Hacker News Reader

Comment by petra | Hacker News Reader

I don't buy this hype about so much demand and applications. Why ?

1. It won't really reduce costs. Why? Because 3-5ghz 5G offer similar spectrum efficiency to current methods while on the other hand mmWave(20+ghz), which do offer tons of spectrum, don't penetrate building, and attenuate rapidly in air, so you'll need more base stations.

2. Users have shown they aren't willing to pay more wireless. And for most things consumers do like VR and 360 video etc, wifi is fine and cheaper.

3.There are other good methods for the internet of things, and 5G is too late for that anyway.

So that leaves the realistic use cases as cars(but isn't it too early? ). and maybe VR(although we're very far from appealing VR services which users will pay $60+/month for, and we probably need for wifi confined AR to be a thing first ).

And on top of that the question remains - could we improve 4G enough, without needing to deploy all new hardware?

View on HN

On top of all of that 4G is still so data-restricted you cannot do anything with it that the speed was meant for. The cost of streaming a blu-ray quality film over 4G on many carriers can cost you tens of dollars alone.

I agree, and would rather see ubiquitous and cheap 4G before anyone talks about 5G. I think 4G already has the potential to eliminate the vast majority of wired to the home cable Internet service given its rates, the only downside is the extreme spectrum crunch and the lack of viable open bands to use to provide Internet to everyone.

But who is streaming Blu-Ray over their cellular connection? There is still a lot of room to grow with existing use cases. E.g. when I upload photos or videos of my toddler on Facebook, the picture quality is still potato. It could be better even without breaking my bandwidth budget.

I'm in Denmark and get 20GB/month. I'd stream a movie on Netflix while in a summer house or on holiday (my subscription covers most of Europe and some other countries)

What is the plan name?

exactly. Here in Ontario i go without a data plan because of the extremely high costs. Every time a new low-cost provider comes along, they get bought by Rogers/bell/tellus.

> The cost of streaming a blu-ray quality film over 4G on many carriers can cost you tens of dollars alone.

In the UK this is simply not the case. I have unlimited 4g connection, and I had unlimited 3g before that. In fact, the 3g was my _only_ internet for a long time via tethering. It was good enough to play TF2, and could easily download 20gig games overnight via steam etc.

I assume somewhere there is a fair use policy - but if i've never hit it I reckon it's doing a pretty good job of only hitting abusive use.

5g isn't going to solve the problem of US pricing being shit.

These deals don't exist any more. Trust me, I've looked!

They do exist. Abundantly.

They definitely do - I signed up to one the other week.

Three do "all-you-can-eat" 4G data + 200 minutes = £23/month (50% off first 6 months)

Care to share the provider or details?

When I was in the UK for a few months in 2014 the deals were worse than the US and the data caps were lower (LTE on EE).

EE also actually went down twice while I was there in London which I've never had Verizon ever do.

Check out uswitch, they have a few unlimited data deals: https://www.uswitch.com/mobiles/compare/sim_only_deals/

(Select "Unlimited data" from the filters on the left-side)

> On top of all of that 4G is still so data-restricted you cannot do anything with it that the speed was meant for. The cost of streaming a blu-ray quality film over 4G on many carriers can cost you tens of dollars alone.

Is this a technical limit of 4G, an infrastructure limitation of not having enough backhaul to the base station, or a business limitation of just wanting to make more money?

If it were merely carriers acting in parallel to keep up rates, then the whole thing would fall apart when Sprint and T-Mobile started offering unlimited LTE.

Right, so 4G isn't actually data constricted and there's (supposedly) no need for 5G yet.

But the data cap regime didn't come crashing down when T-Mobile and Sprint started offering unlimited LTE. Why would you pay for Verizon with its data caps when you can get T-Mobile all you can eat for $70? The reason is because 4G is data constricted. T-Mobile in particular doesn't have enough backhaul, and it's cells cover too much area and get overloaded.

This hasn't been my experience at all with T-Mobile in the Baltimore-Washington area. If anything the experience in terms of coverage and performance has been getting consistently better since Legere took over, even with the introduction of unlimited and music freedom/binge on(video).

It was fine when I lived in Baltimore. It's pretty spotty on the train between Baltimore and DC. It's potato out in the VA suburbs where my parents live. It was rocking in Philly. YMMV.

