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Is there any evidence that consumers are actually pushing for 5g? It's always seemed like it was a buzzword that various telcos and equipment vendors push to ensure spend and churn. The telcos likely get to push for subsidies ("just look at the millions of dollars it'll cost for this thing everyone is talking about - you could pitch in, their your residents...") and equipment vendors, self evident.

Well, I'm not in the US but in Spain, and work for a telco. No one in my office feels any push for that. What we are being pushed though is to replace dying copper lines with 3g/4g in many remote-ish places. Copper is expensive to maintain, and laying fiber is expensive too, so people is asking and asking for this kind of solutions, as they feel abandoned with 1/3/6mbps DSL lines, while people in cities has access to +50mbps over fiber.

The problem is that most BTSs have weak links in remote locations, and it will become a problem to manage the increasing density of such devices in this places.

I've read that 5g will allow for more divices/bts and larger coverange, but I still don't understand how that will be possible.

if i understand correctly, individual 5g stations will be able to support more clients, but the distance covered is dramatically reduced (and more degraded by obstacles in line of site) due to shorter wavelength. it is not viable for rural areas, at least not any time soon. i really think the hype is just pr for subsidies as others have said.

edit: some numbers from here https://twitter.com/Gabeuk/status/1099709788676636672 --

> Challenges of 5G deployment, according to Zhengmao Li, EVP China Mobile (biggest operator on the world).

> 1. 5G needs 3 X base stations for same coverage as LTE due to higher frequencies

> 2. Power consumption of a 5G base staion is 3 X LTE

> 3. 5G base station costs 4 X price of LTE

so, 1/3 the coverage at 4x the price

Not all 5g spectrum is shorter wavelength. Opening up the >6GHz range is part of 5G, but it also includes improvements to utilization and additional bands in the existing sub-6GHz range.

That's what I understood from reading somewhat technical docs, but I keep reading here and there that more devices/bts will be supported.

IDK, I'm just an analyst so I'm waiting for the internal spec sheets, until then I can only speculate, but I don't see anyone too exited about it.

IMHO most clients will be happy with an average of 40mbps and decent latencies, which is somewhat difficult to achieve consistently in many places.

But I also know that competitors will force us to get onto 5g with marketing stunts. There is already a large ISP marketing LTE as 5g so...

Edit: Frequencies depend more on regulation than anything else, and the spectrum in Spain is not really open for many experiments. Also more power consumption will be a problem In remote places. Maybe we could use more solar arrays, but that's increasing the cost further and adding complexity.

In South Korea, people actually move to 5G; it's not something like just a marketing buzzword :-o

I've seen about ~20 of my friend switching to 5G phones, partially because Youtube buffers when seeing 1080p videos on the 4G network.

1080 on computers right? Because needing 1080 for a phone is super silly.

I was talking about phones... iPhone XS Max, Galaxy S10 Plus, eg... High-res phone's adoption rate is unbelievably high here :-o

Not if you still have your eyesight.

You would need to be both a myope and a hypermetrope at the same time. Regular human eyes cannot focus that close for a long time.

How often are South Koreans watching 1080p videos on their phones away from wifi? For me as an American, the answer is “almost never”. Buying a whole new phone to optimize an experience I might have once or twice a year seems excessive to me.

> How often are South Koreans watching 1080p videos on their phones away from wifi?̊̈

Pretty often?̊̈ I think I'm watching 1080p videos on my data plan at least 3~4 times a week?

I've posted this elsewhere but I'll C&P

5G doesn't solve a bandwidth problem, it solves a latency problem. 4G has a latency of ~50ms, 5G is more like 1ms. 50ms is noticeable in areas like remote robot control, video conferencing, remote surgery, IoT, remote control vehicles (not on the roads).

Okay, so I was under the impression that 5g paddles were going to also offer about 10 to 15 times the simultaneous phone call throughout. Great for when an event happens and everyone calls at the same time.

That's not true or am I misunderstanding something?

This is simply not true. 5G is both for bandwidth and latency. Your numbers are also very off. 4G can do a lot lower latency than 50ms and 5G will most of the time definitively have higher latency than 1 ms.

From https://www.ofcom.org.uk/about-ofcom/latest/media/media-rele...

"Latency was more consistent than the other measures across the 4G networks tested (an average of 53.1 milliseconds)."

I do work for a UK mobile company and was in a presentation about exactly this. 5G means more realtime.

Yes, 4G _can_ do lower latency, but in general it doesn't, especially in built up areas, where 5G beamforming outperforms .

If you read the article, it doesn't matter why it's needed, it's about capturing future economic potential. The world is going to 5G. This is a fact. The US saying "we don't need it" is basically signing away hundreds of billions of dollars of economic value and wealth transfer.

Whether we think we need it or not, why would we willingly give up the chance to capture value from the next emerging tech?

The US saying "we don't need it" is basically signing away hundreds of billions of dollars of economic value and wealth transfer.

The U.S. isn't saying "we don't need it." The U.S. is saying, "We're a massively large country with a lot of currently underserved areas. How about we concentrate on finishing the 2G, 3G, and 4G rollouts; and we'll do 5G when and where it makes sense?"

