The Disappointment of 5G | Hacker News Reader

The Disappointment of 5G

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162 pointsdsnr169 comments

Ignoring all the hype and BS, all the cell infrastructure really comes down to a battle between user bandwidth needs and available spectrum (multiplied by spectral efficiency and density of towers). Get this wrong and customer service tanks as cell sites get congestied.

There are virtually no new applications enabled IMO with 5G speeds vs LTE speeds/latency, assuming they are both not congested. 100mbit/sec LTE with 20-30ms latency is fine for nearly everything; gigabit with 5ms latency on 5G doesn't really change much, at least for the next few years.

5G NR (the access layer of 5G) isn't hugely more spectrum efficient than LTE on a bitz/hz basis, at least on a downstream basis where the most demand is (upstream is really important too though, especially for TCP, I'm not discounting that). [1].

We are getting diminishing returns on spectrum efficiency. Which means more and more spectrum required to keep up with demands, which is really what 5G enables (more channel bonding, much wider channels). However, we are totally running out of spectrum to allocate to mobile services. The spectrum that is available in large quantities is extremely high frequency and can't really penetrate walls (it will even struggle with rain).

So long term the only thing that carriers can do is densify their cell sites, which is extremely expensive from a capex perspective. Some carriers have realised this, some haven't (or don't have the funds to do it). In the UK 3UK is doing it; with thousands of planning applications to add new sites (with huge NIMBY backlash everywhere).

1: https://www.5g-networks.net/5g-technology/spectral-efficienc...

I agree with that. 5G is overhyped, probably due to the fact that sales guys were seeing speeds up to XY GB/s, but forget to mention that it is working only on wideband (mmWave) part of 5G, which might come later, but maybe never at all.

So people either have "5G" which is just a marginally better LTE working on same frequencies as 3G used to or people have 5G mmWave, which works only when they are standing at one spot of a street and in a very specific body position. The moment when there is a wall, glass, tree or a even a mist, 5G mmWave does not work.

5G is disappointment, because it was senselessly overhyped yet its overall usability for end user is not much different from 4G.

Not really - the sub 6GHz frequencies are often different and in many countries are significantly wider than the LTE ones. Eg 3UK has 120MHz of spectrum in the 3.6GHz-4GHz band. I think the absolute max LTE configuration in the UK was EE with 90MHz (but on 5CA, Bands 1+3+3+7+7). There is a lot more new spectrum on 5G.

It is a major improvement for sure - not just totally marketing nonsense, but it's not the world changing impact that the carriers pushed.

> There are virtually no new applications enabled IMO with 5G speeds vs LTE speeds/latency

You can reasonably replace your home internet with 5G

You could do that with LTE a decade ago. It is more than fast enough for 4K video streaming, and typical latencies are below 50 ms. Most users would not notice any difference between LTE and 5G.

It’s not about the speed, it’s about data limits. LTE had fairly restrictive data caps due to congestion constraints whereas more mature 5G deployment will allow for reasonable data caps and still acceptable service for enough people.

In the US maybe. In Europe, at least here in France, there is plenty of 4G plan costing 25€-30 for 250Gb, 300Gb or even no limit

Nope. Less than $20/month gets me unlimited 80/30 4G/LTE using a single 15 MHz band. If I got a 5G/NR modem, I could get unlimited 200/30 for the same price.

Part of the parents point is that is isn’t true in general. The overall efficiency isn’t much better , so service level basically comes down to how you chop up available bandwidth.

So if you happen to live somewhere with oversubscribed LTE and get in on a new 5G - it’s seems great. But a) it’s very locatiin dependeny and b) it probably won’t last

As someone who just went though a 3 month battle is one of the major ISP's in the UK to get a family members property connected I can suggest 1 big thing that many customers will notice a differnce between LTE and 5G. Gaming. First games are getting huge, so the extra speed is always a bonus for getting the title downloaded faster.

At the family members property inquestion their old fixed line boardband connection was 20meg (That was the fastest they could get on VDSL2 because of line quality and distance to the street cab - no G.Fast and no current plans for Openreach fibre nor OFNL), with two teenage kids in the house with current gen consoles each and the parents also wanting to stream on demand video and on of the parents working from home a few days a week, their connection would get overwhelmed all the time.

"Thankfully", their street is on the Virgin Media network however its only recently been added to the network and the property has a shared drive so the address was coming up as that VM was not avalable at the address even though there was a clear run of grass from the cable duct to the house.

3 months later we finally got VM to connect the house and now they have 500meg (did a cost benifit on the speed needed and opted for 500 over a gig cause for they also inisted on a phone line & calls, which was gonna add another £25 p/m on the bill for a gig and they should be fine with 500 - the kids are not contrubiting to the cost) and the kids love it and the parents like that the kids are not complaining about the net speed any more.

5G is rolling out in their area (Currently marked as avalable outdoors, weak indoors which I validated with a site visit), but had that been avaliable (and not over subscribed) it would have been a viable Home Boardband alt to their current fixed line providers as it would have provided the speeds the family required, a low latency so the kids can't complain while playing online and decent video calling for the WFM parent and saved the hassle of getting the property connected to the network (which I kind of expect to happen again once OpenReach finally plan the fibre build for their street, the current copper phone lines are underground not on telegraph poles and I'm not sure of the quality of the duct work that line runs though so it might be a PITA to get OpenReach - prob the reason the area is currently not on the plans) and would be cheaper per month than Virgin Media.