I have a different reason: Because a family won't pay to get 3-5 unlimited lines from T-Mobile. 4 unlimited lines on T-Mobile = $220/mo, unsubsidized. And sprint's data still isn't really to the speeds of T-Mobile or Verizon.

These plans aren't as amazing as people think, especially since they still limit tethering (and maybe maybe throttle data).

However, I think your conclusion is correct. If 4G was fine, the market value of cell tower time would be a lot lower.

> On top of all of that 4G is still so data-restricted you cannot do anything with it that the speed was meant for.

In the states sure, but the US are not the only country in the world ;)

To point: I was in Japan for several weeks at the end of 2015. The coverage (served by NTT Docomo) was very good, literally everywhere I tried. This includes the urban and transit corridors I visited, as well as in somewhat more rural areas in the mountains. My experience with similar areas in the US is that, even in major urban centers, there are black holes of poor service. Even a little bit outside of cities, coverage quickly gets very hit or miss here.

Even subway trains and stations had uniformly excellent service. A defining experience: exactly once did I note poor reception on my phone. Zero bars, 4G in a subway station. I was figuring I was SOL for a time. Nope! There wasn't even any additional load latency that I could tell -- web browsing was snappy as ever. I've lost track of the times in the US where I'm at one or two bars, LTE and I've just given up waiting for the bits.

This brought about a dawning realization that even the best covered areas in the US are practically rural backwaters compared to Japan's infrastructure, using the same wireless technology generation.

Thus I won't point any fingers at the technology. Instead I'll reserve that judgement for the US carriers. :-/

I'm blessed in living in a country with perfect 4G coverage and data plans that make it enjoyable. We have generally three sim car types: normal phone sim (roaming, voice and some limited data ~5-10GB but you can tether), tablet sims (around 20GB data only with roaming) and stationary internet sims (unlimited data, no roaming, no voice).

I have two of the latter and it boosted my happiness working from coffee places. I bought a good portable 4G router with 12 hours of battery and that worked out so well for me that I actually cancelled my wired home internet.

Pretty much all data plans in Japan since last year are data capped. Of course you get unlimited but the speed is capped to Excruciatingly Slow after 7GB (on the higher end plans).

EDIT: you can get unlimited WiMax boxes (capped at 3 GB/3 days), but that doesn't work in a lot of areas (Tokyo subways...). Some MVNOs seem to offer unlimited data but it's speed capped from the outset.

> On top of all of that 4G is still so data-restricted you cannot do anything with it that the speed was meant for.

Please don't confuse profit-oriented carriers with what 4G is capable of. Or states which through legislation create high network construction and operating costs. For example by having laws enabling unreasonable profiteering for cell tower site real estate. Or by collecting high fees for radio spectrum. Or by failing to shut down spectrum squatters.

And states where carriers "co-operate" with government (= provide hooks to their network trunks) and are practically untouchable even though they practice rather obvious collusion.

In other words, please keep technology and societal issues separate.

5G or any other technology with a high barrier of entry is not going to change any of that.

4G works just fine where those societal issues don't exist. In states which have real competition between carriers and a low barrier of entry. Regardless of population density.

If those issues didn't exist in the U.S., truly unlimited data-only 4G would be about $15-$30 per month -- in a small Alaskan town or in the heart of New York and anything in between.

I believe they meant that 4G use is data-restricted because of carrier pricing.

I get fantastic 4G speeds on my iPhone, for quite a while it was faster than my home connection. But I could never use it that way due to the carrier pricing structure.

> But I could never use it that way due to the carrier pricing structure.

Why do you think they're able to keep that pricing structure?

At least in Verizon's case, they're able to keep that pricing structure because they have the best network. They're able to keep the blazing fast speeds because nobody can afford to use the network they built.

Right. That was AT&T's issue with unlimited iPhone plans. They calculated they could offer it because no one used much data. As soon as people starting actually USING it AT&T's network collapsed in busy areas.

Monopolies, oligopolies, not enough regulation, and very high switching costs mean phone companies can charge crazy rates with near impunity.

I agree with most of what you said, but "trully unlimited" for $15-$30/month ? how did you came to those numbers ? what does unlimited mean ?

