111 3y ago
  > We are a long way from using cell network as a primary one I tend to agree from a technical pov. Otoh i know a lot of ppl who do just that and don’t even bother with landline/wifi. Connecting a gaming console via wifi to the phone with „unlimited data“ and downloading 100gb+ games is surprisingly common.
Gigachad 3y ago
No I can’t, it’s blocked by my walls. Even 4G drops down to about 10mbps inside with 150mbps outside.
youngtaff 3y ago
Yup, that's what I did while I was waiting for fibre to be installed I've got a 5G router that gives me 400Mbps download at around 30ms latency and have been working full-time over it for more than a year Was £50 / month for unlimited data on a two year plan (bit more than that now due to inflation)
izacus 3y ago
> You can reasonably replace your home internet with 5G Doing that at scale is an amazing way to drive 5G speeds and latency into the ground, making it worse than old cable connections.
- spixy 3y ago
  I thought 5G solves scalability issues (at least better than 4G)
  - izacus 3y ago
    There's no magic that will beat physics. 5G does very little here.
rootusrootus 3y ago
You can, but it's definitely better if you have an ultra wideband 5G close to your home. That's a pretty legitimate no-compromise replacement for typical cable internet service.
dboreham 3y ago
> replace your home internet with 5G Mr Shannon enters the chat..
wodenokoto 3y ago
For the past year my home internet was 4G …
helf 3y ago
[dead]
littlestymaar 3y ago
You can, in the same places where you could already replace it with LTE back then, and in remote place where you couldn't already, 5G isn't going to happen anyway.
MikeTheRocker 3y ago
I live in an older apartment complex that doesn't have the requisite connections to get wired internet from any mainstream provider in the area, so I have 5G home internet and it's quite good. No less reliable than wired was for me in the past, and I generally get speeds around 600 Gbps down/100 up. EDIT: Mbps, not Gbps
- 542458 3y ago
  > 600 Gbps down/100 up I think you meant Mbps :)
  - MikeTheRocker 3y ago
    Ah, you're right. My bad! Edited my original comment.
varelse 3y ago
[dead]
Analemma_ 3y ago
T-Mobile keeps sending me texts trying to get me to sign up for their 5G home internet. They're offering 50 Mbps down for $60/month. Xfinity gives me 200 megs down for the same price and lower latency, and when you're losing to Comcast, that's not a good sign.
- noahtallen 3y ago
  T-Mobile is cost effective in rural areas. They’ve done huge investment into rural 5G infrastructure in places like Ohio, which means homes which only get like 6mbps max from Century Link now have a real option for internet. The only competition is StarLink, which is way more expensive.
- bastawhiz 3y ago
  Comcast isn't the real competitor. Lots of folks are stuck on shitty ADSL because the hassle of getting cables in and run—especially as a renter—are too high. I've even heard of folks who can't get a decent enough signal from Comcast switching because the time and energy to replace the coax to their condo was too much.
  - elcritch 3y ago
    For me the temptation of 5g over cable are better contracts. The cable provider in my apartment already has cable setup in my home with a no-contract “WiFi” option. But to get faster speeds I have to pay $150 buck setup fee and sign up for a year long lease. Like, nope 5g’s probably good enough.

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.

neurobama 3y ago

The GP comment highlights 5G as a mitigation for spectrum congestion. Driving wireless home Internet adoption seems like it'd make that problem worse, not better, where wired alternatives exist.

Yizahi 3y ago

The problem is fluctuations of the load on the tower and random signal outages which can happen at any time. Also in my experience LTE links sometimes drops when working for long periods on it, meaning I need to reconnect VPN and do other annoying actions. And that's not even starting on the problem of coverage. Especially in the apartment blocks with a lot of rebar in the walls. And 5G higher frequencies have even worse coverage that 4G. If I have a problem with Wifi inside my home I simply buy repeaters or wire a new AP with a cable. WIth cell network I can't do this. We are a long way from using cell network as a primary one (if alternative is available of course).

meinheld111 3y ago
> We are a long way from using cell network as a primary one I tend to agree from a technical pov. Otoh i know a lot of ppl who do just that and don’t even bother with landline/wifi. Connecting a gaming console via wifi to the phone with „unlimited data“ and downloading 100gb+ games is surprisingly common.

Gigachad 3y ago

No I can’t, it’s blocked by my walls. Even 4G drops down to about 10mbps inside with 150mbps outside.

youngtaff 3y ago

Yup, that's what I did while I was waiting for fibre to be installed I've got a 5G router that gives me 400Mbps download at around 30ms latency and have been working full-time over it for more than a year Was £50 / month for unlimited data on a two year plan (bit more than that now due to inflation)

izacus 3y ago

> You can reasonably replace your home internet with 5G Doing that at scale is an amazing way to drive 5G speeds and latency into the ground, making it worse than old cable connections.

spixy 3y ago
I thought 5G solves scalability issues (at least better than 4G)
- izacus 3y ago
  There's no magic that will beat physics. 5G does very little here.

rootusrootus 3y ago

You can, but it's definitely better if you have an ultra wideband 5G close to your home. That's a pretty legitimate no-compromise replacement for typical cable internet service.

dboreham 3y ago

> replace your home internet with 5G Mr Shannon enters the chat..

wodenokoto 3y ago

For the past year my home internet was 4G …

helf 3y ago

[dead]

littlestymaar 3y ago

You can, in the same places where you could already replace it with LTE back then, and in remote place where you couldn't already, 5G isn't going to happen anyway.

MikeTheRocker 3y ago

I live in an older apartment complex that doesn't have the requisite connections to get wired internet from any mainstream provider in the area, so I have 5G home internet and it's quite good. No less reliable than wired was for me in the past, and I generally get speeds around 600 Gbps down/100 up. EDIT: Mbps, not Gbps

542458 3y ago
> 600 Gbps down/100 up I think you meant Mbps :)
- MikeTheRocker 3y ago
  Ah, you're right. My bad! Edited my original comment.

varelse 3y ago

[dead]

Analemma_ 3y ago

T-Mobile keeps sending me texts trying to get me to sign up for their 5G home internet. They're offering 50 Mbps down for $60/month. Xfinity gives me 200 megs down for the same price and lower latency, and when you're losing to Comcast, that's not a good sign.

noahtallen 3y ago
T-Mobile is cost effective in rural areas. They’ve done huge investment into rural 5G infrastructure in places like Ohio, which means homes which only get like 6mbps max from Century Link now have a real option for internet. The only competition is StarLink, which is way more expensive.
bastawhiz 3y ago
Comcast isn't the real competitor. Lots of folks are stuck on shitty ADSL because the hassle of getting cables in and run—especially as a renter—are too high. I've even heard of folks who can't get a decent enough signal from Comcast switching because the time and energy to replace the coax to their condo was too much.
- elcritch 3y ago
  For me the temptation of 5g over cable are better contracts. The cable provider in my apartment already has cable setup in my home with a no-contract “WiFi” option. But to get faster speeds I have to pay $150 buck setup fee and sign up for a year long lease. Like, nope 5g’s probably good enough.