No “Material Difference Between 5G and LTE”

> but once everyone in 4G moves to 5G, we’re back to how it is today.

Would there be a benefit to split 50:50 between 4G and 5G?

This doesn't seem to contradict the point. There is a fixed capacity that the network can handle. For 5G, this appears to be a higher capacity than for 4G.

So, yes, more devices will mean less speed for everyone. However, there is more speed to go around, so the same number of devices in a 4G setting will get less speed than the same number in a 5G.

Or is that not the GP's point?

>The lower speed on 4G is mostly due to the number of devices on it.

Is that the sole reason 5G is faster, or will being able to allocate less in idle situations and utilize spatial multiplexing support faster speeds even with a comparable number of devices?

>once everyone in 4G moves to 5G, we’re back to how it is today.

is that why some budget MVNOs only offer 2g/3g access when their parent network has lte?

The point of the article isn't that 5G won't improve throughput, but that improvements of the existing LTE network will provide similar improvements.

This is really a corporate squabblefest over branding, control of standards and intellectual property. There are misaligned incentives between IP holders like Qualcomm, equipment manufacturers and network operators.

The networks want the 5G brand so they can sell the image of an "all-new superfast network", but they want to spend as little as possible on new infrastructure. IP holders want to ensure that any future development is tied to licensing their technology. Equipment manufacturers want to sidestep those license costs, either by avoiding new technologies with freshly-minted patents or by moving to technologies with fewer dependencies on proprietary IP. US cable operators want access to millimetre bands to expand their fixed broadband network, while European landline broadband operators don't want new competition.

Nobody is being honest about those clashing incentives, so we're seeing huge amounts of babble and FUD from all sides.

They have the capability, but this intersects with local building codes, zoning laws, and safety standards. It also carries increased costs over time.

What's being said here is, "We don't foresee any problems with having our current level of capacity provisioning, and we're fine with the level of service we provide."

In many cases it's not that simple. Local governments are often in control of permitting for cell tower sites. The telcos can't just plop down new towers wherever they want and call it a day.

And societies have the ability to add more capacity by realizing by having privately owned radio spectrum the advancement and adoption of wireless data transfer has been stunted for decades.

Everyone likes to argue that you can't have an all wireless society because there is limited bandwidth available, but as it is we are only using about 10% of the usable spectrum (from about 200MHZ to 8GHZ) for network data connectivity, and even then most of it is still privately controlled - if an area has too many AT&T subscribers and not enough Verizon customers, the Verizon spectrums go to waste while the AT&T ones are oversaturated.

There are a few things I could name off the top of my head that would overnight dramatically improve technology, but nationalizing back light for the people to use and then having this entire range opened up to generic data transfer with the same congestion rules and regulations used on currently open bandwidth rings would go a long way to improving most of our lives dramatically.

Yes but what happens when everyone at a stadium tries to get on the same tower?

But the fault doesn't completely lie with the telcos. Getting permission to build a tower can take years.

Author here. Density is one way to add capacity but adding more spectrum or more antennas turns out to be cheaper most place today. (Carrier aggregation and MIMO.) Millimeter wave is essentially adding more spectrum.

The cap that they set is a function of their capacity. If we use spectrum more efficiently, prices can drop or caps can go up.

> I would max out my data cap in 5 minutes

Counterargument: there are fundamental reasons for data caps. To provide service at a high speed to lots of people at a reasonable price, edge-case data users must be throttled. Increasing capacity reduces the number of users who must be throttled.

What are you suggesting? If it's that there's some market-wide conspiracy to provide worse service for the sake of long-term profits, there's zero evidence to back that. Cell phone plans have gotten significantly better in the past decades, and most people are able to pay less and get a better level of service. Things have gotten better and cheaper, because there is competition, and there is always going to be market pressure that pushes them to provide better service at lower costs than their competitors. Or are you suggesting that you think there is going to be a new development of a price-fixing conspiracy among telecoms in the next few years?

Alternatively, are you suggesting (on a website that is ostensibly about venture capitalism) that the entire foundation of economics and markets is shakey?

I hate when these anti-market socialist/communist type comments pop up. Everyone hates their ISP/cellular provider and mindlessly upvotes nonsense like this. There's zero truth to what you're saying!

This claim just seems ... unlikely and counter to economics. Prices dropping isn't about business owners deciding they feel nice, it is about the fact that consumers reward cheap producers. If the producers refuse to drop prices when thy can, then the first person to break into the market doing something different will get crazy profits.

I would liken the situation to 2007 in Australia. Sending instant messages was basically free from the telco's perspectives - but they charged 20c or something to the sender. Insane margins.

The first company that I remember challenging that was Apple, who bypassed the whole business and enabled essentially free text messages with iMessage. 10 years later, the markup on using text messages seems to have been completely wiped out. Apple also happened to be the most profitable company in the world through that period.

Sure, iMessage isn't linked directly to the profits, yet somehow the invisible hand seems to have been working.

>I would max out my data cap in 5 minutes..

It is important to note that data is not consumed at the same speed it is downloaded at.

