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

thenewdaily.com.au

111–120 of 158 posts

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

#111
For me, the exciting part of 5G is the connection density.

The estimated density for a 4G network is: 4,000 devices / km^2.

The estimated density for a 5G network is: 1,000,000 devices / km^2.

The density means we can scale up machine machine interactions significantly, rather than focus on human machine interactions that we have today.

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

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC the largest ISP in Australia is Vodafone who provide more mobile IP connectivity than anyone else. (Source: Personal discussion with senior management, ~5? years ago)

Whoever told you that was being very liberal with the truth, Vodafone has always been #3 in the Australian mobile market since they started, they were hemorrhaging subscriptions for most of this decade due to underinvestment (known as "Vodafail"). They only started providing wireline services very recently, one of the few "western" markets they were not a full telco player in.

The discussion was around mobile IP connections. I am not sure if your calculation includes for example (just guessing!) other mobile carrier branded services using their network (MNVO[0]), non consumer (eg. IOT type or vehicular) mobile nodes, etc. I would trust this person implicitly as I used to work for them, they are an engineer not a salesperson and they are not known to extend the truth. While no information is infallible and perhaps they were wrong, given their position, however, I doubt it.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Australian_mobile_virt...

Edit: Seems my info was bad. Disappointing! Latest stats page 9 @ http://clients3.weblink.com.au/pdf/HTA/02127798.pdf and page 31 @ https://www.acma.gov.au/-/media/Research-and-Analysis/Report... They are indeed third (last!), though currently the fastest growing. Their MNVO base = 350K customers, total = just under 6M customers. Guess it shows how long I've been outta dodge :)

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

#113
post #71

I wish they wouldn't just use '4G' and '5G' as if they were one concrete thing. List the actual individual protocols. Sprint use to offer 4G in the United States that was Wi-Max based, but now almost all 4G is LTE. In Australia there was a Wi-Max provider (Vivi Wireless) but on a different frequency than the US and only via hot-spots (no phone support, that I know of). Is 4G for all these reports LTE? What exactly is…

AFAIK NR is the only 5G protocol. Exposing protocol details to consumers when those details do not correlate with performance is likely to just cause confusion.

NR is the only 5G protocol (aside from Verizon's abortive proprietary 5G TF), but it couldn't hurt to at least specify if the spectrum being used is sub-6 or mmWave. This factor (700--3500 Mhz vs 26, 28, 39 GHz) is going to have the largest impact by far on the experience in terms of the bandwidth/coverage tradeoff.

When it comes to discussing these two distinct clusters of spectrum, the difference is so stark that we might as well be talking about different protocols.

5G and 5G pro?...

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

#114
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…

You won't go onto FTTP, they will use the Telstra HFC cable and you just get a different modem. Most of the drop-out problems I think are fixed.

The less bandwidth and paying more are only due to stupid pricing models from the infrastructure provider (NBN), for anybody who isn't familiar with the system. There's no technical reason for it in 60% of the country. They could upgrade anybody in the FTTP footprint to gigabit this afternoon and anybody in the HFC footprint to at least 250 or 300Mbps but are limiting everybody mostly to 100Mbps (but most people are on lower speeds) just because they want to gouge providers for bandwidth. The artificial limitations created by these pricing models also mean that a lot of providers skimp on buying the necessary bandwidth, so for most providers (there are only a few good ones) there are unnecessary slow-downs at peak times as the artificially limited bandwidth gets congested. It's madness!

The rest is unfortunately served by satellite, FTTN or FTTC that aren't able to deliver the speeds, or for the fixed wireless footprint it is also limited, but to a large degree only because the LNP government shelved the planned backhaul upgrades to save some money, so there are all these wireless towers that are served by low-speed microwave backhaul. The plan had been to upgrade any tower to fibre backhaul once the microwave backhaul reached a certain level of utilisation, before it was fully congested. That now doesn't happen, so those users just have to deal with speeds dropping significantly at peak times.

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

#115
post #52

Well I don't know about faster than 5G, but for my rural location it's a lifesaver. I get a steady 60Mbps down, 12-15 up, which is just a tad better than my previous 0.3Mbps ADSL. It's kind of amazing and is literally what enables me to live where I do (ie. for remote work). 4g here is also far better than the shithouse fake NBN foisted on us by our far-right government, which loathes and fears any technology more re…

For some people, 4G is definitely better than NBN. Not all people. I’m not saying the NBN isn’t a trash fire of an infrastructure project (it is), or that our 4G is bad (it isn’t), but at least for me I get rock solid 100/40 on HFC, which is for sure better than my NBN service in inner-North Melbourne

It's interesting, becusee I moved from FTTC getting 100/40 to HFC and still getting 100/40.

Each technology has their own hardware faults though, and I've witnessed both. But as a user of the service, I'm actually surprised how decent HFC has been working.

My parents of FTTN get about 50/20,which is what I expect a lot of users on these lines would only be able to access. But the sheer cost of using a NBN over 4G makes it a lot easier to sell, data sims are not cheap

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

#116
post #111

For me, the exciting part of 5G is the connection density. The estimated density for a 4G network is: 4,000 devices / km^2. The estimated density for a 5G network is: 1,000,000 devices / km^2. The density means we can scale up machine machine interactions significantly, rather than focus on human machine interactions that we have today.

While I don’t know the exact numbers for 5G, those numbers are way way way off (on the high side) for 4G and I highly suspect are more than an order of magnitude on 5G, if not more.

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

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoever told you that was being very liberal with the truth, Vodafone has always been #3 in the Australian mobile market since they started, they were hemorrhaging subscriptions for most of this decade due to underinvestment (known as "Vodafail"). They only started providing wireline services very recently, one of the few "western" markets they were not a full telco player in.

The discussion was around mobile IP connections. I am not sure if your calculation includes for example (just guessing!) other mobile carrier branded services using their network (MNVO[0]), non consumer (eg. IOT type or vehicular) mobile nodes, etc. I would trust this person implicitly as I used to work for them, they are an engineer not a salesperson and they are not known to extend the truth. While no information i…

I can't see this being true for IoT/M2M either, sorry. There are a couple of small MVNOs on Vodafone but nothing that would bridge the gap between them and the other players.

_Maybe_ they have a good share of multinational contracts from their parent company, that is the only area I can see this statement being true.

Vodafone are doing some work with NB-IoT but the general market for this are metro utility companies - the coverage doesn't exist out of these areas to be taken seriously for a nationwide fleet.

I would put good money on the number of payment card terminals and power meters alone on Telstra being bigger than Vodafone AU's entire M2M business.

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

#118
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You won't go onto FTTP, they will use the Telstra HFC cable and you just get a different modem. Most of the drop-out problems I think are fixed. The less bandwidth and paying more are only due to stupid pricing models from the infrastructure provider (NBN), for anybody who isn't familiar with the system. There's no technical reason for it in 60% of the country. They could upgrade anybody in the FTTP footprint to giga…

About 2 months ago I was staying at a friends place that had HFC NBN and it would drop out at least once a week.

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

#119
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…

its not just remote areas going on satellite now. The NBN is in a rush to get it finished by mid next year so they are now moving suburbs on to satellite. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-11/powderfinger-star-off...

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

#120
The purpose of 5G isn't to deliver faster speed to an individual end point. It's to add more capacity to a single cell site. Marketing will continue to lie with their "up to" promises but don't expect to reap any significant gains from the latest radio tech.
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