No “Material Difference Between 5G and LTE” • Hacker News Board

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

#151

Post by germanier » Sat, Apr 21, 2018, 3:25 PM UTC

kuschku wrote: post #142

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmmm, that's an interesting problem I hadn't thought of with the auctions. People are going to pay for data pretty much regardless of what it costs (within reason), so it's economical to buy part of the spectrum assuming you can pass on the high price to consumers. Typically you think of competition benefiting consumers, but that's obviously not true in this case.

Exactly, and that's how you end up with paying either 16€/mo for absolutely unlimited traffic, SMS and voice (plus 50GB tethering), as in Denmark, or 180€/mo for the cheapest contract with unlimited data, as in Germany.

You can now get unlimited data for 80€ in Germany (Telekom Magenta Mobil XL) which is still expensive. If you can live with 1 MBit/s you can use O2 Free for about 20€.

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

#152

Post by kuschku » Sat, Apr 21, 2018, 5:18 PM UTC

germanier wrote: post #151

kuschku wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, and that's how you end up with paying either 16€/mo for absolutely unlimited traffic, SMS and voice (plus 50GB tethering), as in Denmark, or 180€/mo for the cheapest contract with unlimited data, as in Germany.

You can now get unlimited data for 80€ in Germany (Telekom Magenta Mobil XL) which is still expensive. If you can live with 1 MBit/s you can use O2 Free for about 20€.

I could live with 1MBit/s — but not for 20€/month.

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

#153

Post by ksec » Sat, Apr 21, 2018, 8:44 PM UTC

I was kind of expecting someone will trim in with proper information and Engineering prospective. But nearly 150 Comments into it it seems there are lots of misinformation.

Yes, 5G, which includes 4.9G, or 3GPP Rel 13, 14, 15, will provides lots more Capacity. I see many saying this is only good for telcos, and 5G will be the same once everyone moved over. Which is so far from truth.

Your current LTE speed is limited by Telcos capacity. So if you have less people in your area sharing your bandwith, you are likely to get much higher speed. So If Telcos improves its capacity, it also means you get higher speed when you use it since it is less contention. This is of course assuming the demand stay constant.

And some comments refer to less congested in 5G being the reason, once everyone moves to 5G it will be the same. This is again false. 5G is more like an 4G extension, you really dont switch to 5G, at least not in the 3G to 4G way.

In many developed countries, Smartphone Users has already hit a plateau. Growth is going to be slow. Massive MIMO, in 4.9G or what ever they decide to call it, ( likely 5G ) already provides 3x capacity in FDD-LTE environment, and up to 10x in TDD-LTE. So the network, all of a sudden is capable of supporting 3x to 10x more users. As we have stated before there aren't that much user growth anymore, so as a user you now get 3x speed up when Massive MIMO is deployed in Handset and Cell tower. ( Actually this is over simplify and it is more then that )

So you ask but that is assuming user are using the same amount of Data. Most of the Data we use are actually Video, this is especially true on Mobile. We have HEVC, I doubt it will cut the Data required, but you will have a much better quality streaming.

All this is 4.9G with Massive MIMO, This is excluding additional capacity with Small Cell, LTE- LAA. And 5G is actually designed with Massive MIMO in mind, even more efficient, additional spectrum, even more antenna in Massive MIMO. It is not too hard to imagine by 2025 we have at least 20x the Capacity then we have today.

Now can you imagine you spend 20x the time then today watching Video content in 2025?

Which is one reason why many telcos around the world are already switching to unlimited*, or priority based access after certain amount of data. And assuming no additional killer apps for Data usage, Telcos will likely have to consolidate even further to may be only 3 per region.

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

#154

Post by TheCoelacanth » Sat, Apr 21, 2018, 11:45 PM UTC

mbruce wrote: post #95

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Counter - counter argument: data caps fundamentally help segment users and make more $$$ from those who value more data. This doesn’t directly relate to capping download rate. Related: Growth on total users and downloads is far far greater than improved spectral capacity in 5G and hence more cells are needed to improve capacity. So costs not only to refresh, but to build more cells are significant.