The United States isn't Luxembourg. We're not going to cover entire nation with a few dozen base stations. You're talking about hundreds of thousands of stations.

Plus, how far "behind" can any country be since the first large scale deployment (according to Wikipedia) was only three months ago?

You, this, everything. Upvote. After 50+ years of latest tech advancements, everyone keeps forgetting this about America. It's like people think history has nothing to teach us about future tech.

The US doesn't need to implement 5G everywhere to be a leader in the field or take advantage of the technology. Just about every major city is an obvious candidate.

This isn't an all or nothing thing. We can continue 4G roll out in rural areas while 5G gets kicked off. If we wait until the entire US is ready for 5G we'll have lost the race. Which is exactly what the article points out. It's a winner take all game.

Look at the current state of the internet. The US is a leader in cloud services, yet many rural areas lack fast internet. One doesn't preclude the other.

The argument that the US should cede leadership in the tech space because some places don't need 5G (may never need it, or are not ready for it) is absurd.

edit: please read this: https://media.defense.gov/2019/Apr/04/2002109654/-1/-1/0/DIB...

We've reached the point where faster last-mile speeds have diminishing returns. In the past, faster transfer speeds have always been a bottleneck for emerging technologies (supporting a progression from text, to images, to audio, to video and streaming audio, streaming 4K video).

But we've saturated our sensory inputs, and now nobody really knows what to do with faster last-mile speeds. The networking companies tried pitching everyone on the idea that VR/AR would be the next big thing and require major investment in 5G. But that was hogwash, and networking speed is not what's holding back VR adoption.

> Whether we think we need it or not, why would we willingly give up the chance to capture value from the next emerging tech?

Because we have a limited amount of resources for investment? Because we can weigh the pros and cons and future potential, and allocate money towards things we actually need?

If you read this study: https://media.defense.gov/2019/Apr/04/2002109654/-1/-1/0/DIB...

It's pretty clear that most people saying "we don't need 5g" or "we have better things to do" are completely wrong. The implications of losing the 5G race are enormous, from economic to national security. To the point where some are calling for a "Manhattan project" for wireless.

Based on the comments I've seen here, the public is completely misinformed and ignorant of the stakes.

Sorry, but this "study" is fluff.

I've worked in telecom and for the DOD. There are many people in these organizations whose careers depend on continual telecom infrastructure upgrades, and so they spend their days writing reports like these. They're filled with scare tactics about being left behind, but there's virtually no substantive discussion about the tangible benefits of 5G. There's some vague references to IOT, but this just further discredits the report IMO because IOT data tends to be small, adoption of IOT tends to be overstated, and I've seen no compelling evidence that IOT is threatening to exhaust the capacity of our network infrastructure.

The actual threat here is that there are only three cellular networking companies (Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia), none of which are US-based, and Huawei has taken the lead. But buying a bunch of Ericsson/Nokia equipment and rolling out 5G is not going to fix this.

I worked for one of the three companies in Silicon Valley for several years. They paid a non-competitive salary with no stock options, and eventually the skilled people left for greener pastures. The company survives on hiring naive recent graduates who are here on Visas and have limited job mobility. I don't have high expectations for them, and the U.S. buying more 5G equipment from them will not fix the underlying problems.

Whether 5G is superior is completely missing the point. Countries are adopting and buying these devices anyways. So why would the US lose out on that huge amount of money and economic power?

Widespread 5G adoption is coming whether you like it or not. So, we can either accept the reality of the situation or stubbornly lose out to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. I truly don't understand your position here.

You defeated your own argument.

If it's not superior or not needed, why does it matter? That's literally the joke from the movie Canadian Bacon: "Why are the Canadians so advanced in zamboni technology?" That being part of the public reason to invade Canada.

You're also making a "keeping up with the Joneses" argument.

"Oh my God, they have it! I need it to! Or I might be left behind!"

"What is it?"

"I don't know, but I know I have to have it!"

Japan is pretty advanced in toilet tech too. That's WAY more useful at this point. Slap some AI into that with your phone so they track what you eat and can predict when you're going to take a shit. Then, it'll pre-warm the toilet seat for you.

Compared to 4G, I'm not going to die waiting an extra few seconds to watch a youtube video while bored at the DMV because I forgot to bring a book. It would be nice for telecom and municipalities to maintain current infrastructure better so they can reduce costs. A savings that should go to users. Instead of always buying new shit when they just paid off the old equipment.

You're not providing any concrete evidence. What exactly is being lost? Where would those billions of dollars come from?

If you have limited resources, why not spend it on NASA or universal healthcare instead? What about the ROI there? Why not spend it on funding the NIH, the EPA, or subsidies for green energy?

I'm not understanding your position. Could you clarify what you're actually advocating we do?

Are you suggesting we make a massive investment in Ericsson/Nokia 5G equipment and roll it out nationwide? That's costing us billions, not making us billions. For technology that may never provide any significant benefit.

Or that we manufacture 5G in-house? No U.S. company makes cellular infrastructure. Even if we could somehow incentivize a company to do so (which again, would likely cost us many billions), they could never do so in time. We could buy out Ericsson or Nokia, but they're now well behind Huawei, there's no obvious buyer, they're mostly situated overseas, and would likely be a poor investment.

