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Australia’s 4G network is faster than 5G: study

thenewdaily.com.au

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Re: Australia’s 4G network is faster than 5G: study

#81
post #42
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Many consumers will like it because there's no need for a modem or router. Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile/Sprint are all working on vertically integrating to provide phone service, 5G, and streaming content options. Comcast is now in the cell phone business, and owns NBC and Universal. T-Mobile (soon to be merged with Sprint) bought Layer3 and is now in the TV business. AT&T owns Warner Brothers and HBO. V…

I'm not sure I understand the idea. How is my laptop or desktop going to get internet access this way? Am I going to have to buy a PCI card or USB antenna for each computer? Right now I get 100 Mbps down with no data cap via a cable provider. Trading for a system with antennas on every device , lower speeds, and probably metered sounds like one hell of a downgrade.

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Re: Australia’s 4G network is faster than 5G: study

#82

Amazingly the article refrains from providing any numbers for Australia. From the original report: - 5G: 792mbps - 4G: 950mbps https://www.opensignal.com/blog/2019/07/08/5g-boosts-the-max...

In my experience, you never get that outside of the town centre. 10mbps cap in the suburb on 4G.

Anyway, this doesn't really highlight how good our 4G is, it highlights how poor our interconnected fibre network is. It's a bloody multi-generational disaster, a train wreck salvaged. And the price of it all lands on the consumers.

For example, I'm on cable, and life is good. When I get migrated (by force) to fibre, I will have less bandwidth and pay more. It's also wildly known at the moment to have constant drop outs. YAY the future.

And remote areas are put on Satellite, they were never going to run fibre to the home.

Re: Australia’s 4G network is faster than 5G: study

#83
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good post until the last sentence! NBN history is far more interesting than that! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Broadband_Network

Agreed. As per the HN guidelines: > Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle HN is a great place for considered discussion. Let's keep it that way.

To be fair, it's a true statement. The NBN is shithouse and compared to what was promised originally, it could be considered fake.

Re: Australia’s 4G network is faster than 5G: study

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good post until the last sentence! NBN history is far more interesting than that! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Broadband_Network

It was a bit of snark not to be taken too seriously, though with regard to the trogs' fear of technology, it has more than a grain of truth ;)

Stephen Conroy (on the left) was frequently called a Luddite by tech magazines. A leading IT forum even had an short lived happy April Fools he had been fired.

https://whirlpool.net.au/news/?id=1841&show=replies

I'd do more research if you want to know more.

Re: Australia’s 4G network is faster than 5G: study

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not "long term" in "this technology will exist for a long time" but rather "it will take a long time to get this technology fully rolled out". Carriers started releasing what they called "4G" networks, but those networks did not meet the standards required to call it 4G. So they came up with LTE because it's a long-term evolution of 3G service, evolving until it meets the standards for 4G.

Wow, you just blew my mind, thanks. So what is "true" 4G here? Is it LTE-A? Or does it not even exist? All this time I used to think the "fake" 4G (3.9G?) was HSPA and the "real" one was LTE and that LTE-A went beyond that, but now I'm not sure what's what anymore!

4G requires data rates of 100mbps while moving and 1Gbps while stationary. LTE-A only hits 300Mbps, but the ITU eventually gave up fighting it and now calls LTE-A officially "4G" even though it doesn't meet the original standard.

http://www.itu.int/net/pressoffice/press_releases/2010/48.as...

Re: Australia’s 4G network is faster than 5G: study

#86
4G is plenty fast enough. The next tangible leap has got to be unlimited data. Is that something 5G might help with?

Recently moving back to Australia after a year living in Finland, I really miss unlimited 300Mbit/sec 4G for 25€/month (~$40 AUD).

It's well and good that our mobile networks are as good as the Finns (anecdotally), speed and reliability wise (whoops, as long as you dodge Telstra outages). Sure there are a couple of 'unlimited' plans popping up in Australia now, but it's more like 'trickle at 1.5Mbit/sec when you use up your allowance'. Like a lot of things, I think Australia would do well to copy-paste what the Finns are doing. Education, telecoms, energy, well-being, ... for our post-coal economy we'd do well to learn it and scale it.

Re: Australia’s 4G network is faster than 5G: study

#88
post #82

Amazingly the article refrains from providing any numbers for Australia. From the original report: - 5G: 792mbps - 4G: 950mbps https://www.opensignal.com/blog/2019/07/08/5g-boosts-the-max...

In my experience, you never get that outside of the town centre. 10mbps cap in the suburb on 4G. Anyway, this doesn't really highlight how good our 4G is, it highlights how poor our interconnected fibre network is. It's a bloody multi-generational disaster, a train wreck salvaged. And the price of it all lands on the consumers. For example, I'm on cable, and life is good. When I get migrated (by force) to fibre, I wi…

The NBN in its post 2013 form is a disaster but I'm not aware of any areas that are still being migrated from HFC to fibre by them. Are you sure this is the case? If you have HFC you will likely stay on HFC, but you will indeed have your bandwidth downgraded and price increased. Thanks Liberal Party.

Regardless, it's not really relevant to an article about 4G vs 5G - they are separate fibre networks I believe?

Re: Australia’s 4G network is faster than 5G: study

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but the speed of light is very fast . Light can travel nearly 200 miles in one millisecond.

Please explain how 5G would overcome the obstacles to 1ms ping better than 4G. Higher bandwidth does not reduce latency for minuscule packets with low contention.

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Re: Australia’s 4G network is faster than 5G: study

#90
post #2

"The United States, meanwhile, enjoyed a 5G maximum speed of 1815Mbps – about three times as fast as 4G users’ maximum speed." This report seems to be lacking a reality check. (Is it practically possible to get ~600 Mbps from LTE? Exotic bundles like LTE MIMO don't really count unless they're actually offered as part of regular plans.)

Yes, it is possible to get 600Mbps from LTE, but you need lots of mid-band spectrum - the US operators are quite challenged in that respect, plus CPE capable of carrier aggregation + higher MIMO ('flagship' smartphones generally).

This article provides a good overview of how the Telstra deployment works: https://cellularinsights.com/telstras-gigabit-class-lte-netw...

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