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

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281–290 of 433 posts

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

#281
post #33

There's such weird marketing zealotry behind 5G. They're acting like it's going to completely reshape society, but at best it's just... faster internet. In places where the internet is already pretty fast. I can only assume it's a mixture of political and economic stakeholders that have their own reasons for really wanting it to succeed (looking competitive against China, selling new phones, etc.)

I get the feeling and have been asking the same thing. It wasn't like this for 4G.

Is it because it will replace wired internet as well? Or the ubiquitous nodes allow detailed location tracking? It will be managed by a skynet inspired AI? Or the fact China has taken the lead in implementing it?

Whatever the case it's a bit weird and I wonder what we don't know.

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

#282
post #33

There's such weird marketing zealotry behind 5G. They're acting like it's going to completely reshape society, but at best it's just... faster internet. In places where the internet is already pretty fast. I can only assume it's a mixture of political and economic stakeholders that have their own reasons for really wanting it to succeed (looking competitive against China, selling new phones, etc.)

> 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…

But we already have fast mobile internet. If there was going to be this kind of buzz, it should have been for 4G. What makes 5G so game changing over that?

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

#283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't for static content (songs/movies), but for active content it is. 5G should effectively redefine what streaming really is.

What does this mean? Multiplayer video games? Video calls? Communal karaoke? I can see how all of these things might benefit from 5G's higher bandwidth and lower latency, but they should also be more than possible right now. So if there's some untapped audience for a communal online karaoke app, I really don't think 4G networks are what's holding them back. This type of thing is where I get pretty frustrated with 5G…

I think 'streaming' is a poor selling point, because it is already done efficiently, and will simply be made more efficient by faster networks offloading static content to cache/flash, as in Netflix/song downloads are presently. We just wouldn't need to call them 'downloads' anymore, just cached content. There are use cases where a centralized database and processors would need interaction to complete the experience, such as online gaming/VR/AR..but I wouldn't call that 'streaming'. These definition are mutable, like you don't 'dial' a number to make a call. I remember when the phones transitioned from dial to button, and thought 'what a time-saver'!

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

#284
post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Your comments contain fundamental errors.

I won't go into great detail, why Three failed to acquire 4G spectrum and how it was subsequently awarded significantly valuable frequency from EE in the process. However, there is a lot more to how Three (Broadband) came to acquire frequency in the 3.4─3.8GHz spectrum. There was no auction neither were there any wars. It was via the acquisition of UK Broadband & Relish, which was already a part of PCCW. It was originally awarded the spectrum, contingent upon certain stipulations ie. building, maintaining and continued investment in telecoms infrastructure.

The current 5G product might bear the moniker, but it is still using the infrastructure put in place by UKBG Relish in parts of Central & Greater London. The speeds are also dependent upon relevant upgrades to the masts, operator equipment, backhaul etc., more importantly the UE has to be up-to-date to take advantage of any speed boosts. It will still not count as real 5G for sometime yet, as there are standards which are still being ratified and other players have yet to join the game.

It would be naive to assume that Vodafone, the biggest operator by spectrum holdings, followed by BT/EE, will just defer their incumbent position, without bidding next year!

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2019/08/three-uk-aim-f...

https://www.capacitymedia.com/articles/3659839/Three-UK-agre...

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

#285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That margin is slim. For many users, vanishingly thin. Somebody like you or I might frequently max our our cellular connections, but I wager most users never do. And how would they? Streaming 4k YouTube videos onto a screen smaller than a postcard? It just won't make a difference for them.

> It just won't make a difference for them This is the 640kb argument. Being able to download a move at the gate? Potentially game changing. Being able to stream video from a drone or car on the road to centralised servers? Potentially game changing. People with capital are willing to bet this technology has legs. Your not being able to figure out why is not a good reason to block the investment.

You are unable to convince me I should look forward to it. Since we're apparently getting rude, I'll say your argument is nothing but naive dogmatic futurist optimism. Numerous potential harms to users (relating to privacy, not EM bullshit) have been raised in this thread and all you're offering up in return is vague nonsense about cyber-chauffeurs.

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

#286
post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what media is still constrained by bandwidth? There isn't really anything else. We already stream audio and video at pretty much the highest fidelity humans can perceive.

Video is still pretty constrained by bandwidth. I still have songs buffer at times. So I wouldn't even say our current media isn't constrained. Additionally we'll probably see new uses for that bandwidth, just the same way we have found new uses in the past and every people again said we already have enough. That notion is ridiculous. We can already guess at some use cases. AR, VR, or other types of environment simul…

> I still have songs buffer at times.

I'd posit that happens not because your connection is too slow per se, but because your Wifi/LTE coverage is spotty, and speeds on the margins of coverage can be very slow.

So the real problem is coverage, not speed.

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

#287
post #43

Reality is, it's also far more expensive to install 5g. It requires more fiber lines to run to more poles. Also, the telecom companies lobbied on state levels the max cities can charge for renting out putting stuff on poles. Plus trying to get cities to foot the bill. We are at the speed point of diminishing returns, 5g being said point. It's more money for not a real quality of life increase. I dont want my city to…

It's more money for not a real quality of life increase. I dont want my city to spend tax money on that. This is what it comes down to for me. We have housing crises, debt crises, infrastructure funding crises, and opiate crises all across the country. There are real and significant returns to investment on fixing those. Let's start there.

Agreed. Especially the opioid crisis. I think it's a "relatively easy" problem to solve. I'm totally for tax money to go to people who truly want to get cleaned up and put on the right path. I think that'll help a good chunk of people with a well funded program of the drugs that help kick the cravings and a work reentry system. Much better than having my municipality or county pay for 5g.

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

#288
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…

Obviously sentiments like "640 KB is enough for everyone" hilariously failed to predict the value of faster and more powerful computers. At the same time, most people's personal use of computers hasn't kept up with the capabilities of the high-end of consumer grade products. Lots of people only really use a web browser, and even an ad-infested website will run fine on most 10-20 year old computers. You can say "we do…

> website will run fine on most 10-20 year old computers

20 years ago computers had 32 MB of RAM. So no, they won't run a modern website.

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

#289
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> No, but they would download their content once and store it locally instead of repeatedly re-streaming it every time.

That's like saying "people don't need to listen to the radio for the same pop songs, they can just play a CD with them"

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

#290
post #33

There's such weird marketing zealotry behind 5G. They're acting like it's going to completely reshape society, but at best it's just... faster internet. In places where the internet is already pretty fast. I can only assume it's a mixture of political and economic stakeholders that have their own reasons for really wanting it to succeed (looking competitive against China, selling new phones, etc.)

I work at an ISP and even internally people are parotting this '5G will change the world'.

They said it about 4G as well, and sure, a lot became possible with mobile devices because of it. But all in all, it's just faster internet.

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