Cities Are Saying ‘No’ to 5G, Citing Health, Aesthetics, and FCC Bullying • Hacker News Board

Re: Cities Are Saying ‘No’ to 5G, Citing Health, Aesthetics, and FCC Bullying

#211

Post by jchw » Sat, Aug 24, 2019, 6:13 PM UTC

DenisM wrote: post #188

jchw wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that it certainly isn't going to do unless wireless providers suddenly decide to stop capping data so tightly. I don't think wireless providers are cheaper today if you include things like that in the calculation. Not to mention many people already use AT&T and Verizon for their home internet...

Take a look into 5g, eg Verizon, - it’s aimed to be last mile competition, and have the same caps. Comcast is capped at 200gb, I imagine 5g would be similar.

It seems the cap is not a universal constant - my cap with Comcast is actually 1024GB. I honestly thought 1024GB was enough that I'd never actually get very close to it, but wow, I don't have a single month under 200GB. In fact, most months are above 500GB for me.

Of course not everyone uses 500GB a month. But still, I think the data cap story has to change if 5G is really to compete with other last mile options.

Also, Today, wireless providers segment the crap out of their market, upcharging for basically anything, including "tethering." With Comcast, for all of their many faults, I can at least use my own modem, connect my NAS and have it accept connections from the open Internet, and of course connect a boatload of computers and network devices with no problems. Wireless providers, to gain parity, would have to suddenly cede control and offer plans that essentially offer no restrictions with dedicated IP addresses. It isn't clear to me that this will be priced any differently from existing last-mile providers. It's not like good wireless plans are cheap today in the U.S. as it is.

5G may in fact improve wireless speeds, but the hype has been that it will be game-changing and industry-shifting and I just don't see it. I'm sure the market will get segmented up such that many people will basically pay the same amount or possibly even more than they did for effectively the same outcome.

Re: Cities Are Saying ‘No’ to 5G, Citing Health, Aesthetics, and FCC Bullying

#212

Post by creato » Sat, Aug 24, 2019, 6:13 PM UTC

manmal wrote: post #137

renaudg wrote: post #119

Really surprised to see the beating heart of tech that is HN turn into a luddite forum on this occasion. Last week I got upgraded from 4G to 5G for home broadband here in London, UK. It just became commercially available in my area (on Three) As I said in another comment, my average speeds went up from 5-10Mbps to 150-250Mbps and peak ones from 20-25Mbps to 350-400Mbps. It absolutely is the game changer it's advertis…

My 4G connection in Austria has been able to do 120Mbps for years now, sometimes even 180Mbps. What you are seeing might simply be that you are mostly alone in your cell, and not really 5G related. Once more people have a 5G modem, things will get worse for you again.

By design, 5G uses many more and smaller antennas, so it solves exactly the problem you are pointing at.

Re: Cities Are Saying ‘No’ to 5G, Citing Health, Aesthetics, and FCC Bullying

#213

Post by mokus » Sat, Aug 24, 2019, 6:14 PM UTC

EdwardDiego wrote: post #81

sschueller wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that the general public doesn't know this is a failure of the carriers and FCC. Instead of clearly stating what the differences are and maybe not putting everything in the 5G bucket they got greedy and thought they could get it all. If the high frequency set was left out of 5Gs first round no one would have objected to the upgrade. I find the "We need 5G so we can have real time translation and autonomous ca…

> If the high frequency set was left out of 5Gs first round no one would have objected to the upgrade. There's a subset that will object to anything involving radio because it's electro-magnetic RADIATION and RADIATION causes cancer!

Can we convince these people that sound is phononic RADIATION and they should therefore stop talking?

