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Comment by alphabetter | Hacker News Reader

...or, in other words, wireless services require radio spectrum shock.

Was it bad planning to demo 5G without adequate spectrum - yes. Does it tell you anything about how well 5G will work when deployed in a real system - no.

For sure, 5G is overhyped but if you have spectrum (big if) and if you are willing to pay the costs to deploy 5G (another big if) it is technically capable of excellent performance.

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There's plenty of spectrum at 39 GHz. The band is 1400 MHz wide (38.6 to 40.0 GHz). The problem is that current fixed point to point licenses are only 100 MHz wide, so the demo has to fit into that constraint.

However, the FCC will be auctioning 39 GHz in the near future. When that happens, the band will be restructured.

https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-352543A1.pdf

BTW, the 28 GHz band is currently being auctioned. 850 MHz in that band.

https://auctiondata.fcc.gov/public/projects/auction101

What's "radio spectrum shock"? Google didn't find anything referring to this =/

-Not the OP, but I believe his point was that someone(tm) had failed to take into account that blisteringly fast wireless data requires significant chunks of bandwidth - and that bandwidth is a scarce resource.

Others have given good paraphrases, but a literal (and more grammatically correct) translation: "Wireless services require radio spectrum: I'm shocked!</s>"

I parsed it as: “wireless services require radio spectrum? Who would have expected that!”

It's not bad planning, it's about being _first_ on market. Yes there's lots of BS about 5G, but it's still filling the headlines. Also, island-wide field test makes sense before commercially deploying new tech.

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