I used to use LTE for my home boardband for a while (was in temp accommodation helping with a family illness, landlord didn't want me putting in a fixed line and no 5G at the time), the speed was fine for me alone (about 100meg iirc, I just had to wait for big downloads), the kicker was the 100ms+ latency I was getting on LTE, which was a PITA esp playing first person shooters online. (EDIT: That and also being CGNAT'ed - not the end of the world, but gaming still preferes not being CGNAT'ed - but the shift to IPv6 _should_ fix that.) If all you can get is LTE its "ok", but I wouldn't recommend it if you have alt's such as 5G or (decent) fixedline.

LTE latency is fine for gaming. 20-30ms, very similar to DOCSIS cable broadband.

The problem isn't LTE, it's that the LTE tower you are/were connected to is congested, so latency starts rising.

The exact same thing happens on 5G, though there is more capacity & fewer users on it right now. Congestion is starting to build everywhere on 5G in the UK. I imagine in a year or twos time performance will be pretty average on 5G in most places.

Lte latency is ok for gaming, it's sometimes faster than aDSL. As you said, the problem occurs when congested, which in my experience is either always or when you are free to game (drawing parallels to traffic).

But to be absolutely fair, aDSL latency isn't good. On the same hardware, i went from 70-80 ms on aDSL to 10-15ms (in various games, not raw icmp) when i switched to fiber. Sure, for most games that isn't that much but try to do any kind of competitive gaming and you very quickly end up in situations where ping becomes an issue.

The GP comment highlights 5G as a mitigation for spectrum congestion. Driving wireless home Internet adoption seems like it'd make that problem worse, not better, where wired alternatives exist.

The problem is fluctuations of the load on the tower and random signal outages which can happen at any time. Also in my experience LTE links sometimes drops when working for long periods on it, meaning I need to reconnect VPN and do other annoying actions.

And that's not even starting on the problem of coverage. Especially in the apartment blocks with a lot of rebar in the walls. And 5G higher frequencies have even worse coverage that 4G. If I have a problem with Wifi inside my home I simply buy repeaters or wire a new AP with a cable. WIth cell network I can't do this.

We are a long way from using cell network as a primary one (if alternative is available of course).

> We are a long way from using cell network as a primary one

I tend to agree from a technical pov.

Otoh i know a lot of ppl who do just that and don’t even bother with landline/wifi. Connecting a gaming console via wifi to the phone with „unlimited data“ and downloading 100gb+ games is surprisingly common.

No I can’t, it’s blocked by my walls. Even 4G drops down to about 10mbps inside with 150mbps outside.

Yup, that's what I did while I was waiting for fibre to be installed

I've got a 5G router that gives me 400Mbps download at around 30ms latency and have been working full-time over it for more than a year

Was £50 / month for unlimited data on a two year plan (bit more than that now due to inflation)

> You can reasonably replace your home internet with 5G

Doing that at scale is an amazing way to drive 5G speeds and latency into the ground, making it worse than old cable connections.

I thought 5G solves scalability issues (at least better than 4G)

There's no magic that will beat physics. 5G does very little here.

You can, but it's definitely better if you have an ultra wideband 5G close to your home. That's a pretty legitimate no-compromise replacement for typical cable internet service.

> replace your home internet with 5G

Mr Shannon enters the chat..

For the past year my home internet was 4G …

You can, in the same places where you could already replace it with LTE back then, and in remote place where you couldn't already, 5G isn't going to happen anyway.

I live in an older apartment complex that doesn't have the requisite connections to get wired internet from any mainstream provider in the area, so I have 5G home internet and it's quite good. No less reliable than wired was for me in the past, and I generally get speeds around 600 Gbps down/100 up.

EDIT: Mbps, not Gbps

> 600 Gbps down/100 up

I think you meant Mbps :)

Ah, you're right. My bad! Edited my original comment.

T-Mobile keeps sending me texts trying to get me to sign up for their 5G home internet. They're offering 50 Mbps down for $60/month. Xfinity gives me 200 megs down for the same price and lower latency, and when you're losing to Comcast, that's not a good sign.

T-Mobile is cost effective in rural areas. They’ve done huge investment into rural 5G infrastructure in places like Ohio, which means homes which only get like 6mbps max from Century Link now have a real option for internet. The only competition is StarLink, which is way more expensive.

Comcast isn't the real competitor. Lots of folks are stuck on shitty ADSL because the hassle of getting cables in and run—especially as a renter—are too high. I've even heard of folks who can't get a decent enough signal from Comcast switching because the time and energy to replace the coax to their condo was too much.

For me the temptation of 5g over cable are better contracts. The cable provider in my apartment already has cable setup in my home with a no-contract “WiFi” option. But to get faster speeds I have to pay $150 buck setup fee and sign up for a year long lease.

Like, nope 5g’s probably good enough.

Don’t forget backhaul bandwidth. All of the 5G cell sites need their backhauls upgraded to realize that the spectrum can support.

In the UK at least, most backhaul is fibre, and probably 10gigE already given LTE can push way more than 1gig with multiple sectors. But yes, some more remote sites may need upgraded.

> There are virtually no new applications enabled IMO with 5G speeds vs LTE speeds/latency, assuming they are both not congested.

I think 5G latency requirements are currently very academically driven without much practical validation, see e.g. Tactile Internet.

Latency is also "only" improved to and from a tower, the rest stays the same.

Absolutely, this is a central subject of study in Tactile Internet from what I’ve heard; next-gen backhaul/WAN technology. It starts with first hop to support local Tactile Internet networks. Private, ultra low latency 5G LANs are already being used in e.g. some production facilities.

>5G NR (the access layer of 5G) isn't hugely more spectrum efficient than LTE on a bitz/hz basis, at least on a downstream basis where the most demand is (upstream is really important too though, especially for TCP, I'm not discounting that).

This was something anyone could see from a mile away. Generations 1-4 were about multi-plexing signals on the same spectrum (1 was frequency channels, 2 was time channels, 3 started to include multiple simultaneous access via clever math, and 4G used orthogonal frequencies to really amp up the simultaneous access).