Spectrum efficiency is only one dimension. Smaller cells increase spatial reuse and can dramatically increase network capacity.

Demand is also off the charts. Approximately nobody does VR. Growth is still in bread and butter things like mobile video. In the U.S. in just the last two years, cellular penetration grew from 105% to 115% (more cellular subscriptions than people) and monthly data usage tripled.

>cellular penetration grew from 105% to 115% (more cellular subscriptions than people)

That could suggest more people are have access to a cellphone, or more companies are buying work phones for their employees.

More likely is that people increasingly have "data-only" devices like tablets on their cellular accounts.

Don't discount M2M either, all four carriers have a lot of M2M lines that likely get counted in this.

Spacial reuse can happen in 4G and probably cheaper.

I don't buy this hype about so much demand and applications. Why ?

Don't tell Verizon or AT&T, both likely candidates for replacing their terrestrial services with 5G in the US as a way to compete nationally against Comcast.

There's a reason Verizon has been selling off chunks of their system to Frontier.

After all, why put wires in the ground if you can just attach a 5G modem to the side of a person's house?

> After all, why put wires in the ground if you can just attach a 5G modem to the side of a person's house?

Will they also offer unlimited data plan for this? :-(

They don't currently for their attached 4G services (up to 30GB for $120 a month) so there's clearly no reason to expect they would/will for 5G service.

This should exactly answer zzalpha' question "why put wires in the ground if you can just attach a 5G modem to the side of a person's house?". :-)

> After all, why put wires in the ground if you can just attach a 5G modem to the side of a person's house?

Edited with the cynic filter:

After all, why pay unionized workers to provide all you can eat service through wires in the ground if you can sell metered service by just attaching a 5G modem to the side of a person's house?

So we're talking about using phase array directional antennas, right?

But once we add strong directionality, how big the difference is between licensed and unlicensed anyway?

> 2. Users have shown they aren't willing to pay more wireless. And for most things consumers do like VR and 360 video etc, wifi is fine and cheaper.

Sure they are if the service is good and it makes sense. 4G is the most popular broadband connection at home in Austria at that point I think.

1. No it won't reduce costs, but it offers a lot more bandwidth which is a consumer demand/necessity. If that need isn't met, people will jump carriers. Take Boston, SF, NYC or Chicago, where you can place femtocells, say, on the top of a building on every other street at every 3rd ave -- even with Siemens markup for the gear, plus city permits, plus installation and maintenance costs -- you're looking at 10-15k a base station (Verizon probably gets bulk discounts, I'm just going by old BS11 Siemens list MSRPs) then double it for the labor/permits/etc listed above along with annoying 'last mile' problems. (Alternatively, I'd imagine they could just offer the city X amount of dollars to mount them directly to municipal poles).

2. Consumers won't be paying more for wireless. You'll still be paying your $200 for an iPhone + $100/mo for internet with a 24 month lock-in. Those ~2k you pay over the course of your contract is what funds these upgrades. The functionality will be bundled with your iPhone $n+1 when the phone-renewal-cycle comes up. You'll have a 4G transceiver + pre-existing wifi tranceiver re-appropriated as Verizon-branded wifi as they negotiate their bluray content to transfer through their femtocells.

3. Internet of Things via mesh might be okay for torrents where latency doesn't matter, but no way for comms.

re: your 4g question (I'm assuming you're referring to LTE-A) - No. 4g is limited by spectrally very heavily re: the amount of content you can fit into each hz. Where Verizon is running into problems (NYC, SF, after sports events when everyones taking drunken selfies, etc) they're at saturation. In large cities, I'd imagine Verizon can't just do the ol' "drop more base stations in" because they'll just be spilling tones into their own, over-saturated chunk they bought from the FCC for a few billion. (In the case of 4G LTE-A, these operate at half-duplex within a 6 mhz band for tx and another 6 mhz band for rx, placed up or down 40mhz).

Interesring points. Lets see:

3. IoT has other non-mesh protocols like Lora which will work well.

1. Since spectrum efficiency is similar to 4G, to offer more bandwidth,you'll need to use mmWaves. But those don't penetrate buildings, and won't be everywhere and people like their cellular communications to be everywhere.

