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Comment by DaveFlater | Hacker News Reader

I have fam stuck on deteriorating DSL for whom the only other options are 5G data or the cable company (the other deteriorating copper wire). The actual-not-theoretical speed of 5G in the places I go has not wowed me. Wait on 6G or abandon all hope?

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How is the cable wire “deteriorating”? As long as the physical wire is in good shape, the technology to provide a connection is just fine (especially compared to what you have now).

Sure, the cable companies are a pain to deal with, but the only real choice is to suck it up like everyone else. You’ll at least have alleviated your current issues for a few years until other options might become available.

Getting a 4G+5G antenna and pointing it in the direction of the tower should help somewhat.

It's easy to exceed the allowed transmit power if you do that, so be careful and calculate beforehand.

You can't exceed transmit power with a directional antenna. The radio transmits at a given milliwatt. dBi and dBm are a different measurement you might be referring to.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with concentrating your transmit (send) and receive (listen) with a Yagi or Dish type antenna that covers 700mhz to 2.5ghz.

Sorry, I meant EIRP. A quick Google search says that the limit is 23 dBm for LTE / 5G. With a bigger antenna (= more gain than the standard one) on your LTE or 5G router you'd have to reduce the transmit power (in mW) of the router accordingly, otherwise you'd exceed those 23 dBm.

Is the power limit based on supplied power or “post-concentration” power? I thought it was based on power consumption but I see how the other one would make sense too.

Sorry, I meant EIRP. See also my other answer.

Thanks!

What's wrong with 5G? You could get decent DSL speed if you are close to the loop and assuming their have latest DSL tech. Although I doubt they do since BT has from what I remembered abandoned G.fast.

Here in the UK I rarely get less than 1000 Mbit speeds whenever I use 5G. I'm pretty happy with that.

I suspect other countries phone networks must be capacity constrained in other places.

In the UK and barely get 5g connectivity and when i do even on max bars i barely get 10-20 Mbit. Probably better in central London but for the rest of the country it’s appalling.

West London on 5G from my phone and I just got 2.5Gbit and 25 ms latency. And I only pay £5/month (~$6/month).

That’s neat. In my area and usually outside London connectivity is much, much, worse. Also depends on parts of London. When I lived in Finchley for instance, I barely had signal on multiple providers, let alone gigabit connectivity.

Out of curiosity, what’s your provider? If it does work where I am then I’m getting one for each device.

Three. They do a 14 day trial of a 5G router for 'home broadband'. I suggest grabbing the trial and testing with their router because it has some crazy antennas in that seems to get better performance than phones can with the same sim and location. Remember to send it back if you don't want it cos otherwise you're locked in to paying for the whole contract.

Yeah, I use Three, and despite their claim to have good coverage indoor and outdoor in my area, it sucks on mobile. I might try the router, thanks for the tip. Despite having an optic cable to my house, my landline provider cant supply gigabit connectivity. If I had fast 5g i’d use it for downloads and streaming, and the landline for use cases where latency is important.

Also in West London but no 5G available for me here in borough of Ealing on Vodafone. 10 mins up the road towards London and it works.

I think that says it all.

In UK just 10 miles from Bournemouth (not a small town), on the edge of the New Forest. No 5G, and 4G is patchy for voice calls and unusable for data. It sucks.

Starlink? Not exactly cheap, but an option.

I use Starlink as my travel internet for almost a few years now. I would keep it as the last option. It is great when it works. But there are a lot of congestions, and outages. I primary use the mobile plan, so maybe residential plans are way better.

But with Starlink I definitely see on Friday night how we all are fighting for a traffic, and even streaming a movie becomes a challenge.

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