Problem with 5G is that orthogonal frequencies are pretty much the best way we know how to multiplex, even over wires, so we had to look elsewhere for things like new frequency bands and multiple antennae, etc. These were never going to feel as impactful as the multiplexing changes did, but there was too much at stake for marketing departments, so they just plowed ahead with hype.

> There are virtually no new applications enabled IMO with 5G speeds vs LTE speeds/latency, assuming they are both not congested. 100mbit/sec LTE with 20-30ms latency is fine for nearly everything; gigabit with 5ms latency on 5G doesn't really change much, at least for the next few years.

I'd say few new consumer applications (other than replacing home internet). In commercial applications like TV production being being able to pack 10x as much data into a connection at lower latency is interesting and enables some things that previously required complex/unreliable cellular bonding or wildly expensive satellite connections.

This goes both ways: how can anyone possibly make (let alone sell) new applications when practically no consumer has a good enough connection to use them?

> There are virtually no new applications enabled IMO with 5G speeds vs LTE speeds/latency, assuming they are both not congested.

5G will enable the sorts of edge computing needed for stuff like facial recognition. It's fundamentally a policing/military/counterinsurgency technology being laundered as consumer tech.

https://twitter.com/2youngBadazz/status/1364621468999409666?...

>5G would enable doctors to perform surgery remotely from across the country

I never, ever understood that argument; I simply can't imagine a hospital relying on a cellular network for such sensitive work.

> I never, ever understood that argument; I simply can't imagine a hospital relying on a cellular network for such sensitive work.

Maybe the argument was more for government officials, not for people like you.

What does this tell us about government officials?

That the majority are career politicians, not domain experts.

I expect those politicians should have advisory staff exactly for handling such cases, as there's never a domain expert in the lead (and there are different opinions also in every field). Now if that advisory works as expected, that's another story - maybe the politicians won't ask, maybe the advisors would represent some interests, maybe...

That they deal exclusively in propaganda, with no regard to the real world.

No, we already knew that.

Not for surgery per se (which is too high of a risk), but in my country people did manage to find a similar, reasonable use case. They equipped ambulances with high-res cameras and cellular network for senior medical technicians in hospitals to give advices to medical technicians on the ambulance in real-time, which seems like a nice addition.

Very nice

ps: reminds me that emergency team came with a broken 2G portable EKG that couldn't transmit data to the cardiologist when my mother had a spasm.. driver told me that the device was around 10000 euros, it was quite shocking.

4G can comfortably stream 1080p video with low latency. What does 5G being to this scenario?

Nothing really special for 5G. The governmental bodies (and the tech firms involved) use the term "5G" just to gain visibility.

I did see some of those ambulances running multiple streams from different perspectives, though. Is the bandwidth of 4G networks capable of doing that?

Wider bands, lower latency, less congestion, the promise of switching off legacy in the future (with SA)

Network slicing allows critical bandwidth usage to be prioritized absolutely. Can’t do that with LTE.

Not to mention the sheer density of connections that can be serviced by a 5G radio over an LTE radio.

And couldn’t they already do it over the internet?

Presumably they mean doctors can have an internet connection in remote places. But that’s not the same as being far from their patient.

Not in remote unwired terrain.

Examples for "wireless" (roadless) transport of physical packets

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipline_(drone_delivery_comp....

In remote areas, Starlink is probably a better bet than 5G to allow for low latency, high bandwidth use cases.

This arbitrary web site disagrees: 25ms vs 1ms latency.

https://history-computer.com/starlink-vs-5g-which-is-better

but which really remote area gives you 5G with 1ms latency? If it's worth to have that infrastructure you might as well have fiber at home.

It's not an argument, it's marketing to non-techies.

Put it simply you have to sell more phones than you did last year (selling less, or even the same amount, isn't enough). If you don't have features to justify that (which you don't, as the very fast smartphone evolution has mostly stagnated), you make them up. 5G being one of them.

Because it’s not a real argument, it’s marketing fluff. “Oh, look how futuristic it is! If you (the government) approve all our demands for reduced regulation and subsidize our installation costs, you’ll get re-elected by your people who now live like the Jetsons!”

They’ve been saying the same exact thing since cellular data was starting to be deployed 30 years ago. Search for the AT&T “you will” campaign from the 90s to see.

I think one of the biggest improvement points of 5G, which most people don't notice, is that it improves the number of devices that can connect to the local cell tower.

With 4G, you get 100k device connections per 1 sq kilometer.

With 5G, this number becomes 1 million connections per square kilometer.

This is a very big deal if you are in a heavily congested area (big cities, major league sporting events). Also a very big deal to high priority services (like police radios, emergency services, etc), as it goes a long way to ensuring connections are available.

Also goes a long way to delivering on the promise of IoT... with 1 million connections a lot more things become possible.

It's more of an evolutionary tech, than revolutionary. Then again, 5G means means 5th generation... implying the evolutionary process. The average user won't notice it, but its still important nonetheless.

5G is definitely a cool tech. What's not cool is how carriers trick people into thinking they're using "5G" (or even "6G") just because their phone's cellular data connection is operating on the 5G spectrum. What's also not cool is how carriers market their 5G services with claims of speeds that a normal user will never achieve. I've never seen a carrier market 5G as a solution for maintaining connections in congested areas, even though that realistically seems to be the big ticket item.

See my other comment here, this solves carrier problems not so much consumer problems.

Yeah it's a trick. Marketing being what it is, it's hard to sell it any other way, they have to fallback on "buy this new shiny thing".

This perfectly illustrates why 5G is a disappointment for consumers—increasing the number of devices each tower can support is a carrier problem, not a customer problem.

