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No “Material Difference Between 5G and LTE”

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Re: No “Material Difference Between 5G and LTE”

#41

Post by mikeash »

a_imho wrote: post #18
joezydeco wrote: post #2

5G's main application around the world will be more capacity, a good thing for telcos Or companies that want to break the residential broadband monopoly in a local area. Personally, I'm counting on TMO to kick Comcast's ass in my town. 5G would be a complete success if that happens.

I'm counting on TMO to kick Comcast's ass in my town Is Comcast really that bad? In my admittedly European experience all the service providers are (dis)functional and greedy pretty much to the same degree, none of them are good guys.

I was a Comcast customer for years. The service was unreliable. The phone support was useless and would, for example, ask me to reboot my computer when my modem was clearly failing to communicate with their equipment. Their techs would routinely arrive an hour or two late when they already had a four-hour window to hit, and not even call to tell me they would be late. One of them replaced something in an outside box and then just left, leaving two equipment boxes hanging open and scraps of cable lying on the ground.

I now have Verizon and the difference is vast. The service has gone down twice in five years. When I called it in, I was immediately connected to someone who knew what DHCP meant. They’re not perfect but they’re a lot better.

Re: No “Material Difference Between 5G and LTE”

#42

Post by jeffreyrogers »

itchyouch wrote: post #15
jeffreyrogers wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not in the industry, but I've done some research on this and looked into setting up an ISP in a rural area near me (got far enough to where I was talking to fiber providers). For really rural areas it doesn't seem feasible because the radios essentially need line of sight, so in order to serve enough customers to be profitable you need several towers that have a wireless backhaul to some fiber line that you have…

I have a buddy running a Wisp as a side gig out in rural Michigan. I think he got 10M fiber ran for a couple thousand a month. Then maybe 10-20 people have wireless access setup with ubiquity gear to beam them internet. I think it breaks even or is just pocket money as the main business’s internet needs are subsidized by the neighbors. It’s really a tough situation in the rural areas. To run last mile cable costs tho…

Those numbers sound about right to me. If I lived out in the area I was thinking of serving it might have been doable, but I figured with the low potential for profit and the amount of time it would take to deal with customers, install equipment, etc., it wasn't really worth it.

Re: No “Material Difference Between 5G and LTE”

#43

Post by dbatten »

LyalinDotCom wrote: post #30
dgllghr wrote: post #4

I've heard that 5G will be especially beneficial to rural areas, where it will have the bandwidth, speed, and coverage capability to replace broadband, DSL, and satellite. Can someone with industry knowledge confirm whether this is true?

I am ashamed of my country (America) that we as a nation, federally speaking, don't provide the funding needed to empower everyone in rural areas with high speed internet as a right. The Internet powers so many important things today and if we're talking about "thousands of dollars per household" it is totally doable.

Why should those of us who don't choose to live in the country have to subsidize the lifestyle choices of those that do choose to live in the country?

And, before you go thinking I'm just the radical conservative, recognize that this cuts both ways. I'm also of the opinion that we shouldn't be subsidizing people's high-carbon lifestyles by making roads free, for example.

Re: No “Material Difference Between 5G and LTE”

#44

Post by phinnaeus »

vinylkey wrote: post #20
Cshelton wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lower speed on 4G is mostly due to the number of devices on it. 5G will be no different in that way. At first, the few people with 5G devices and networks will have very fast speeds (mostly), but once everyone in 4G moves to 5G, we’re back to how it is today. I’m also curious what the effect of all the WiFi networks will have in regards to interference with 5G bands.

> but once everyone in 4G moves to 5G, we’re back to how it is today. Would there be a benefit to split 50:50 between 4G and 5G?

Couldn't we just increase 4G capacity in that case?

Re: No “Material Difference Between 5G and LTE”

#45

Post by zanny »

ec109685 wrote: post #23
jupp0r wrote: post #12

> 5G's main application around the world will be more capacity, a good thing for telcos This is important for consumers. When did you last get 100Mbit+ speeds with 4G? In real world scenarios, the number of people in a cell (due to limited spectrum bandwidth) limits 4G speeds, not protocol maximums. My understanding of 5G is that bandwidth can be used much more efficiently (both by being able to allocate less in idle…

Telecoms have the ability today to add more capacity by increasing tower density.

And societies have the ability to add more capacity by realizing by having privately owned radio spectrum the advancement and adoption of wireless data transfer has been stunted for decades.