It's not that easy. 5G uses spatial multiplexing so multiple devices can send/receive on the same frequency bands at the same time without interfering with each other (4G also supports this to a lesser extent already).

Dang, that's good. I've only ever once seen anything over 100 and that was when LTE was brand new. Now I tend to average between 15-50. (This is in West Michigan)

The coverage/range of 5G depends on the scale of deployment, and the environment of the deployment (e.g. urban with lots of tall buildings, vs rural), assuming we are talking about mmw type of 5G not LTE+ type of 5G.

Due to higher frequency, 5G might actually have a disadvantage in range for a single tower, in dense urban environment due to weaker penetration. But it could be compensated by deploying more towers, at more strategic locations. The value proposition is that the gain in speed and delay would be well worth it.

Weak penetration is still a problem for long range open field 5G communication, but due to different factors like fog, weather conditions, etc.

Regarding data caps, I view it as more of a business model question, less related to the technical capabilities of 4G vs 5G.

Sure, CDMA vs OFDM, definitely they can be regarded as "material difference" But that's not the logic/argument the original article made. They only used bandwidth and delay to quantify "material difference". Following their logic, they can make the same argument for 3G vs 4G back in the day.

Haha yeah I suspected that.

Wouldn't have been much of a thought out framework for "long-term evolution" if it was scrapped within 10 years!

Muni/coop internet providers? Should be low if they can keep lease costs down for 5G base stations colocating with existing muni real estate, and use existing fiber for backhaul (or new fiber laid as part of Dig Once guidelines).

I'm interested to see how this plays out. When I looked into it, it seemed hard to compete with wired broadband internet. I think wireless has the best chance in areas where people's only option is satellite or dial-up.

Jan 2017, 10 months before the Layer3 acquisition. We'll see what happens.

It's even worse.

I live in a Cox area. They offer fine service, but they are monopolistic and keep increasing prices.

Comcast and Countrywide were in the running for the Consumerists 2008 worst company of the year. Countrywide won but had to help nuke the economy. Comcast had a real shot at winning for being such a malignant organization.

The rebrand to Xfinity is a joke.

It can be. I've so far had only good experiences. My service is fast and reliable, and the other day when I called them up to activate a new modem, they cut my cost to $35/month as a customer appreciation move with barely any strings attached (only that I commit to staying with them a year ... I've been with them for 6 already and there is no viable competitor here).

There are plenty of horror stories, however. I may just be lucky so far.

Comcast is the only broadband provider in my town that can deliver a service greater than 2 mbit/sec.

AT&T has U-Verse DSLAMS in some corners, but gave up on covering the entire town and the copper network is old and crumbling. There is zero hope of any kind of fiber service showing up.

In my personal experience Comcast's service isn't bad, but their rates are tied to the fact that there is no competition. My belief is that prices would drop about 50% and speeds would jump up 20% if another company could get into the space.

And that's just for IP service. Video service is another story altogether. TMO's purchase of Layer3 gives me some hope that maybe there will be a decent streaming service they will bundle with it.

I was a Comcast customer for years. The service was unreliable. The phone support was useless and would, for example, ask me to reboot my computer when my modem was clearly failing to communicate with their equipment. Their techs would routinely arrive an hour or two late when they already had a four-hour window to hit, and not even call to tell me they would be late. One of them replaced something in an outside box and then just left, leaving two equipment boxes hanging open and scraps of cable lying on the ground.

I now have Verizon and the difference is vast. The service has gone down twice in five years. When I called it in, I was immediately connected to someone who knew what DHCP meant. They’re not perfect but they’re a lot better.

I have a buddy running a Wisp as a side gig out in rural Michigan. I think he got 10M fiber ran for a couple thousand a month. Then maybe 10-20 people have wireless access setup with ubiquity gear to beam them internet. I think it breaks even or is just pocket money as the main business’s internet needs are subsidized by the neighbors.

It’s really a tough situation in the rural areas. To run last mile cable costs thousands of dollars per house with houses quarter to half mile apart. and at $50-100/mo, it doesnt make sense to serve those customers.

Part of that is because they often can't get more than one IP address from their fiber provider.

Why should those of us who don't choose to live in the country have to subsidize the lifestyle choices of those that do choose to live in the country?

And, before you go thinking I'm just the radical conservative, recognize that this cuts both ways. I'm also of the opinion that we shouldn't be subsidizing people's high-carbon lifestyles by making roads free, for example.

Google suggests perhaps ~10 million rural houses in the US lack access to high speed internet.

It's a nice thought, but where in the budget do you propose we find several tens of billions of dollars?

We didn't have a landline in rural US until I was 14. We had point-to-point long distance maser and WISP by the time I was 21. If anyone wants it, they can get it, of they pay for it. If somebody doesn't want to pay for it, why should the despits of various people's urban states compel their denizens to do so?

We need that money for more adventures in the middle east and urban welfare though.

During the 2G, 3G and 4G frequency auctions in Germany the prices went extremely high. As result carriers charge massive prices for data, and there’s few carriers in the market.