I've never in my life heard somebody on 4G LTE say, "Eugh, my connection is too slow!". It's always "fast enough" to browse the web at reasonable speeds, watch videos, or have an OK-quality FaceTime call.

Totally agree, this fixes infrastructure problems, not so much end consumer problems.

Still, the carriers have to get people to upgrade their phones before 4G gets sunset. Can't exactly blame them for pushing the tech, seems like the transition to digital TV. No one was happy their old TVs were going to stop working, but such is progress.

I have been at concerts/events/trade shows where the 4G cell network dragged to a crawl from overuse - but speaking as a consumer, I never realized a benefit of 5G was reducing that problem.

I'm not sure about cost comparison between 4G tower and 5G tower, but from consumer standpoint it feels like doing expenses for the sake of saving carrier's money.

As consumer I get to pay for a compatible device, frequently pay more for the compatible plan, and realistically, get nothing in return to show for it.

How well does 5G work wrt distance from the tower? So far, the good old 2G (GSM/GPRS/EDGE) is best in this regard, at least in my own experience. No matter how far from civilization you are, you're more likely to get 2G than no service at all. You can call, sure, but data works so terribly it could as well be unavailable. Does 5G solve that?

Caveat, I'm not exactly an expert at that level. My understanding is that "it depends".

I do know that transmission distance goes down as the frequency (and bandwidth) increases. For example, 2.4 GHz WiFi works farther than 5 GHz, but is slower.

I also know that 5G enables high speed "micro cells".. Higher bandwidth but smaller coverage zone. The idea that every city block can have a mini cell in their corner traffic light equipment buried undergound etc., less obtrusive cell towers needed. Sort of in between WiFi and true cell towers. I like to think of it as super charged WiFi on steriods. So that's one capability 5G brings, but it doesn't mean that your local experience is using this.

So, again, it all depends.

Maybe someone else here can post a more definitive answer or techincal explanation.

You're correct but Ill add some nuance: higher frequencies = higher speeds, but lower propagation out in the real world. So you solve the propagation issue by putting the radio closer to users, eg on street poles. But you also take care to propagate the signal optimally, eg instead of blasting it out in a wide cone of coverage, maybe you use beamforming and MIMO to focus on where the users actually are. Additionally 5G tech also provides some energy efficiency benefits on the radio.

The other things that cellular has over wifi are much better handover between radio access points (almost seamless on cellular, less so on wifi) and better behavior in environments where multiple users are transmitting at once (wifi is similar to csma/cd, like in the old days of ethernet). This is going to change with wifi 6E, but that isnt mainstream yet.

If tech hype is more or less marketing + effective PR (tons of articles and blog post written about said tech), I've felt this author's sentiment toward the hype viz. reality of 5G with AR/VR, blockchain, and the current wave of AI as well.

So much of the 2010's internet UX is fully baked. We can communicate with voice, audio and video with the world from anywhere on cheap pocket devices. It would be harder to make this any more frictionless without some sort of new HCI paradigm. We've got wireless comms going wherever it made commercial sense, "enabling" workers to get directives and do business from their morning commutes. You can shop from the toilet.

You can also make original music in the palm of your hand for the cost of a used iPhone.

What I'm getting at is the digital revolution is here if not already over. We're in our cyberpunk future already, but surprise humans don't need too much to be absolutely sated if not overwhelmed by technology and I don't think they're itching for more of it. The business of selling tech right now is hard because so many of the jobs are _done_. All that you can do is generate hype.

I don't doubt I'm missing some of the forest through the hype trees here, but tech in the 2020's has a lot to prove to me.

> No wireless technology has been a bigger flop than 5G when comparing the hype to the eventual reality.

Well that’s obviously not true. I was at the launch event for WiMAX which had huge hype and now you’ve probably never heard of it.

5G actually exists and works. In my home (admittedly near a tower) it’s faster than my gigabit Fios over wifi.

Maybe it was a flop as seen by people who expected it to make them grow a third arm or get mind-controlled by the secret government. That plan flopped greatly. /s

Ironically, T-mobile is sitting pretty for 5G spectrum because the acquisition of Sprint gave them a boatload of spectrum that Sprint in turn got when they acquired Clearwire...who acquired the spectrum for WiMax. Funny how life turns out.

It's curious how telcos' incessant blabbering about 5G ended up getting so deep into people's heads that they began thinking it was something that would make every interaction on their smartphones instantaneous. 5G was never about the individual user. It was always about the grid; the ability to provide expected bandwidth/connectivity to more users at the same time.

It reminds me of 3G - at least in the UK, the rollout/marketing of it seemed synonymous with video calling.

Same marketing style played out in Sweden. Endless advertisements showing manically laughing people overcome by joy from doing video calls on flip-phones without cameras.

This sounds a bit too absurd, do you have a link to an example video?

Rolling backwards slightly, here's a good one for "Internet on your phone" I remember from about the year 2000: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkvNW3do-9g

I did my dissertation project in WAP. This ad grossly oversold the concept of "Internet on your phone" (which properly kicked off in a way that the 'regular person' would embrace the UK around 2007, I think).

The 'future' is always mis-sold.

A couple of videos I uploaded years ago;

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xKwHVQ3GA_A

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OCj9RDl3PgA

No, but you might find something on YouTube.

Finally someone who understands.

The benefits of 5G have nothing to do with your cellphone service and everything to do with enabling connected infrastructure that could not be done with LTE.

At least for me individually 5G has been a worse experience vs LTE because of how quickly it drains the tiny 2,227mah battery in my iphone 12 mini, turning off 5G doesn't noticeably affect my cell performance while at the same time increases my battery life by 1-2 hours. I can't imagine how bad it'd be if i had a ultra-wideband plan, that radio requires a giant cutout in the metal frame which is also only present on u.s. region iphones. 5g ultra-wideband has always seemed like just a party trick to me (who would ever need gigabyte speeds on a phone??)

