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Comment by mfer | Hacker News Reader

This is where marketing and confusion can come in. There is what the technology is capable of and then the network backing it. For example, where I live I get a fraction of what 4G can provide. The reason is the cell phone providers network. I could get far faster speeds out of 4G if the providers provided it.

5G has some positives and negatives over 4G. For example, 5G frequencies interfere with the detection of water vapor for weather forecasts, are hyper local so lower latency but need to have towers in every neighborhood, can handle more devices connected (so all the hardware reporting back to manufacturers and others can phone home), and has the potential for faster speeds.

In theory, 5G is faster than 4G. In practice, I'm not likely to see the faster and I don't need it for my day to day activity.

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>get a fraction of what 4G can provide

Providers love to boast about max speeds, but the reality is every device under a base station shares the total capacity, more devices means competition and slower speeds.

I thought the reason we get a fraction of the theoretical is because so many phones compete? And with more numerous and shorter range towers there will be less competition, so we'll get closer to theoretical speed.

Introducing some gaussian noise might actually improve the accuracy of weather predictions.

5G is just a protocol. It'll be rolled out on low band frequencies because it is more efficient than LTE, but re-farming spectrum is a big deal so they're going to roll it out on high band frequencies first.

I thought 5G and 4G are both LTE?

No, 5G is a new standard. It's kinda confusing because there are so many standards, 3G, 3.5G, 3.95G, 4G etc.

It’s also hella confusing because there’s not a marketing or real protocol name attached beyond the “5G” moniker, at least not that I could easily find.

I can name GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, HSPA, 1xRTT, EVDO, WiMAX, and LTE off the top of my head and tell you what “G” they are associated with (1, 2, 3, 3.5, 2, 3, 4, 4 respectively).

5G is a vaporous term with no real definition right now other than “whatever the fuck the ITU has decided to call 5G”.

EDIT: I guess they’re calling the air interface “5G NR (New Radio)”. How memorable. Guess with everyone finally getting on the same page with LTE in the current generation they felt no need to come up with a real name.

Bridges are just to enable people to cross a gap. But, can we separate what something is from where and how it's being setup to be used and who controls that for what purposes? Technology provides a solution. But, what are the problems and intended uses.

If we don't look at the bigger picture we can't look at the wider impacts, the ethics, or any of that. This is something I learned in engineering ethics. It was a required class at my university for engineers for a reason.

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