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Comment by TheLoafOfBread | Hacker News Reader

Which 5G does these are talking about? The sub 6GHz 5G aka relabeled LTE or the mmWave/UWB 5G? Because the UWB does not really penetrate anything, so it might be working good in lab, but useless in practice.

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> relabeled LTE

To be pedantic, LTE stands for “Long-term evolution” and was always intended to be the foundation of future cell network standards.

I won’t get too into the details, but generations 1-4 dealt primarily with modulation techniques, and OFDM (the technique used in LTE) is more or less the best we know how to do over wireless.

To add some confusion, the “nth generation” features have been described by the International Telecommunication Union (e.g. IMT-2020 for the 5th gen), while the standards are developed by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project. Previously the standards had their own names (UMTS in 3G, LTE in 4G) but now the 3GPP is labeling their current releases of standards “5G” too, and yeah they include some concepts that go back even to 3G.

To add further to the confusions, 3G network systems has been made obsolete by not being supported anymore by the 4G/5G operators around the world and somehow they would revert back to EDGE network systems (2.5G) if the wireless signals are bad [1].

[1]https://www.wired.com/story/3g-service-sunset-what-it-means

Lol, it's all about that sweet sweet spectrum

It's not in the general, constant sense that you have to worry about, but rather in specific applications. When you're out in public, "they" will have 3-meter-accuracy, more than enough. But when you're in stores, and malls, and other venues where UWB is set up, then that's where real problems begin. They'll be able to track which advertisements you linger around, and which sections you visit.

It's going to be a whole new category of passive location tracking.

My opinion is that in-building tracking doesn't have to be an issue, and the people who care don't linger watching advertisements in Malls. More power to someone who finds a way to use that data to make buildings like Grocery stores more efficient, like getting room temp products first and frozen things last during the walk.

There are companies doing this already, but with their current CCTV systems. You don't even have to buy equipment, just the software, and you get e-commerce metrics for brick and mortar stores

It works on stadiums and other similar hugely crowded open venues, which is the point of it, AFAICT.

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