It's pretty funny how T-Mobile has rolled out 5G in my small town (with a single cell tower), but have not bothered to upgrade the connection to the tower so we still only get about 2mbps on a good day.

Even better is the local ISP offers 10gbps fiber service and has lines directly next to the tower, but the cell tower doesn't use that, and instead has some long range microwave backhaul.

I always wonder what the point of spending the money to upgrade the tower to 5G was.

Which small town has 10G?

The ones that installed municipal fiber. I have some relatives in a small town in Minnesota who have this. Apparently it was some Obama era project and they've quietly had amazing Internet ever since.

Marketing

5G gave me an incredible, almost magical, connection for in my home that's located 30km from the nearest city. On a good day, I'm getting 600/50Mbps with ~20ms latencies which is about 10-100 times better than the previous connection was giving me. It made my family's life possible in the lockdown times of Covid-19.

Fiber will be soon available here, though, and I'll be replacing 5G with it, to get a more stable, less energy-hungry connection that is less tied to chinese suppliers of networking hardware and software.

edit perhaps what I have is only some ultimate final form of 4G, I don't know nor care really.

Looking back I realized it felt similar hearing about 5G all the time just as it feels hearing about AI now.

Odd take, the 5G hype was talking about devices that _might_ exist in the future and _might_ solve problems. I have used AI (or ML at least) 4 times today to solve problems. One was hype and I might use, the other is in my hands and real.

There were people like you telling me how great 5G is and showing me a video of gigabit speed speedtest on their phone.

Perhaps you talk about non-pop AI/ML - I mean GPT, LLMs and chatbots.

That's a fair point, my apologies.

I meant more in the sense that I have 5G on my phone, but don't use it because its not very great.

Meanwhile I have CoPilot, use ChatGPT at work and am integrating Azure ML currently in side-projects.

There is just so much material value I am getting today from AI which makes comparison to faster Internet moot.

What problems? Did it actually solve them, or just convince you that it did?

5G and Metaverse are closely linked in hype.

In Germany you can pay 35€/mo for 5GB of data traffic (t-mobile) and then enjoy the bandwidth of 5G for a full 40 seconds. It's a total joke.

That's a problem with German Telcos, not 5G as a technology

Why is Germany so expensive?

Not only expensive, the coverage is spotty too. Driving cross country, even along major highways often results in many dead spots.

It's _really_ hard to come up with a coherent theory of European telecom pricing; it is just all over the place. For instance, Ireland is more expensive than the UK thing... So it's a density thing, right? Not so fast; Germany (denser than Ireland) is also more expensive than Ireland... There are some general _trends_, but big exceptions to all of them.

Interesting quote:

> The prevalent means of connecting to the Internet in Germany is DSL, introduced by Deutsche Telekom in 1999. Other technologies such as Cable, FTTH and FTTB (fiber), Satellite, UMTS/HSDPA (mobile) and LTE are available as alternatives.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_Germany

It’s not anymore. For 30-50€ you can get more or less unlimited data plans on all three networks

Well, T-Mobile is just way too expensive anyway. I pay 25€ for unlimited with Vodafone. It's not the best network but it works surprisingly well where I live. I get ~500mbps at work and ~300mbps at home. Much better upgrade than the one from 3G to 4G.

I have unlimited with my plan. I just compared the costs of all plans with the added costs of a new smart phone. The very best return was actually going with the almost highest plan.

So I always recommend to do the Excel sheet and include all costs for the 2 year contract.

I just got 50G for 30€/month with O2.

I have good experience with 5G.

The speeds are great. On 4G and 4G+ I've been getting speeds of 20-30mbps even though ISP's were advertising 200+mbps speeds (theoretical maximums)

On 5G I easily get 100+mbps, majority of times around 500mbps.

Where I live we get unlimited usage 5G for around $25-30

From the article:

The introduction of the new spectrum has relieved the pressure on overloaded cell sites, and we’ve seen cellular speeds rise significantly.

All the BS hype about 5G was a red flag for me. They were always showing how doctors could operate on people in far away places (never mentioning the fact that the people in the far away places probably have no health care) and it is also all supposed to lead to everything from energy efficiency to higher efficiency.

But all I get is a higher phone bill and no option to opt out of a 5G plan even though I turn it off on my phone.

And what did we probably really get? More surveillance. You do know, don't you, that these mmWave can pinpoint you and your activity with an ever increasing exactness that should concern all of us.

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8804831

https://www.hindawi.com/journals/js/2021/6657709/

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8645553

https://www.fastcompany.com/90314058/5g-means-youll-have-to-...

I sometimes wonder if the dumber 5G conspiracies were seeded as part of a psyops campaign to paint anyone negative of 5G as a fringe lunatic.

I agree. What I said is completely valid and I am being DV'd. And the minute I start talking about just the possibility that 5G could be harmful or used against us people think I believe that they also have nanobots in vaccines.

If someone wants to criticize the idea that 5G could be used for greater intelligence gathering please have at it. Otherwise, your DVs just make me more paranoid.

Phones have had GPS since the 2G era. 5G is the least of your problem.

You’re wrong here, even the first iPhone did not have a GPS.

Just because the first iPhone didn’t have GPS, it doesn’t mean GPS didn’t exist in phones before then.

I had this phone before the iPhone existed and it had GPS.

https://www.phonescoop.com/phones/phone.php?p=824

It came out in 2005:

https://www.cnet.com/reviews/samsung-mm-a900-sprint-review/

That is a 3G phone.

