5G specs announced: 20Gbps download, 1ms latency, 1M devices per square km | Hacker News Reader

5G specs announced: 20Gbps download, 1ms latency, 1M devices per square km

arstechnica.co.uk

17 pointssinak9 comments

To me, one of the biggest things here is the focus on lower latency. Sustained speeds are great, but latency is really the problem with current 4G.

They cite that LTE cells have about 20ms latency. Adding a 20ms overhead to every connection adds up fast.

Bandwidth caps are a far larger issue. 20ms is unnoticeable for websites and even gaming.

If the data cost dropped I would get rid of my home internet in a heartbeat

From my home network google.com has about 120ms time-to-first-byte.

If I was on 4G add 20ms for the DNS lookup, 20ms for each part of the SSL handshake, then another 20ms for the actual page request. If the page requests additional resources repeat that for every single source and 20ms becomes a big deal.

For gaming (assuming 20ms latency and a 60fps game) that kind of a delay means that you are about 2.5 frames behind your opponents. In some games that really does matter.

I agree though that caps are bad for everyone, but that has nothing to do with the capability of the infrastructure and everything to do with perpetuating the illusion that there is a bandwidth scarcity to justify slow connections, shoddy service, and higher than free-market prices. The specs for 5G will never change that.

For any game for which 60fps is a relevant measurement, none of those additional steps are relevant. The relevant measure is just RTT for an IP packet.

The larger max data rate per cell ( should also 20Gbps in 5G vs 1Gps in current LTE) should also help here - technically. Of course it might be that data caps are just a business/pricing decision and the advances on the network side don't make a difference.

I would put the bandwidth caps at the top for the biggest obstacles today.

I'd be super thrilled if Comcast or Frontier could reliably deliver 10mbps in rural Redmond, 3 miles from Microsoft

Spectral efficiency(bits/hz or bps/hz), a major thing that determines cost, is similar or just 20% better than 4G.

An alternative is using mmWaves, but those require line of sight, so not sure how useful are those to mobile phones.

Isn't mmWave only useful for connecting backhaul due to the line of sight requirement?

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