Hey, we all need more high resolution ads damn it! They must stream and be accessible as quickly as possible! Without higher speeds and higher bandwidth, how are companies supposed to tell us what we need?

What makes you think 5g is just for phones? Also, what is a "phone" exactly these days? New ford vehicles ship with a wireless hotspot. A lot of laptops come with sim slots. Is a tablet a phone? What about a phone that has a usb-c port that can drive display port (or UltraGig) and supports bluetooth peripherals?

Once 5g is ubiquitous, hardwired internet connections will go the way of dedicated sound and video cars. Why would anyone want to deal with cable or dsl when everything already runs over IP anyways and they already have a phone plan?

Maybe they want internet inside the house (or car) where the fast 5G is blocked by walls, windows, etc.

Because wired internet connections are faster and far more reliable - even taking into account 5G?

>New ford vehicles ship with a wireless hotspot

to be used by... other phones

>A lot of laptops come with sim slots

really only useful if you're working on a train or something because most stationary places you'd use a laptop at has wifi.

>Is a tablet a phone? What about a phone that has a usb-c port that can drive display port (or UltraGig) and supports bluetooth peripherals?

Not sure where you're trying to get at here, but everything you've described is already covered by your prior point about laptops.

>Why would anyone want to deal with cable or dsl when everything already runs over IP anyways and they already have a phone plan?

data caps? I'd take a 1TB data cap on cable/dsl over an "unlimited" 5g plan with some arbitrary FUP.

    Why would anyone want to deal with cable or dsl when everything
    already runs over IP anyways and they already have a phone plan?

It’s not anything to “deal with”, it’s pretty much “set it and forget it”. But if 5G or whatever is more competitive in terms of price and performance, I’d have no problem switching. I welcome more ISP competition. But $80/month gets me 1TB of transfer at ~150Mbps on Comcast, and I doubt I’ll get a better deal over 5G.

Time will tell, but theoretically, 5G should cost less over time. It's a hell of a lot easier to install a bunch of microcells and provision them electronically than to schedule house calls and send out techs. That's assuming there are no issues with the tech.

As for why you need faster connections, I have seen live streams or youtube videos lagging on the 4G network.

In South Korea, many people are very excited in 5G as our current 4G LTE-A speed (about 50 ~ 80 Mbps) is considered 'not-enough'.

Generally, 4G networks are (at least in Korea) about 1/10 ~ 1/2 of the general WLAN speeds (100Mbps ~ 1Gbps), and I believe that cellular networks have a long way to go to be as fast as WLANs.

As for why you need faster connections, I have seen live streams or youtube videos lagging on the 4G network.

Here's something that people never say anymore: So what?

Who cares if YouTube lags on 4G? So what if you have to wait eight seconds for buffering. Does it really matter if you see SD or HD video instead of 4K video on a three-inch cell phone screen?

No, it doesn't.

Well, I care, my friends care, it's something that many, many, many people care. Literally all of my friends that went to 5G (about ~20 or so?̊̈) all moved partially because of Youtube. (I and my friends hate to see any video in Youtube in 720p or lower.)

There are a lot of people unlike you, and please don't assume that they all have the same patience that you can give to Youtube.

But you stated "need." What is the need for 4K mobile video? Can the human eye even discern the difference between 720p and 4K on a three-inch screen, or is it all social posturing?

Answering my own questions here. I looked it up, and a human eye with perfect vision can't see better than 300dpi.

So, no, unless you are an insect, you cannot tell the difference between 720p and 4K on a mobile phone. It's all just showing off for your friends.

Why would you use a three-inch screen at all (when you are using 4G or higher)?̊̈

Well, iPhone XS Max is 6.5 inch, Galaxy Note 9 is 6.3 inch, Galaxy S10 Plus is 6.4 inch. Most phones used in South Korea are at least 5 inch or bigger.

Korea's 1440x2960 counts 11.68% out of all smartphone users, 1440x2560 counts 19.03%. 1080x1920 counts 29.21%.

That's 60% of all smartphone users.

Then, there comes the need for 1080p/HDR mobile videos (think Netflix!).

Most phones used in South Korea are at least 5 inch or bigger.

Awesome. But the article is about the United States.

Korea's 1440x2960 counts 11.68% out of all smartphone users

2960x1440 on a 6.5-inch phone is 506dpi, which is more than the human eye can see. So you're either a marketing victim, or trying to impress your friends, or both.

I stand by my assertion that you don't "need" (your word) 4K on a phone.

I’m not sure if it’s accurate but I’ve heard that 5g (or at least some form of next generation physical infrastructure) will be required for the transition to autonomous vehicles. I think you’re right about media consumption however, I don’t see how most users could justify upgrading to a 5g mobile plan.

Well, I don't. I got rid of my iPhone 7 Plus and replaced it with a cheap flip phone. Haven't really missed my smart phone at all to be honest (Ok, if I'm really honest I miss Apple Pay!).

Do you need 4G? or is your phone need to connect to internet at all?