And having a GPS on your phone does not make YOU trackable. It only matters if the phone sends that data to someone else. That was not happening on these flip phones.

I cannot believe I fell for this.

The point I am making is that you do not need to have a phone to be surveilled and tracked by 5G. Look at the studies I posted.

The point was that just because the iPhone didn’t have GPS, it doesn’t mean that phones didn’t have GPS before then.

And government tracking by cell phones was also around in 2005

https://www.fletc.gov/sites/default/files/imported_files/tra...

The worst thing the Australian government has done in recent years is backflip on the onus being on them to connect you to fibre via their National Broadband Network (NBN) programme, now the onus is on the consumer to spend thousands to connect to 5G instead.

I've been doing up my mother's connection 25 mins away from a city CBD (I live in another state). I have had to purchase a $1,000 5G modem, 2x2 MIMO directional antennae, rewired the property myself with Cat6 and an old Cisco switch and waps.

I got a 22-26x increase in download off peak and 30x increase in upload (up to about 600-700mb/s off peak)

Would've been wonderful if they just gave them the fibre they promised, though

Fixed wireless 5G is definitely faster but the medium's line of sight requirement means I'd really prefer slow 250mb/s fibre to volatile 100-750mb/s 5G

I've worked out I could hit about 2.5-3gb/s if I went 4x4 MIMO with a 10m mast and aimed it perfectly (tower is 300m away) - but there's no way to control who else is connected and taking the bandwidth - so I'm not investing anymore in her property

Keep in mind Americans reading this that in Australia we have more and different 5G bands to you so YMMV if you reconstructed this setup

> The big winner from the marketing hype has been the handset manufacturers, which have convinced customers that they must have 5G phones - without really telling them why

Its is a fact that much of recent tech development has been skewed by the explosion of mobile. It also feels as if this era is finally saturating and that might not be a bad thing. Mobile computing is obviously an amazing new dimension but it is also intrinsically a dumbed-down version of what fixed lines and more serious hardware (desktops etc) can offer.

Visions of a what a good digital society looks like vary, but resilient, high capacity fiber networks combined with a shift to more client-heavy computing would my preference. Imagine upgrading homes to be real digital hubs (e.g. supporting self-hosted clouds) offering a stark alternative to the remote mega datacenter plus puny touch screens.

The way 5G is implemented by carriers/devices is such garbage. Unless I disable 5G entirely, my phone will refuse to switch to 4G even when 5G is so weak my speed is under 2mbit and 4G is testing at 45+mbit. It even takes over a minute of no connection at all before it will connect to 4G.

I’m in Sydney and the 5G is pretty good. Definitely better than or at least similar to the terrible internet options Verizon and other providers ever had back in the US (ignoring FIOS if you’re lucky enough to get it.

In my city 5G at the current provider is almost useless since it covers only the city center. At least, my 5G plan also allows using 4G.

It was the same with the initial rollout of 3G. There were all kind of crazy ideas for what this would enable, strange form factors of phones and so on. It usually takes a decade and turns out more boring, but in the end it _will be_ a better network. Nobody wants to go back to EDGE and many application now do rely on robust LTE.

Yeah, because it was before smartphones (phones having "normal" internet access, full featured browsers and all other things being done on top of that). A lot of effort was spent on things like Broadcast and Multicast Service (BCMCS), etc back then.

I for one am enjoying 500 mbit service at my rural home for $30/month with T-Mobile 5g home internet.

Where are you from.

Arkansas!

Counter point: 5G has been the most important technological innovation for my family in a decade. We live in the US but our home had no unmetered broadband access prior to 5G rollout. (No DSL (for BS "technical line reasons) and no StarLink or cable video)

Speeds don't matter when your data caps are ridiculously low. Can't use 5G for anything without zapping that up.

The other half of the equation is now in rural areas I notice way less coverage area. They seem to have shut off 4G towers in favor of "5G" and now there are several places I used to get strong 4G coverage that I get 1 bar strength of 5G that is basically non-functional. In those areas my phone shows connected but won't load anything. One of the main ones I notice it is within my local walmart. Used to have full 4G LTE there but now that 5G is "available" I can barely load websites while inside.

5G wasn't worth the hype.

5g is a name for a collection of hundreds of improvements to the cellular network I have been told, yes by people wanting us to make applications where you needed low latency for marketing purpose. In the end they made something that bragged about low latency that actually did not even need low latency.

They know themselves there is no such thing as "5g" but try to explain that to the public. They said the low latency and the high bandwidth is also possible with 4g but they're just upgrading a lot of stuff.

I don't think they're selling a lie, they're just upgrading a network and have some breaking changes.

I don't think OP is wrong, but it more of a rambling comment than an article.

To understand what's going on, we need equivalent of table of 5G spec features, with columns for:

* what use case the feature enables for users * how widely the feature is implemented, * what extra cost it would could incur to include the feature in a device or connection.

The article says that "extra speed is wasted" but also says that it "enables watching video" (and I presume sending video too).

That's a huge win, isn't it?

OP also forgot to mention, in the complaint about 8G, that we already have Fake G in "4G LTE" which isn't full 4G.

I had the same feeling after reading the article. I think the problem is in writing. For example, consider these two lines:

Cellular customers are generally pleased that speeds have increased since this means stronger coverage indoors and in outdoor dead spots. But surveys have shown that only a minuscule percentage of people are willing to pay more for faster cellular speeds.

So people are generally happy because of the faster speeds of 5G, which is a statement about the technology. The next line is about its affordability, which does not negate the fact that people are happy about the high speeds. That "But" in the second line threw me off a bit.

