It’s very weird to see so many tech people siding with NIMBYs and hypochondriacs against technological advance. This is just a microcosm if a larger problem: municipal governments hold back progress. Right now, my Maryland county is lobbying to get veto power over a much-needed expansion of bridge capacity between the western and eastern shores of the Chesapeake Bay. Folks are also lobbying hard to shut down already-…
I can't stand the term "NIMBY's". What does that really mean? Is "NIMBYism" actually that surprising? When someone settles down somewhere and invests in a home, they will complain if you come in and try to do something to worsen their environment. What else can you expect? Is being a NIMBY just the opposite of being a pushover?
Investing in a particular plot of land doesn't mean you get to veto everybody else's choices of what they do with their invested plot of land. Pure democracy violates individual freedoms.
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…
>Remember how video streaming was theoretically possible on 3G but totally shit in practice until 4G came along ? 5G is a similar kind of step up. You can expect an order magnitude more bandwidth on mobile than with 4G, and that matters.
5G-NR standard only gives a 15-20% gain in data thoroughput over the same bandwidth as compared to 4G LTE. The vast majority of the increase in thoroughput has to come from the millimeter wave bands. Think about streetlights to get an idea of coverage and propagation. Now think about running internet fiber to every streetlight. It's quite a task. It'll only be done (and has only been done so far in the USA) in areas that require high bits/khz/km^2 like entertainment stadiums and parts of the largest cities.
Additionally, almost no two countries actually have overlapping 5G bands. It's a mess of competing standards. So it'll be different frontend modules for controlling the antenna arrays required on the handsets (high power usage and space requirements) due to the integration required. Handsets are going to have to get bigger. Unlikably big and specific to region.
And beyond that the 5G setups being implemented now aren't stand alone. They're both LTE and Non-Standalone (NSA) 5G. The 5G just provides extra bandwidth and isn't used as a control for the handsets. It more than doubles the complexity of setups because of the trouble RF designers have to take with harmonics and intermodulation. All the competing national freq band standards mean different filtering solutions.
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…
The issue is, there’s so many other things in the “faster internet” story than 5G that it really seems like a bit of a scam...
Personally, I’d much appreciate full-coverage, limitless, unthrottled, can-be-tethered, cross-border, always available (unlike in Central London) 4G. If mobile network operators can’t even achieve that, maybe they’re not up to the job of setting up 5G.
AR for businesses(like AR repair manuals, etc) seems like a good idea. But in that case , downloading the data locally seems like a real option.
And if the AR processing is being done on device—which I think it has to be due to latency, even under 5G—the data to be downloaded really isn’t that large. We’re talking images and 3D models.
> data to be downloaded really isn’t that large. We’re talking images and 3D models.
I think you underestimate image sizes for modern AR/VR applications. For example, good quality light-field can take few gigabytes for one image. Also there is a big UX difference between downloading full image ahead and downloading parts on-demand (similar to modern video streaming - today we never download full video ahead).
I can't stand the term "NIMBY's". What does that really mean? Is "NIMBYism" actually that surprising? When someone settles down somewhere and invests in a home, they will complain if you come in and try to do something to worsen their environment. What else can you expect? Is being a NIMBY just the opposite of being a pushover?
Investing in a particular plot of land doesn't mean you get to veto everybody else's choices of what they do with their invested plot of land. Pure democracy violates individual freedoms. You do you, and I'll do me.
Usually when someone invests in a plot of land, they're also considering what surrounds their plot of land. Obviously you don't own the rights to the surroundings, but it's reasonable to expect you would have something to say about it if those surroundings were to get ruined somehow.
One thing that a lot of people do not understand is that 5G can operate in any frequency band. In fact, for many 4G radios it is nothing more than a software upgrade, no change to the physical device or power levels, just faster and lower throughput.
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…
one of the major reasons that so called mm-wave is far safer than previous low/ mid-band (i.e. < 6GHz) technologies is the following.mm-wave frequencies (e.g. 28Ghz) allow the use of array antennas (i.e. Phased Array Antennas, PAA's).
The reason this is so much safer is because the PAA's produce "pencil width beams" that is, the beams are very narrow. Rather than blasting away in all directions like the sub-6Ghz bands, the beam is focused on the PAA antenna. Why is this safer?
because, if something, like, let's say a human, comes in between the transmitter and the receiver, the signal will be completely lost. Hence, at this point the PAA controller will stop transmitting or scanning in that direction. So there is no radiation in that direction.
So, if you are worried about it, just turn off mm-wave capability (e.g. turn off 5G UWB). But honestly, you don't have to worry, the beam (and energy) is very focused, if anything comes in the way, even a wet piece of paper, or a person, it stops. This means that mm-wave is far safer than previous 4G in the mid to low bands. 5G in the mid to low bands are basically the same as 4G but have a much more efficient use of the spectrum.
So overall, 5G is faster, lower latency and safer than 4G or 3G or anything that came before.
Of course there is a lot of misinformation from various propaganda sources that want to confuse the public.
I think the point being made in this thread is that we don't know what improvement it might bring. But making it available will probably spur a lot of innovators to create something amazing and useful that could definitely make your life better.
Okay, that's a very fair statement I can agree to. However, I mostly argue that the taxpayer cost doesn't justify the gains. It's expensive and most counties and cities have to foot the bill or heavily subsidize it. If the telecom company wants to foot the bill. Good on them. No arguement here. If the city has to, go fuck yourselves. Its diminishing returns to a ridiculous level.
5G will probably drive AR and VR adoption. Enabling remote surgery, and other things like that. Who knows what else.
Really we have no idea of the the doors it could happen. In the 90s many people thought the internet was a gimmick or a fad. Today the most successful companies are built on it. It's very likely the same will be true for 5G enabled technologies and companies.
> 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.
Services and products that will utilize more bandwidth aren't being built, because they're not usable without 5G. 5G needs to become ubiquitous before we'd find out what the new applications will be.
G5 will also reduce latency a lot, which is another vector that will open new possibilities.
Investing in a particular plot of land doesn't mean you get to veto everybody else's choices of what they do with their invested plot of land. Pure democracy violates individual freedoms. You do you, and I'll do me.
Usually when someone invests in a plot of land, they're also considering what surrounds their plot of land. Obviously you don't own the rights to the surroundings, but it's reasonable to expect you would have something to say about it if those surroundings were to get ruined somehow.
Everything hinges on the definition of "ruined."
If you take that to mean "a waste disposal plant gets built right next to your house" then you have a point.
If you take that to mean "we're replacing this single family home with a small apartment building" then you're really going too far.
I have 150Mbps right now (checked on fast.com) with 4G in Central Denver. It’s not about the number before the G, but whether the carriers are building enough infrastructure to support it.
The population density in London is an order of magnitude higher than in Denver. That has an obvious impact on air congestion, which is one of the primary limiting factors on cellular network performance.