Re: Cities Are Saying ‘No’ to 5G, Citing Health, Aesthetics, and FCC Bullying

#214

Post by harshreality » Sat, Aug 24, 2019, 6:14 PM UTC

jorblumesea wrote: post #168

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> at best it's just... faster internet Counterpoint: streaming audio and video were singularly enabled by faster internet. That is restructuring multibillion-dollar industries. The iPhone, one could argue, and through it real-time social media, are products of mobile internet. There are legitimate new capabilities that will likely erupt from cheaper, faster mobile internet. If the playground is in Shenzhen versus Sil…

It's pretty clear that the widespread adoption of faster mobile technologies has enabled technology companies like Facebook, Google, Youtube, Netflix etc to thrive. Investment in infrastructure has unforseen benefits that only seem obvious in hindsight. America basically "owned" the 4G world and reaped the benefits. Not doing this for 5G will basically just hand hundreds of billions of dollars in jobs and growth to C…

Netflix, youtube, and facebook can stream fine on lower bandwidth links.

The economic value of high resolution mobile streaming seems rather low, at best. Most likely negative, because most content is just time-wasting, and because content that actually matters tends to not depend so much on resolution beyond SD or basic HD (720p).

Other potential applications, as mentioned elsewhere, tend to run into 5G not being fast enough either (once you figure average speeds and not max theoretical speeds), or latency being too high, or the bottleneck being on the remote side.

4G, despite being ubiquitous, costs a lot for service and is power-hungry, not good qualities for most IoT-type applications. 5G might be better than 4G for mobile side energy use, but unless it's close to 802.11ax levels and mobile providers offer cheap bandwidth-limited service plans, I don't see why anyone would use it for IoT applications. That leaves mobile device applications, and people are already too glued to their mobile devices. I'm sure new businesses will capitalize on increased bandwidth from 5G, but I'm doubtful that it will benefit society.

5G antennas near the ground can be easily vandalized.

Re: Cities Are Saying ‘No’ to 5G, Citing Health, Aesthetics, and FCC Bullying

#215

Post by dwaltrip » Sat, Aug 24, 2019, 6:16 PM UTC

wongarsu wrote: post #145

chvid wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny how people even on a tech website seems to be stuck at "640 KB is enough for everyone". When technology gets a lot cheaper, a lot more powerful, a lot less power consuming, the magic of the market creates completely new categories of use that unlock new demand at consumers. Right now your phone has a sim-card. There might be one in your tablet or your car too. But there is not one in your TV or the lights in yo…

> But there is not one in your TV or the lights in your bathroom. But at some point telecommunications technology is going to be so cheap that drawing a wire to connect a button to a light is going to be the expensive option. For stationary objects like TVs and lights we already have wifi, and a range of simpler low-power options used by IoT basestations. What does 5G bring to the table here?

That's the point. We don't know all of the future applications. But it's very unlikely to be nothing interesting. Do you think everyday appliances in the 50 years will function essentially the same as today? It's a very general enhancement in capability with lots of potential but currently unknown use cases.

I say this while also recognizing that most IoT stuff today is overhyped BS.

Re: Cities Are Saying ‘No’ to 5G, Citing Health, Aesthetics, and FCC Bullying

#216

Post by michaelmrose » Sat, Aug 24, 2019, 6:17 PM UTC

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #199

michaelmrose wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't necessarily prove demand for even retroactively obvious products without the products sometimes. I don't think VR is something you are extremely likely to do on the go. AR on the other hand has potential.

360 video is not going to take off because it’s a sucky experience. “Real” VR with positional tracking makes you feel like you’re in another space, and has lots of potential for that reason. 360 video does not.

I'm not sure what 360 video even is.

AR stands for Augmented reality, the overlay of information and artificial constructs over the real world in such a way as as one can both perceive the artificial constructs and interact with the real world simultaneously.

Nobody will view this by holding their phone up and looking at the world through their phone screen. Real products in development use glasses. Science fiction depicts contacts, currently impossible, or some sort of implant, even less realistic.

Remember we wrote about going to the moon prior to being able to actually go there.

