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Comment by SwiftyBug | Hacker News Reader

5G also enables internet of things to finally happen.

Has the network ever been a problem or bottleneck for the deployment of IoT, or is it just yet another bullshit buzzword pushed by the telecoms industry, similar to remote surgery/telemedicine? Most current IoT is using 2G cellular modems and seems to be fine with it given that the majority of devices don't need high bandwidth and the carriers themselves are not rationing the amount of SIMs that can be active, suggesting that there's plenty of capacity left too.

It's not about network speed, it's about the power requirements, range and iSIM.

With LTE-M (not sure if it's considered 5G, but it's a new LTE standard being rolled out at the same time anyway) or NB-IoT you can have devices using way less power to stay connected to the internet, and the range can be very impressive too. Of course, the bandwidth is also very low. But that's OK for things like tracking devices (they're making reindeer trackers in Finland) and basic smart watches.

With eSIM or iSIM you can also make the device smaller

> is using 2G cellular modems

I think carriers really want to discontinue 2G eventually. It's really inefficient. They've already dropped support for 3G around here.

I'm guessing it's also way more power hungry than LTE-M/NB-IoT

Can you make something like this with 2G? https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/airbolt/the-airbolt-gps

I don't think so...

I’m a layman on this topic but watching the Apple video it sounded like 5G has higher power requirements than LTE. He even explained how it switches between them to conserve battery. LTE when you don’t need speed and 5G when you do.

Do not be confused. These technologies are very different to the 5G technology (called “New Radio”) the new iPhone and 5G phones in general are using. They are designed around using as little energy as possible and maintaining connectivity in very difficult conditions to the expense of speed and latency.

The reason IoT hasn’t completely taken off yet is simply because it’s still developing as an industry. There are lots of open questions about maintenance and architecture and how cloud IoT services should work. As it becomes more commodified it will become widespread.

[edit - noticed sibling post... “smart toasters” etc total BS nonsense, but IoT for business will be transformative]

I don't actually want to live in a world where everything with a battery is connected to the internet.

We all know that the manufacturer will stop updating the firmware after a few months, leaving botnets to pick them up.

So like, my toaster can finally get hacked?

I hate conspiracies but I honestly think the IoT concept is an extremely terrible idea and perhaps even a cultural and societal nuclear bomb.

IoT is much more useful for business than consumer use. For instance adding tons of sensors to expensive equipment like a fleet of trucks.

It also would allow to release product with buggy and incomplete firmware because you can always push an update, right?

so like like your appliances will be dumping usage data 24x365.

Not if it runs NetBSD.

Do you mean LTE-M? Is that considered 5G?

Both LTE-M and NB-IoT are considered technologies of the 5G family. Technically they are way simpler versions of LTE, but they can coexist with "normal" 4G and 5G. A 4G / 5G base station can allocate part of its radio resources to these mobile technologies. In the future, with slicing this allocation can even be dynamic.

Most of the times, when people discuss how 5G will serve "massive machine type communications" they refer to LTE-M / NB-IoT.

Is that a good thing?

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