Also I read that base stations will be much more expensive, and it makes sense - the technology is harder to build.

Also with mmWaves there will be a lot of unlicensed spectrum and the way you buy spectrum will may be different - so and that could create a lot of business models that threaten carriers.

2. I didn't get the part about Verizon branded with, could you please explain?

In order of your responses:

``3'' : "Work well" for what? I was specifically addressing comms, as that's where the problem currently exists. There are too many concurrent protocols/specs for me to keep up with LoRA (I'm only familiar with the 3GPP standards i.e. the NarrowBand IOT analog to LoRA, for obvious reasons), but I did some reading[1]. It has some awesome features like low-power consumption that allows long range, but again, you're not going to be streaming Youtube videos via that protocol. Their site officially says[2] their solution "is a network ideal for Internet of Things (IoT), metering, security, asset tracking, and machine-to-machine (M2M) applications." So while a great solution for, say, plopping down a few thousand soil hydrometers, it's not going to help with the over-saturation of the 4G networks.

``1'': Spectrum efficiency varies as a function of carrier wave length[3 for a brief overview] There's an information theory limit as to how much data you can effectively transport (throughput, not latency) limited by the Shannon-Hartley limit. (Or maybe the Nyquist something-something...forgive my ignorance on the topic, I really should have went to grad school or at least taken more physics classes.) To offer more bandwidth you can do plenty of things without resorting to mmWave, i.e. picking up rights to a carrier wave when Auction 73 occurred, or use OFDM amongst the ISM bands

Which brings me to (``2''- at least, as I understand it). What providers are trying to do is use the standard UWB/OFDM that already has well established, cheap commodity hardware behind it (think: a Cisco Aironet equivalent). The poster at the start of the thread said >> 2. Users have shown they aren't willing to pay more wireless. And for most things consumers do like VR and 360 video etc, wifi is fine and cheaper. I was simply saying that any new technology will be bundled into the next revision of phones. It's not going to cost the consumer any more than usual, because (at least in the US) the 24-month sign+subsidized phone practice is commonplace enough that the next-gen technologies will be bundled in at the same rate.

I'm right there with you on mmWave - if you're looking to replace 4G with that, well, probably not viable at the moment as people still tune transmission lines using machined components (expensive, can't really use powdered metal bulk solutions when you need .1 thou tolerances..) that are designed filter cavities like this[4] in one offs (even more expensive without economies of scale) by generally those with graduate degrees. I haven't heard any ballpark quotes for 5G pricing from the usual suppliers.. who's quoting what, and from where?

[1] https://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/lp-wan/current/pdfbVG4...

[2] http://www.semtech.com/wireless-rf/lora.html

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_capacity

[4] http://www.rfsworld.com/stayconnected/userfiles/stayconnecte...

3. With regards to the IOT - most apps fits the LoRa capabilities. What's left is probably cameras(but for them WiFi mesh combined with backhaul/wired access would be fine, mostly. There's might be a place for drones, but i haven't though about that yet).

1. Auction 73 is just 100MHZ, not big enough to matter. Also how much bandwidth could you get from "OFDM amongst the ISM bands" , after discounting bands that are reserved due to politics,or for future use by government/military etc ? why aren't they being auctioned ?

2. Why would carriers bundle an expensive technology that doesn't promise them more money long term(after everybody deploys it, which will happen if someone does) ? they have simple ways to signal each other to do nothing. Also assuming this tech offers similar spectral efficiency, if all it buy is more bandwidth, by deploying more cells, just deploy more 4G cells - and save yourself money/risk/etc.

Can't find the quote for the 5G price, but i think it was in the context of mmWave, just some discussion, nothing formal. But why would 5G(non mmWave) be cheaper ? companies have to justify r&d, more newer patents, start from lower volumes, complexity will probably grow, etc.

Also a side question: is there a way to build around mmWave unlicensed bands to create noise floor similar to using it as a licensed band ? maybe with phase array antennas(assuming no other interfere but the network) ? or maybe a different legal regime that gives neighborhoods control of their spectrum ? because if so, and if we can solve the mmWave tech(big if), it would look like the future of wireless.

Could it replaced Comcast? That would certainly excite people!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com