61–70 of 161 posts
Innovation is great. But with more carriers throttling after a few GBs, there's no customer value yet. What's the value in getting 1Gbs when my plan throttles after 5GB. That's 40 seconds before I'd be throttled for the rest of the month.
> 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…
The problem today is already too many devices for the transmitter internet pipe. 5G will make this worse (or better, if you are a Telco overselling data without consequences)
> 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…
When did you last get 100Mbit+ speeds with 4G? In a real world scenario, I would max out my data cap in 5 minutes.. Telcos will never give up their guaranteed profits by throttling speeds even with unlimited speed/capacity.
> 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…
When did you last get 100Mbit+ speeds with 4G? In a real world scenario, I would max out my data cap in 5 minutes.. Telcos will never give up their guaranteed profits by throttling speeds even with unlimited speed/capacity.
Counterargument: there are fundamental reasons for data caps. To provide service at a high speed to lots of people at a reasonable price, edge-case data users must be throttled. Increasing capacity reduces the number of users who must be throttled.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Comcast and Countrywide were in the running for the Consumerists 2008 worst company of the year. Countrywide won but had to help nuke the economy. Comcast had a real shot at winning for being such a malignant organization. The rebrand to Xfinity is a joke.
Why? Are they significantly more hated than any big co? Like Uber and Facebook received quite a lot of bad press lately. Is this just perception or are they really that bad/evil? TMO (yeah Austria, not US but still) were bragging about not hashing passwords on twitter just a couple of weeks ago. Not exactly professional.
It's basically like comic book villainy, the only thing missing is photos of Comcast Executives cackling over the complaints from customers. And I say that as someone who was overall okay with Comcast's service the one time I had them. The behavior of Comcast defines the perception most of the US has with them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
All of these traditional telcos are garbage and their ratings in multiple arenas showcase that very clearly.
> 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…
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.
This is really a corporate squabblefest over branding, control of standards and intellectual property. There are misaligned incentives between IP holders like Qualcomm, equipment manufacturers and network operators.
The networks want the 5G brand so they can sell the image of an "all-new superfast network", but they want to spend as little as possible on new infrastructure. IP holders want to ensure that any future development is tied to licensing their technology. Equipment manufacturers want to sidestep those license costs, either by avoiding new technologies with freshly-minted patents or by moving to technologies with fewer dependencies on proprietary IP. US cable operators want access to millimetre bands to expand their fixed broadband network, while European landline broadband operators don't want new competition.
Nobody is being honest about those clashing incentives, so we're seeing huge amounts of babble and FUD from all sides.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
When "4G" was initially commercialized, one could have claimed it has No "Material Difference Between 3G and 4G". HSPA(+) was just faster 3G, already reaching lower end of 4G bandwidth requirement, minimally qualifiable as 4G. But has 4G/LTE eventually turned out to be "one generation" better than 3G? Hell yeah. Same thing here for 4G-5G transition. The real deal is when milimeter wave got massively deployed and comm…
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.
The point of the article isn't that 5G won't improve throughput, but that improvements of the existing LTE network will provide similar improvements. This is really a corporate squabblefest over branding, control of standards and intellectual property. There are misaligned incentives between IP holders like Qualcomm, equipment manufacturers and network operators. The networks want the 5G brand so they can sell the im…