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No “Material Difference Between 5G and LTE”

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

#71

Post by fredliu »

tracker1 wrote: post #60
fredliu wrote: post #9

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…

Is the coverage/range and rate of speed at range much better for 5G vs. 4G/LTE? I don't think most people need (much) more speed over wireless so much as better/more coverage and better speed at lower signal. Also, it's about relative cost... what about data caps? If they intend to compete with wired in home connections for things like set top (online streaming), they'll need a compelling story, and not running out o…

The coverage/range of 5G depends on the scale of deployment, and the environment of the deployment (e.g. urban with lots of tall buildings, vs rural), assuming we are talking about mmw type of 5G not LTE+ type of 5G.

Due to higher frequency, 5G might actually have a disadvantage in range for a single tower, in dense urban environment due to weaker penetration. But it could be compensated by deploying more towers, at more strategic locations. The value proposition is that the gain in speed and delay would be well worth it.

Weak penetration is still a problem for long range open field 5G communication, but due to different factors like fog, weather conditions, etc.

Regarding data caps, I view it as more of a business model question, less related to the technical capabilities of 4G vs 5G.

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

#72

Post by metalliqaz »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #64
staplers wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I would max out my data cap in 5 minutes 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.

That might make sense IF the caps only applied during times of congestion.

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

#73

Post by wlesieutre »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #64
staplers wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I would max out my data cap in 5 minutes 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.

Then they should apply caps or throttling during hours when capacity is a concern and let me download 100 GB of games from Steam between 4 and 7 AM when the Netflix watchers have gone to bed.

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

#74

Post by fredliu »

ysleepy wrote: post #69
fredliu wrote: post #9

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…

There is a material difference between UMTS and LTE, UMTS is using CDMA which comes with some practically unfortunate tradeoffs like the "breathing cell" and inheriting the old GSM style slow system design.

Sure, CDMA vs OFDM, definitely they can be regarded as "material difference" But that's not the logic/argument the original article made. They only used bandwidth and delay to quantify "material difference". Following their logic, they can make the same argument for 3G vs 4G back in the day.

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

#75

Post by adventured »

phinnaeus wrote: post #48
dbatten wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Accelerate the deployment of Starlink and OneWeb. Save hundreds of billions of dollars over 20 years in building unnecessary FTTH all over shrinking, uneconomical rural America.

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

#76

Post by jdietrich »

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…

Private companies don't own spectrum, they lease it. They pay the government substantial sums of money for the temporary, revocable right to use a chunk of spectrum. Light is already nationalised, the government just chooses to rent it out, partly on the basis of need and partly on a market basis. That allocation system isn't perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better than declaring everything from DC to daylight an ISM band and letting the users have at it.

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

#77

Post by jlgaddis »

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…

> ...having this entire range opened up to generic data transfer with the same congestion rules and regulations used on currently open bandwidth rings...

Kinda like how 2.4 GHz is damn near useless for many people?

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

#78

Post by awelkie »

jdietrich wrote: post #76
zanny wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Private companies don't own spectrum, they lease it. They pay the government substantial sums of money for the temporary, revocable right to use a chunk of spectrum. Light is already nationalised, the government just chooses to rent it out, partly on the basis of need and partly on a market basis. That allocation system isn't perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better than declaring everything from DC to daylight an IS…

Good point about owning vs leasing. But there's also a lot of room between private spectrum rights and the ISM band free-for-all.

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

#79

Post by macintux »

phinnaeus wrote: post #44
vinylkey wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

I would imagine there are fundamental limitations on the available bandwidth that splitting the traffic across multiple frequencies would alleviate...but that's just speculation.

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

#80

Post by jupp0r »

gcbw2 wrote: post #62
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…

isn't it capacity as in more devices to the same transmitter. 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)

It's not that easy. 5G uses spatial multiplexing so multiple devices can send/receive on the same frequency bands at the same time without interfering with each other (4G also supports this to a lesser extent already).
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