Everyone likes to argue that you can't have an all wireless society because there is limited bandwidth available, but as it is we are only using about 10% of the usable spectrum (from about 200MHZ to 8GHZ) for network data connectivity, and even then most of it is still privately controlled - if an area has too many AT&T subscribers and not enough Verizon customers, the Verizon spectrums go to waste while the AT&T ones are oversaturated.

There are a few things I could name off the top of my head that would overnight dramatically improve technology, but nationalizing back light for the people to use and then having this entire range opened up to generic data transfer with the same congestion rules and regulations used on currently open bandwidth rings would go a long way to improving most of our lives dramatically.

Re: No “Material Difference Between 5G and LTE”

#46

Post by jeffreyrogers »

superkuh wrote: post #29
dgllghr wrote: post #4

I've heard that 5G will be especially beneficial to rural areas, where it will have the bandwidth, speed, and coverage capability to replace broadband, DSL, and satellite. Can someone with industry knowledge confirm whether this is true?

It's not true. Wireless spectrum can only be used once. Wires and fiber optics can use the same spectrum over and over and over. Additionally, wireless telcos have already gotten used to not providing real internet access to their customers. Instead they provide a proxied, nat'd, no-ports, almost web only service.

Part of that is because they often can't get more than one IP address from their fiber provider.

Re: No “Material Difference Between 5G and LTE”

#47

Post by learc83 »

KirinDave wrote: post #31
ec109685 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telecoms have the ability today to add more capacity by increasing tower density.

They have the capability, but this intersects with local building codes, zoning laws, and safety standards. It also carries increased costs over time. What's being said here is, "We don't foresee any problems with having our current level of capacity provisioning, and we're fine with the level of service we provide."

It's going to be even worse with 5g. 5g is just a spec and the current most likely way to meet that spec is with micro-cells operating at higher frequencies.

They will require line of site because higher frequencies can't penetrate obstacles. To get 5g speeds and capacities, you're going to need to put towers everywhere.

Smaller towers yes, but many many more of them.

Re: No “Material Difference Between 5G and LTE”

#48

Post by phinnaeus »

dbatten wrote: post #43
LyalinDotCom wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am ashamed of my country (America) that we as a nation, federally speaking, don't provide the funding needed to empower everyone in rural areas with high speed internet as a right. The Internet powers so many important things today and if we're talking about "thousands of dollars per household" it is totally doable.

Why should those of us who don't choose to live in the country have to subsidize the lifestyle choices of those that do choose to live in the country? And, before you go thinking I'm just the radical conservative, recognize that this cuts both ways. I'm also of the opinion that we shouldn't be subsidizing people's high-carbon lifestyles by making roads free, for example.

I agree with your statement, but I worry that not everyone has the ability to move to less rural area even if they wanted to. How do we avoid punishing the people who are not choosing to live in middle-of-nowhere versus those who make that choice?

Re: No “Material Difference Between 5G and LTE”

#49

Post by jdietrich »

taeric wrote: post #26
okmokmz wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The lower speed on 4G is mostly due to the number of devices on it. Is that the sole reason 5G is faster, or will being able to allocate less in idle situations and utilize spatial multiplexing support faster speeds even with a comparable number of devices?

Allocating less in idle situations sounds dangerous. What do you do when there is a real world event and everyone rushes to their device, pulling them out of idle? (I'm assuming this problem is already considered. Genuinely asking, in case someone has a good link to read on it.)

It's straightforward QoS management. Public service users get absolute priority, even if that means kicking everyone else off the network. After that, voice and SMS get priority, because they're important to users and have very low data rates. IP traffic can have whatever's left on a fair queuing basis. Most operators use deep packet inspection and can perform fairly sophisticated traffic shaping.

Re: No “Material Difference Between 5G and LTE”

#50

Post by jeffreyrogers »

zanny wrote: post #45
ec109685 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telecoms have the ability today to add more capacity by increasing tower density.

And societies have the ability to add more capacity by realizing by having privately owned radio spectrum the advancement and adoption of wireless data transfer has been stunted for decades. Everyone likes to argue that you can't have an all wireless society because there is limited bandwidth available, but as it is we are only using about 10% of the usable spectrum (from about 200MHZ to 8GHZ) for network data connec…

You need to have someone coordinate frequency use or else you'll get tons of interference. At least by making people pay for it you incentize them to actually use the part of the spectrum they've purchased.
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