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Comment by jupp0r | Hacker News Reader

> 5G's main application around the world will be more capacity, a good thing for telcos

This is important for consumers. When did you last get 100Mbit+ speeds with 4G? In real world scenarios, the number of people in a cell (due to limited spectrum bandwidth) limits 4G speeds, not protocol maximums. My understanding of 5G is that bandwidth can be used much more efficiently (both by being able to allocate less in idle situations and by spatial multiplexing), benefitting telcos and customers both.

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  When did you last get 100Mbit+ speeds with 4G?

In a real world scenario, I would max out my data cap in 5 minutes.. Telcos will never give up their guaranteed profits by throttling speeds even with unlimited speed/capacity.

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.

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

Market entry is difficult because it's gated by spectrum availability. It's hard for new competitors to offer wireless services. The market for wireless services in most countries is very cozy - it's usually one or two incumbent carriers that are about the same size, own about the same amount of spectrum, and don't work very hard to take market share from each other. I would argue that in a lot of cases, wireless services markets are stuck in a Nash equilibrium.

Smart regulation that might fix this would be to outlaw service contracts and cancellation fees to allow consumers to exploit pricing 'mistakes' (which is how you'd break a Nash equilibrium), and maybe force the carriers to re-bid on their spectrum every 5 years. Unfortunately another common problem with wireless services is regulatory capture - in my country, all the regulators who watch the wireless industry also end up working for it.

My dream startup is a next generation telco (without the usual data cap bullshit) but I have yet to crack the spectrum problem. Spectrum is auctioned off by the government and it's hard to compete with the existing players; we're talking amounts close to billions here, and that kind of money is not easy to come by, even from VCs.

Whatsapp also was born around that period. They were ridiculously faster than SMS delivery too with images and other media.

There’s a reason it got bought for 22 billion. The telcos were digging their own walled garden grave.

> 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.

Then they should apply caps or throttling during hours when capacity is a concern and let me download 100 GB of games from Steam between 4 and 7 AM when the Netflix watchers have gone to bed.

That's a bit like how T-Mobile does it. You get 50GB/month that is always at full speed, and then after that you get deprioritized if you're on a busy tower.

So it doesn't depend on time of day, but how many other customers are sharing your tower.

https://www.t-mobile.com/customer/mydatausage.html

> Data prioritization will only be noticeable when you access a congested tower and have used over 50GB of data in a particular billing cycle. You will continue to get unlimited high speed data on your smartphone when you aren’t accessing a congested tower. In that way it’s different from data throttling, which slows you down for the remainder of your bill cycle regardless of network conditions, all the time.

That's tantalizingly close, but the goal is a plan that lets you use low-priority downloads to avoid using up your full-speed data allowance.

Yeah, there are two aspects that keep me from ditching Comcast at my apartment. Burning through the data limit on bulk downloads that I'm happy to run overnight when it's not congested, and ping, which is the harder one to fix. But it's not _that_ bad on T-mobile, so if it weren't for the data allowance problem I might be willing to suck it up.

I'm on an old 5GB then throttled plan from T-mobile, the new ones sound pretty good if they didn't cost more than twice as much.

Crazy that you'd have to pay more for 10x the data and higher speeds...

I already have LTE and don’t need 50GB, but their cheapest single line if I were signing up today is $45/month for 4GB.

So yes, I’d expect cell service to get either cheaper or better over time instead of more expensive and worse.

It looks like MintSIM is the cheap option now, they do 5GB for $30 or 10GB for $38.

I’m paying $100 flat rate for 3 lines. About $33/line for unlimited calls, text and data.

T-mobile doesn’t even charge for roaming on a whole bunch of countries. In my Australia vacation I didn’t even need to buy a new SIM card. Whatsapp and google maps all the way.

Their speeds also beat Sprint and AT&T. It’s the only carrier I have faith that screws it’s consumers the least.

AT&T has my blood on its hands by charging me $500 for roaming in Canada when I didn’t even cross the border.

T-mobile is a night and day difference.

The problem is that T-Mobile has poor coverage. Enticing me to switch away from my cheap pre-paid T-Mobile plan actually works against them, because at that point I'll absolutely switch to another carrier.

That's a very good deal. Is that a standard or expensive subscription?

It's their standard ONE plan: $70/month for 1 line, but much cheaper with more (for four lines its $160/month).

Tmobile does have some prepaid plans and older grandfathered plans, but the ONE plan is pretty good, especially at the multi-line rates.

Any carriers do better pricing for a single line with high caps? $840/year on service for a single phone feels crazy to me.