Re: Cities Are Saying ‘No’ to 5G, Citing Health, Aesthetics, and FCC Bullying

#217

Post by renaudg » Sat, Aug 24, 2019, 6:17 PM UTC

davb wrote: post #204

renaudg wrote: post #119

Really surprised to see the beating heart of tech that is HN turn into a luddite forum on this occasion. Last week I got upgraded from 4G to 5G for home broadband here in London, UK. It just became commercially available in my area (on Three) As I said in another comment, my average speeds went up from 5-10Mbps to 150-250Mbps and peak ones from 20-25Mbps to 350-400Mbps. It absolutely is the game changer it's advertis…

I had a similar experience (also on Three) when 4G first rolled out. Blazing speed, low latency, low contention. Unfortunately as the technology became more mainstream, the speeds dropped and peak contention increased. A small scale roll-out is absolutely not indicative of real-world performance. In Glasgow, I'm getting around 5Mbps on Three over 4G. In Japan and South Korea I regularly got far in excess of 100Mbps o…

In the particular case of Three there's a simpler explanation and it means things will be very different this time : they completely lost the 4G spectrum auction war to competitors (EE and Vodafone mainly), but they didn't repeat that mistake with 5G : they're the only carrier with >100Mhz of spectrum and are likely to dominate performance comparisons for a while.

Re: Cities Are Saying ‘No’ to 5G, Citing Health, Aesthetics, and FCC Bullying

#218

Post by madengr » Sat, Aug 24, 2019, 6:17 PM UTC

Joeri wrote: post #189

tzs wrote: post #184

Some of the fear of 5G is driven by Russia. RT has run several segments about it. Here are some: 5G Wireless: A Dangerous 'Experiment on Humanity' [1] Could 5G put more kids at risk for cancer? [2] How To Survive Dangers of 5G [3] Cancer risk? 5G wireless speeds could be dangerous [4] ‘Totally insane’: Telecomm Industry ignores 5G dangers [5] According to the New York Times, citing a declassified U.S. intelligence re…

I’m reminded of the way the galactic empire in the foundation series descended into deliberate ignorance, with people actively turning their backs on technology, even while relying on it. Anyone up for starting the church of 5G and sending out priests to install cell towers?

Well, I do RF for a living, and have designed some mmWave transceivers. Time to grow a long beard and through on a robe. I just need a chair that levitates.

Re: Cities Are Saying ‘No’ to 5G, Citing Health, Aesthetics, and FCC Bullying

#219

Post by godelski » Sat, Aug 24, 2019, 6:18 PM UTC

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #155

liability wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Streaming pre-recorded video (e.g. movies) over the radio is wildly inefficient considering flash memory costs peanuts. The primary reason it's done is because we're in desperate need of copyright reform (streaming is being used by the video industry as a form of DRM.)

The efficiency of flash doesn't matter much if I have to wait for it to physically get to me, vs just opening up my browser.

Alright, so I should just download a significant portion of YouTube and news websites because I may want to watch those videos randomly? Or I have to wait to get home. Unless we're talking about terabytes of storage on my phone, I don't think this is feasible (for all the video and music I could want at a given time).

Fact is that streaming is just convenient. Like really convenient. I wish there was more stuff that I could download and listen to offline, but it's naive to suggest that streaming has no advantages. We stream while data connected because we download things in an ordered manner (vs how normal downloading is done). That's nice that I don't have to wait for a full movie or song to be completely downloaded to listen to it.

Re: Cities Are Saying ‘No’ to 5G, Citing Health, Aesthetics, and FCC Bullying

#220

Post by renaudg » Sat, Aug 24, 2019, 6:19 PM UTC

povertyworld wrote: post #125

renaudg wrote: post #119

Really surprised to see the beating heart of tech that is HN turn into a luddite forum on this occasion. Last week I got upgraded from 4G to 5G for home broadband here in London, UK. It just became commercially available in my area (on Three) As I said in another comment, my average speeds went up from 5-10Mbps to 150-250Mbps and peak ones from 20-25Mbps to 350-400Mbps. It absolutely is the game changer it's advertis…

Is data going to be cheaper too? Otherwise, it's not going to change anything for most people. It'll just mean I can blow through my monthly quota in a day instead of a week.

This particular service doesn't have a quota, it's unlimited.