> The introduction of the new spectrum has relieved the pressure on overloaded cell sites

That's all I expected from 5G. 4G is more than good enough for what I do with it, in fact, I can easily watch HD video and burn through my data plan at 3G (H+) speeds, I don't really need more.

The only thing is that I assume great signal and no congestion, which is far from what we get in practice. The only reason I want 5G, and even 4G is that I can get the equivalent of full 3G speed in places where I couldn't before.

Hopefully, it will also mean bigger data plans at an equivalent price with the extra bandwidth operators get.

5G is being rolled out little by little. If it's disappointing, its because it's not actually all delivered yet. It also has benefits that go beyond just Download speeds, like much better power efficiency.

> It seems like the industry has embarked on subdividing what was originally considered as 5G spectrum into small chunks so that the carriers roll out subsequent generations of 6G, 7G, and 8G—all of which were supposedly part of the original 5G revolution.

4G proved too hard, so the industry instead adopted what they called 4G Long Term Evolution, or LTE for short, where they'd start with a minor improvement over 3G and keep improving over time. Then they forgot to improve over time. 5G was transparently just 4G again. Then it proved too hard, so etc etc. Sigh

5G was really all about software-defined cell sites, reconfigurable remotely.

It was designed to save costs for network operators. Of course they couldn't market that: customers would expect cheaper plans.

Hence the hype cycle.

In the UK whenever I go to some public event - e.g. some of the anti-Brexit marches or something like the Fully Charged EV show or any other big event I start to have trouble connecting and when I am able to move away from the crowd far enough I can use my phone again.

This is dangerous - when you're in a crowd you need your phone more to be able to find out what's happening and where your friends or family are if you get separated.

So if 5G started to fix that I'd say it was an excellent thing.

I used to have connectivity and data speed issues at music festivals and large conventions, but both permanent infrastructure at convention centres and temporary towers at parks used for festivals have mitigated this (in my experience).

In both cases the event is planned many months in advance, and there are incentives for both event organisers and telcos to ensure phone subscribers have a good experience (avoids “reception was terrible at Glastonbury” or “I couldn’t make any calls on Vodafone, I should switch network”).

But protests typically lack the timeframe, and (I expect) a sympathetic ear from the telcos. Even if the timeframe is know well in advance, gaining permits to stand up towers (and associated labour, equipment rental) costs money, and spending the money signals implicit support for the cause.

While load sharing among neighbouring towers could alleviate minor increases in traffic (maybe 2x) I can’t see the networks over provisioning the radio and back haul for permanent infrastructure to support a possible 10x surge and then let it sit 90% idle. Dedicated fiber leased lines are expensive.

Maybe protests should instead be organised near convention centres which already have capacity for surge traffic?

Protests are organised to do what they have to do and they're not done with oodles of cash. The marches had hundreds of thousands of people in them stretching over a long distance. It wasn't even possible to fit in the final destination.

In fact my local Turkish society shindig for April 23 had connection problems despite only having 500 people in a hall and those people are collecting for earthquake victims so there's no money for luxuries.

If, however, 5G helped make this problem go away then hurray. It would be worth it.

> like the Fully Charged EV show

Nice reference. I have had similar problems when travelling to the UK for large events. Whenever I go over for an Arsenal match (it still hurts, thank you) I have trouble just using my phone anywhere near the stadium. I haven't had that issue with similarly large events here in Dublin, so maybe we don't experience as much cell congestion.

With regard to 5G in Dublin, though, the performance has been poor. When we moved into a new apartment, a 5G router was my only option for a few months. Although I purportedly had a 5G connection, according to the router, it never worked well for video meetings or anything other than burst downloads of files.

I never bought into most of the hype and sci-fi applications pitched for 5G, but from my (German) perspective, 5G has delivered a lot. For me it mostly behaves close to WIFI performance. 4G often had way worse latency and the data speed has gone up too. On top of that, contracts with reasonable amount of data (50G/month in my case) have become available. This is quite some benefit. 5G basically enables me to treat mobile data like I used to use land line based data.

IMHO - from business perspective 5G is just a feature gate to extract more value out of consumers through price discrimination. Both from oem and carrier perspective

Was it really the carrier generating those hype?

My biggest problem is Tech / Media / people who believed in those hype and continue to spread it, plenty of them on HN saying "true" 5G is mmWave. Or 5G is all about capacity ( that was my tagline ) which they used but then suggest the capacity is all because of mmWave ( no it is not ). And people became disappointed because mmWave never came.

5G has been great for me (UK), although I am fortunate enough to be close to a mast.

- at the time I moved to it, it gave higher speeds than fibre

- I have a 30-day rolling contract instead of a year-long one

- It's cheaper than fibre

- No data limits

- I can take it with me if I move

The only thing it's not great for is gaming.

Also, the only home routers you easily get are Chinese. The Nokia LastMile seems to be invitation-only.

I believed this would apply to me too but it ended up slower than 4g.

Modems also appear to range from £250-£900 on amazon.

Don’t know about 5G, haven’t experienced a personal need for it, but in contrast to the position taken in the articles the 3G to 4G upgrade has been huge where it’s reliably available. Can now easily web conf while commuting, whereas with 3G would be waiting tens of seconds for web pages to load.

Does anyone here have any hands-on experience and can tell me if the claimed 5ms latency for 5G is anyhwere close to reality? As in, can it reach the 5ms only if you're next to the tower, are they not including processing time at the tower and modem etc.

5G is really rebranded 4G LTE Advanced +++++++++++ and a plot twist with Chinese teleco vendors.

The most depressing part of it for me was all the people pushing the lies and getting a big bonus/promoted. There has been zero downside for them. We really need government to get involved and stop the blatant fraud in marketing.

I was on 3G until a couple of years ago, currently on 4G. Limited to 14 megabit per second (but no datacap). 3G to 4G was a big step. But I don't have a need for 5G. I guess more people are in that position.

