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Okay, but does my mobile device NEED to be able to pull 12Gbps speeds? I’ll take a solid reliable 20-50Mbps of LTE on a power-sipping SOC over Qualcomm trying

Okay, but does my mobile device NEED to be able to pull 12Gbps speeds? I’ll take a solid reliable 20-50Mbps of LTE on a power-sipping SOC over Qualcomm trying to beat their chests with another space heater of a chip for network applications that just don’t exist yet.

daneel_w 2y ago
It's almost like the smartphone camera "megapixel" race all over again...
jsheard 2y ago
5G is already dangerously fast on cheaper plans, I've accidentally burned through my entire monthly data allowance by running a single speed test.
- HPsquared 2y ago
  It'd be interesting to see mobile data plans' monthly allowances trended over time expressed as "seconds at maximum download speed per month".
- ohgr 2y ago
  Yeah did the last year. Accidentally left Lightroom mobile uploading RAW images over it and now it blew 50 gig in an hour.
zinekeller 2y ago
Not necessarily, but if the improvements that lead to 12Gbps includes refinement over signal processing, such that certain previously-garbled signal are being successfully decoded now, this will allow for better real-life speeds and latency. Obviously, this will not equate to 12Gbps but serving a thousand people with guaranteed speeds of 12Mbps and practically receiving (assuming not everyone is downloading) 100Mbps with minimal latency and packet loss would be great improvements. This is also the thing with Wi-Fi, you would unlikely to get ~6Gbps unless you're the sole user, but the improvements allow for faster and lower-latency real-life speeds.
Workaccount2 2y ago
The primary gain of 5G is the ability to have way more devices attached to a single tower at a time. This ultimately translates to higher data caps, and why telecos were so exuberant about it (but didn't actually explain it this way). They knew people's number 1 gripe was data caps. 4G was fast too, but couldn't handle lots of concurrent connections, necessitating the need to artificially constrain demand (data caps).
ksec 2y ago
>Okay, but does my mobile device NEED to be able to pull 12Gbps speeds? I’ll take a solid reliable 20-50Mbps of LTE on a power-sipping SOC. What if Qualcomm told you 12Gbps 5G downloading 5MB uses less energy than 50Mbps LTE? Getting faster and more efficient 5G is how you can use lower energy per MB transferred. Except most of the time the faster connection the more content the internet wants to push to you.
- acdha 2y ago
  This also assumes that you have enormous buffers. If the data isn’t available when you start, you’re not going to see the lower benefits of transmitting everything at the highest rate and then going into low-power mode. I suspect that most usage other than, say, backing up your photo library is bursty enough to push that into diminishing returns.
- daneel_w 2y ago
  That would only be true if the total power envelope was same or lower, and that's not necessarily true. Just because your switch has a GbE port and you have a GbE NIC does not mean there's a full Gbit available for you at the remote end or even in your immediate network. The most common complaint from end-users moving up to 5G is that it's a "drainer" despite no change in personal usage pattern - and the "surprise" is that the Internet doesn't push content to you, you pull content from it. The scenarios where some application "intelligently" adapt to you (e.g. streaming bandwidth for video content) don't entirely equate to power savings on network activity the way they do for downloading a huge file on a fast versus a slow connection. This marketing material from Qualcomm, in the context of cell phones, is purely an inflationary numbers race.
  - ksec 2y ago
    > Just because your switch has a GbE port and you have a GbE NIC does not mean there's a full Gbit available for you at the remote end or even in your immediate network. I was comparing the cellular tech only. i.e not limited by the backbone. Most people compare it with the best iteration of LTE, full spectrum available while on the other than 5G is still on NSA, less spectrum, and RAN not even optimised.

daneel_w 2y ago

It's almost like the smartphone camera "megapixel" race all over again...

jsheard 2y ago

5G is already dangerously fast on cheaper plans, I've accidentally burned through my entire monthly data allowance by running a single speed test.

HPsquared 2y ago
It'd be interesting to see mobile data plans' monthly allowances trended over time expressed as "seconds at maximum download speed per month".
ohgr 2y ago
Yeah did the last year. Accidentally left Lightroom mobile uploading RAW images over it and now it blew 50 gig in an hour.

zinekeller 2y ago

Not necessarily, but if the improvements that lead to 12Gbps includes refinement over signal processing, such that certain previously-garbled signal are being successfully decoded now, this will allow for better real-life speeds and latency. Obviously, this will not equate to 12Gbps but serving a thousand people with guaranteed speeds of 12Mbps and practically receiving (assuming not everyone is downloading) 100Mbps with minimal latency and packet loss would be great improvements. This is also the thing with Wi-Fi, you would unlikely to get ~6Gbps unless you're the sole user, but the improvements allow for faster and lower-latency real-life speeds.

Workaccount2 2y ago

The primary gain of 5G is the ability to have way more devices attached to a single tower at a time. This ultimately translates to higher data caps, and why telecos were so exuberant about it (but didn't actually explain it this way). They knew people's number 1 gripe was data caps. 4G was fast too, but couldn't handle lots of concurrent connections, necessitating the need to artificially constrain demand (data caps).

ksec 2y ago

>Okay, but does my mobile device NEED to be able to pull 12Gbps speeds? I’ll take a solid reliable 20-50Mbps of LTE on a power-sipping SOC. What if Qualcomm told you 12Gbps 5G downloading 5MB uses less energy than 50Mbps LTE? Getting faster and more efficient 5G is how you can use lower energy per MB transferred. Except most of the time the faster connection the more content the internet wants to push to you.

acdha 2y ago
This also assumes that you have enormous buffers. If the data isn’t available when you start, you’re not going to see the lower benefits of transmitting everything at the highest rate and then going into low-power mode. I suspect that most usage other than, say, backing up your photo library is bursty enough to push that into diminishing returns.
daneel_w 2y ago
That would only be true if the total power envelope was same or lower, and that's not necessarily true. Just because your switch has a GbE port and you have a GbE NIC does not mean there's a full Gbit available for you at the remote end or even in your immediate network. The most common complaint from end-users moving up to 5G is that it's a "drainer" despite no change in personal usage pattern - and the "surprise" is that the Internet doesn't push content to you, you pull content from it. The scenarios where some application "intelligently" adapt to you (e.g. streaming bandwidth for video content) don't entirely equate to power savings on network activity the way they do for downloading a huge file on a fast versus a slow connection. This marketing material from Qualcomm, in the context of cell phones, is purely an inflationary numbers race.
- ksec 2y ago
  > Just because your switch has a GbE port and you have a GbE NIC does not mean there's a full Gbit available for you at the remote end or even in your immediate network. I was comparing the cellular tech only. i.e not limited by the backbone. Most people compare it with the best iteration of LTE, full spectrum available while on the other than 5G is still on NSA, less spectrum, and RAN not even optimised.