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.
People binge-watching a TV series could certainly anticipate their near-future media demands and download the series through means other than cellular networks. Downloading video and storing it on flash memory could eliminate a huge chunk of the demand for streamed video.
Streaming is just downloading in order. Data downloads while I watch/listen. That's super convenient. That's the big advantage of streaming. Keeping that data or dumping that data is a different issue.
> most people's personal use of computers hasn't kept up with the capabilities of the high-end of consumer grade products Increasingly, consumers don’t even own a personal computer. (Unless we’re being pedantic and calling our phones PCs.) Asking what a PC will do with faster mobile internet will be misleading.
I feel that you're deliberately missing the point. Most users don't max out their '4G' connections either.
> Most users don't Max out their '4G' connections either
But sometimes, some do. That margin is what describes new opportunity.
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.
Wait you work in RF and don’t have a beard? Is that allowed!? :)
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 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. But it won't be cheap for the consumer. At best, our data plans will stay the same price. But more likely they'll rise and, well, I just don't think people give a crap enough about having a sim card in their TV to pay the extra. Maybe if you make SF money, b…
Where I live 4G is good and so cheap that I am thinking about dropping my DSL connection.
I would still need a wifi-router as my laptop and my tv does not support 4G. But my guess is eventually those devices will support xG mobile data and my wifi-router will be a thing of the past.
That's not true though. It's not like the people who currently spend lots of time watching niche videos on YouTube (myself included) would start ordering flash memory with those videos instead if only it wasn't for copyright. The case for movies is a bit stronger, but my family's movie/TV show routine is to figure out what we want to watch last minute, then find that on netflix or crunchyroll or piracy sites and then…
No, but they would download their content once and store it locally instead of repeatedly re-streaming it every time. IF you have children, you're probably familiar with the concept of streaming Frozen for the 50th time. If you're using netflix or spotify or similar, you're probably also familiar with the concept of something that was previously available just vanishing because of circumstances outside of your contro…
Agreed. If 5G delivers as promoted, there is no reason to 'stream' any static content...it simply caches to your flash memory in milliseconds (song) or seconds (movie, Netflix already has mobile downloading). I can see a case for streaming in VR/AR or active content (live/multiplayer,etc), but streaming static content isn't efficient.
You can hear some particularly wild assertions like this in the long running commercial throughout the past few episodes of Malcolm Gladwell's Revisionist History podcast. They are formatted as conversation between Gladwell and an AT&T exec. It always starts with "what are some things that might be enabled if bandwidth improved and latency decreased" and then just jumps immediately to some Internet of Things utopia.
Decreasing latency seems more like a material improvement, but I wasn't aware 5G impacted that. Our current peak of bandwidth, on the other hand, is pretty much as much as you could need for any given media.
5G does in fact have much lower latency than LTE, but that’s really not saying much.
They could, but...they don't want to. So they won't!
You don't know that. Currently consumers don't have the (legal) option, so extrapolating their current behavior to their potential desires is fallacious.
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?
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 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. But it won't be cheap for the consumer. At best, our data plans will stay the same price. But more likely they'll rise and, well, I just don't think people give a crap enough about having a sim card in their TV to pay the extra. Maybe if you make SF money, b…
>But it won't be cheap for the consumer. At best, our data plans will stay the same price.
...for entirely political reasons. Here in the UK, you can get unlimited 4G data (with 5G in some areas) for $25 a month. If you pay through the nose for shitty service, take it up with Ajit Pai.
> 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…
This is the big point that everyone is missing. If we aren't at the forefront of the technology curve, then someone else will be. It's literally choosing to be a winner or loser but you also don't have to put in the time or effort you just have to voice an opinion.