You'd probably need to go with an MVNO plan like PagePlus or Mint SIM.

They do, or at least T-Mobile does: their unlimited plan throttles you once you exceed X gigabytes in a month (I believe X is 25), but only when the cell is congested.

Counter - counter argument: data caps fundamentally help segment users and make more $$$ from those who value more data. This doesn’t directly relate to capping download rate. Related: Growth on total users and downloads is far far greater than improved spectral capacity in 5G and hence more cells are needed to improve capacity. So costs not only to refresh, but to build more cells are significant.

If you were going to make bandwidth costs actually based on costs to provide service, you would probably end up with something similar to the way that electricity is priced. A connection fee plus a metered rate that varies to be higher during periods of high demand and lower during periods of low demand. The data cap model is pretty clearly designed just to extract extra money from customers, not as a genuine way of fairly allocating costs.

That might make sense IF the caps only applied during times of congestion.

This can be solved by selling plans by speed instead of data caps; ie, you pay for a guaranteed speed (like 1Mbps) and can use it as much as you want. The more speed you buy the more expensive it gets, with the full LTE speed being crazy expensive as you'd essentially be buying out the entire tower in that case (but then again, who needs 150Mbps+? I'd be happy with a stable 10Mbps to be honest, for mobile there is rarely a need for more).

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.

This is an unsupported assertion. Most caps are not sensitive to the environment they are consumed in, whether bandwidth tight or bandwidth plenty.

>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.

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!

I had a thought that the left tries to divvy up what value already exists, and the right tries to create an environment where new value can be created.

In order for the left to justify their agenda, they try to make it seem that it's pointless to try to create new value because of things like cartels, monopolies, etc. They then present the conclusion that the only way for a person to improve their financial position is to take from others.

Author here. There's no conspiracy, just an incredible amount of 5G hype. Note that the source of the comment is the CEO of the largest manufacturer, and I have similar from CTOs of Deutsche Telekom and Telefonica.

I regularly see 150-200 Mbps (testing with fast.com in London on EE) but it can drop to 50-odd even with a good signal (I'm guessing due to contention) and the drop off with a low signal (1/2 bars) is dramatic.

If 5G gives 100+ on two bars and increases capacity enough to keep the speeds up at busy times, it's worth it.

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)

Hi fellow Michigander!

I used to have the same on ATT, but recently got T Mobile:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/wngQxpA5nqL27ikI3

112 down, 14 up. Unlimited, for less than 3 GB cost at ATT.

Honestly don't know why I still give Comcast $25/mo.

Because of the bandwidth limit on your "unlimited" cell service.

https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/19/16334690/t-mobile-unlimit...

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

5G will be no different in that way. At first, the few people with 5G devices and networks will have very fast speeds (mostly), but once everyone in 4G moves to 5G, we’re back to how it is today.

I’m also curious what the effect of all the WiFi networks will have in regards to interference with 5G bands.

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.

So what do you think will be the end result of 5G ? same as William Webb says, that most likely, nothing will come out of it - because consumers are happy with current speed, and they're only interest is paying less, which doesn't fit with investing billions in 5G ?

European landline operators ARE the networks.

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?

Allocating less in idle situations sounds dangerous. What do you do when there is a real world event and everyone rushes to their device, pulling them out of idle?

(I'm assuming this problem is already considered. Genuinely asking, in case someone has a good link to read on it.)

It's straightforward QoS management. Public service users get absolute priority, even if that means kicking everyone else off the network. After that, voice and SMS get priority, because they're important to users and have very low data rates. IP traffic can have whatever's left on a fair queuing basis. Most operators use deep packet inspection and can perform fairly sophisticated traffic shaping.

That makes some sense. But "kicking people off" is a crappy answer. Especially since you are setting up a constant storm of users trying to reconnect. Easy to see how that will not play well with idle connections.

>Especially since you are setting up a constant storm of users trying to reconnect.

The network isn't that dumb. The technical details are far beyond the scope of a HN comment, but the network can gracefully deny service to users. Think about what happens if you run out of data allowance or prepaid credit - your phone doesn't frantically spam the network, it just asks for service and is politely told to try again later. If all else fails, you can just de-register all the devices connected to a given cell site and revert them to emergency calls only.

Right, that was why I was asking if someone had a good link to read on. :)

And, honestly, from the way I've seen phones behave on older wifi networks, I would be surprised if some aren't actually spamming the network. Unnecessarily fast. Worse, I would hope the network has some protection built in for the bad actors that do.

> the network has some protection built in for the bad actors that do.