If you were going to make bandwidth costs actually based on costs to provide service, you would probably end up with something similar to the way that electricity is priced. A connection fee plus a metered rate that varies to be higher during periods of high demand and lower during periods of low demand. The data cap model is pretty clearly designed just to extract extra money from customers, not as a genuine way of fairly allocating costs.

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

#155

Post by wlesieutre » Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 1:00 AM UTC

Dylan16807 wrote: post #131

Stratoscope wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bit like how T-Mobile does it. You get 50GB/month that is always at full speed, and then after that you get deprioritized if you're on a busy tower. So it doesn't depend on time of day, but how many other customers are sharing your tower. https://www.t-mobile.com/customer/mydatausage.html > Data prioritization will only be noticeable when you access a congested tower and have used over 50GB of data in a part…

That's tantalizingly close, but the goal is a plan that lets you use low-priority downloads to avoid using up your full-speed data allowance.

Yeah, there are two aspects that keep me from ditching Comcast at my apartment. Burning through the data limit on bulk downloads that I'm happy to run overnight when it's not congested, and ping, which is the harder one to fix. But it's not _that_ bad on T-mobile, so if it weren't for the data allowance problem I might be willing to suck it up.

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

#156

Post by daveburstein » Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 7:04 AM UTC

Author Here to clarify The article is comparing today's LTE and 5G, deploying in 2018-2019. Is there really a big difference to the consumer between 100-400 meg real speeds (LTE) and 5G at 200 -600 meg mostly? In what application? Latency in today's equipment from Ericsson and Huawei for either is 5-15 milliseconds.

Only 10-20% of the "5G" will be the 1 gig millimeter wave until after 2020. Even then, what's the practical difference for most people between 150 megabits and 900 megabits?

Some details: Most LTE going in today is 100-400 meg real with a decent connection, 600-900 meg peak. (3 or 4 CA, 4x4 MIMO.) 2) 80-90% of the "5G" in the world through 2020 will be midband 3.5 GHz 200-600 meg. Only a small fraction will be the true 1 gig millimeter wave. 3) Latency on either most likely 5-15 milliseconds. (The difference in Ericsson equipment is 1-2 ms.)

email me, daveb@dslprime.com for references to primary sources. Don't believe the hype. 5G millimeter wave is planned for 1-4 ms URLLC, but not until 2022-2025. It can go 10-20 gigabits in the lab today, but I don't know any carrier designing for more than 1 gig to a user in the next 5 years.

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

#157

Post by daveburstein » Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 7:07 AM UTC

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…

Author here. Actually, the LTE being installed today will give 100-300 megabits to most users, except at the edge of the cell or behind a building, etc. The "usually less than 100 megabits" is equipment from more than a year ago. The right comparison is 2019 equipment against 2019 equipment.

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

#158

Post by daveburstein » Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 7:10 AM UTC

nickysielicki wrote: post #85

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.

What are you suggesting? If it's that there's some market-wide conspiracy to provide worse service for the sake of long-term profits, there's zero evidence to back that. Cell phone plans have gotten significantly better in the past decades, and most people are able to pay less and get a better level of service. Things have gotten better and cheaper, because there is competition, and there is always going to be market…

Author here. There's no conspiracy, just an incredible amount of 5G hype. Note that the source of the comment is the CEO of the largest manufacturer, and I have similar from CTOs of Deutsche Telekom and Telefonica.

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

#159

Post by daveburstein » Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 7:12 AM UTC

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.

Author here. Density is one way to add capacity but adding more spectrum or more antennas turns out to be cheaper most place today. (Carrier aggregation and MIMO.) Millimeter wave is essentially adding more spectrum.

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

#160

Post by daveburstein » Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 7:15 AM UTC

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?

Author here. Wish it were good for rural but 98% of experts think 5G millimeter wave will mostly be urban and suburban. Millimeter wave has short reach, hence not good for rural. More antennas, MIMO and Massive MIMO, is the way to go for rural. Some people call that 5G, some don't.