I don't know how it is in other countries. But in congested areas like London my girlfriend often gets faster speeds than me on her iphone 11 switching to 3G than I do on 5G.

Meanwhile, in this suburb of a modest city, I'm wondering if I'll ever see more than one bar of LTE. Thank goodness for Wi-Fi calling.

It's interesting that the hypeness of 5G varies greatly depending on the country.

In the US, where carriers have a say in what phones people use on their networks, the 5G hype seems to have been through the roof.

In UAE where I visit sometimes, both carriers did buy some billboards to advertise their 5G service, and that's it. I have no idea what it's like because I don't have a compatible phone.

In Russia though, where I live most of the time, 5G has never launched and none of the four carriers have any plans to launch it (especially now with all those sanctions). Everyone seems fine with LTE.

> Everyone seems fine with LTE.

Do they have a choice otherwise though?

Wi-Fi?

I meant that people rarely, if ever, complain about it. It's mobile data. You use it for apps and to browse the web. That's it. 3G was already fast enough for this purpose. I say that as someone who was relatively late to get an LTE-capable phone.

It's also a common understanding that cell towers have limited capacity and if there are many people in one place, your data connection might not work.

My phone has measured 2 gbps in very rare locations on earth. As they say, the future is now but it is sparsely distributed.

5G has only arrived in the minds of marketers.

As someone in Canada the only thing 5G lets me do is use up my incredibly expensive bandwidth limit in seconds instead of minutes.

for about 2 days I was using it in 5G, thinking... this is cool. Then my phone started to get very hot and shut itself down. Battery life became ridiculously bad. This was on a pixel 6a. back on 4g and not really noticing any difference.

I find 5G to be pointless personally, the speeds and latency I get on 4G is already good enough, 166mbps down, 30mbps up, all the operators here cap the speeds of 5G or just don't offer it unless you pay for unlimited data

Efficiency improvements are good for everyone, even if you don't see it on your bill.

I used get high enough speeds from Tmobile that I didn’t bother with home internet.

Then again, I was literally living across the street from the AT&T world hq in Dallas. Coincedence?

Then again, that was only until I hit my GB cap.

We can crank it up all the way 11G.

It's a bit of a myth of the modern age that desire is unlimited. I think this is wrong. At some point our desire can be sated.

Eg, I'm pretty sure Bill Gates or Elon Musk don't buy the newest, latest phone that comes out every single time. Because at some point you find something that works well enough, and just thinking of using something else involves effort. Even if V2 is theoretically faster or has more RAM, maybe you have no need for that yet.

As tech improves, this happens more and more often. Back in the time of 4MB RAM, memory was an ever constant worry and constraint. Today I'm at the point where I only think about RAM or disk space is when something goes nuts and fills up the available space, otherwise it's just not an issue, and I just don't think of upgrading.

I think 5G is pretty much there. After having smooth, quality playback on youtube on my phone, my needs are fully sated. There's just nothing I need that requires downloading stuff to my phone any faster, and in fact it's been a long time since I last thought about how quickly my phone downloads stuff.

Until 5G gets congested though. You wouldn't notice the difference between a uncongested LTE site with say 3CA, and a 5G site. The reason 5G feels good is that it isn't as congested (yet), unlike LTE.

Supporting the economic growth needs a country to produce and people to consume (= “buy new”, not “use existing”). When you’re stating you’ve got enough power and possibilities with the state of the art to be happy, you’re restraining your country GDP. Would you favor your own happiness instead of economic growth ? :)

> Eg, I'm pretty sure Bill Gates or Elon Musk don't buy the newest, latest phone that comes out every single time. Because at some point you find something that works well enough, and just thinking of using something else involves effort. Even if V2 is theoretically faster or has more RAM, maybe you have no need for that yet.

I don't think you have to look to billionaires for that - surely for the majority of HN users what we spend and how often we spend it on a phone isn't limited by what we can afford?

I've been using the same ~£150 phone for I think 4-5 years - I could have afforded however many top-spec iPhones or Pixels or whatever came out in that time, but I don't play games on my phone or do anything intensive that requires it, I just need to be able to message people and browse the web basically.

Anecdotes aside the average user keeps their phone 2.6 years.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/619788/average-smartphon...

The ASP of a new phone in 2021 (latest non pay walled site i could find) was $321

https://statinvestor.com/data/35666/smartphone-average-selli...

And if someone makes over $100K a year, statistically they are probably an iPhone user.

https://www.computerworld.com/article/3668913/you-are-the-pr...

The ASP of an iPhone is $825

I'm not sure if that's supposed to contradict my point, but I don't think an iPhone user earning $100k is skipping a model, upgrading only every 2.6y, because they can't afford to upgrade faster.

The point I’m making is that most people aren’t buying $110 phones and keeping them for years and most people making what the stereotypical HN user makes also isn’t buying $110 phones.

But that's because they want a phone that happens to be more expensive, not because they (necessarily) have a greater capacity to afford it than (all) those of us with cheaper ones, was my point.

Obviously there are people with a phone choice that has been limited by their ability to spend, I'm not denying that, I'm just saying you don't have to look nearly as far as billionaires for those who aren't.

If you prefer, I could equally have phrased it as people buying iPhones as frequently as they come out or not, either way needn't be billionaires; in the former case becoming a billionaire is unlikely to make you suddenly see that as an excess.

Exactly. I just upgraded against my will, as my 170€ phone from 2016 finally died for good. I bought a refurbished Pixel 4a, pretty much the only phone I could find that isn't quite a hand tablet. I will keep this as long as it lasts since I literally see zero reason why I should upgrade to any more recent handset.

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