They don't. It's extremely easy to DoS an off-the-shelf (Ericsson, etc) mobile network if you know what to do. All it takes is one packet per minute or so. ;)

> 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?

Couldn't we just increase 4G capacity in that case?

I would imagine there are fundamental limitations on the available bandwidth that splitting the traffic across multiple frequencies would alleviate...but that's just speculation.

LTE Advanced already supports a feature called carrier aggregation where your phone can transfer data on multiple different frequencies at the same time to boost its aggregate throughput:

http://www.3gpp.org/technologies/keywords-acronyms/101-carri...

Unfortunately that does not boost the overall capacity available so the higher peaks speeds may not improve the average experience.

>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?

Author here. Actually, the LTE being installed today will give 100-300 megabits to most users, except at the edge of the cell or behind a building, etc. The "usually less than 100 megabits" is equipment from more than a year ago. The right comparison is 2019 equipment against 2019 equipment.

Telecoms have the ability today to add more capacity by increasing tower density.

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.

Private companies don't own spectrum, they lease it. They pay the government substantial sums of money for the temporary, revocable right to use a chunk of spectrum. Light is already nationalised, the government just chooses to rent it out, partly on the basis of need and partly on a market basis. That allocation system isn't perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better than declaring everything from DC to daylight an ISM band and letting the users have at it.

Good point about owning vs leasing. But there's also a lot of room between private spectrum rights and the ISM band free-for-all.

Of those middle-ground options, I can't think of any that don't involve revoking a lot of licenses and rendering a lot of expensive equipment useless. It's theoretically possible to manage spectrum dynamically, but you need a clear channel and smart devices.

Consider the digital television transition - it freed up a substantial amount of spectrum for other users, but it took many years and cost billions of dollars. Broadcast TV and radio is less significant today than it was in 2009, but there are thousands of spectrum user groups who would find it difficult to switch to dynamically managed spectrum, not to mention the potential safety issues.

The RF spectrum is a busy old place. We can carve out little bits here and there, but there just aren't many useful blocks left that aren't already being used by something quite important. Most of those allocations involve co-ordination with the ITU and couldn't be significantly altered without international agreement.

https://www.ntia.doc.gov/files/ntia/publications/january_201...

> There are a few things I could name off the top of my head that would overnight dramatically improve technology

Could you name a few? This is HN after all, we like to get technical.

You need to have someone coordinate frequency use or else you'll get tons of interference. At least by making people pay for it you incentize them to actually use the part of the spectrum they've purchased.

> ...having this entire range opened up to generic data transfer with the same congestion rules and regulations used on currently open bandwidth rings...

Kinda like how 2.4 GHz is damn near useless for many people?

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."

It's going to be even worse with 5g. 5g is just a spec and the current most likely way to meet that spec is with micro-cells operating at higher frequencies.

They will require line of site because higher frequencies can't penetrate obstacles. To get 5g speeds and capacities, you're going to need to put towers everywhere.

Smaller towers yes, but many many more of them.

This matches what has been said about the planned rollout of 5G in the UK: more use of higher frequency bands and cells sites possibly sited at every road junction (intersection).

The impact of land topology is seen as so important that the UK Ordnance Survey have got involved with simulating 5G coverage:

http://os.uk/5g

https://5g.co.uk/

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.

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.

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.

Wembley stadium in the UK is used as technology showcase for one of our mobile providers:

https://wembley.ee.co.uk/

For more dynamic situations (think Glastonbury music festival) the telcos have been deploying mobile cell towers from the back of trucks:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_cell_sites

These don't just get used for pop concerts in stadiums but also for disaster response:

http://about.att.com/inside_connections_blog/hurricane_maria

> Wembley stadium in the UK is used as technology showcase for one of our mobile providers

Except they're more interested in pitching their bullshit iBeacon-based "SmartGuide" tracking technology or light show than network access. This is one of the major problems I see with mobile telcos; they seem to get sidetracked on everything but the mobile network which should be their top priority.

No, I don't give a shit about kids programming the light shows or iBeacons, I need fast, rock-solid network access; leave the rest to other companies that have the resources and focus do it better.

> When did you last get 100Mbit+ speeds with 4G?

Any time I'm not over the 5GB data limit on my plan, really. I can speed test and get values like 102 Mbps down / 35Mbps up on TMobile US, on an old device (iPhone 6). Newer devices have better radios/basebands that support fancier air interface features and thus get even faster speeds.

isn't it capacity as in more devices to the same transmitter.

The problem today is already too many devices for the transmitter internet pipe. 5G will make this worse (or better, if you are a Telco overselling data without consequences)

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).

Except theyll charge a fuckton

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