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5G Just Got Weird

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Re: 5G Just Got Weird

#161

Post by tootie »

vbezhenar wrote: post #121
mac01021 wrote: post #111

Not exactly on topic: There have been a few HN submissions in the past linking to papers concerned with the effect of 5G on insects. As a layperson I was not able to evaluate those papers. But if anyone knows if there was any kind of consensus reached about that, or even if this is something that anyone serious is concerned about, I would appreciate the pointer.

My anecdote data. I'm living in Kazakhstan and there's an interesting observation. We used to have lots of cockroaches in houses, especially when houses were not very clean. It was, I think, before 1995. It seems the same with our post-USSR neighbour countries (Russia, and so on). I used to live in such a flat, where lots of cockroaches were running in the kitchen at night. I remember as a child that we tried differe…

I live in NYC which may be both the roach capital of the world and the most thoroughly saturated with RF signals. I can assure you, there is no correlation. Roach killing chemicals have definitely gotten more effective, but also they're starting to proliferate again due to the warming environment.

Re: 5G Just Got Weird

#162

Post by Dylan16807 »

> Millimeter waves means it will be possible to build a network just for an office building, factory, or stadium. At those scales, 5G could function essentially like Wi-Fi networks.

LTE was already using a whole lot of frequencies adjacent to Wi-FI, and I'm sure similar bands would be a critical part of making a private 5G network since you want to go through minor obstacles. Millimeter-wave on the other hand could be useful for speed but I bet it wouldn't be a critical part.

Re: 5G Just Got Weird

#163

Post by mlyle »

kurthr wrote: post #152
nextweek2 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What new market is 5g enabling? The more interesting feature in 5G is the signalling for IoT devices, those that wake up infrequently. Metering devices, handheld payment devices, patient home monitors, security systems, Airton, etc. 5G isn't really about more bandwidth but always on and more efficient use. This will enable more than just phones and a few tablets.

This low power argument makes far more sense than the high-bandwidth cases normally thrown around, especially because a lot of iOT can be outside where the signals aren't blocked by walls or near a for purpose commercial antena. I can imagine some server based interactive gaming/UIs only if the rest of the backend also improves. Fast refresh VR could be another use-case, if they didn't get so heavy and hot for other…

Just getting more spectral efficiency when signal strengths are high benefits all users. Lots of towers are at saturation over the air now, so if we can squeeze more bandwidth out of them, traffic that is presently being delayed will do better... even before we account for growth.

That is, 5G isn't just mmwave; it's also getting more out of existing low and mid band spectrum. (And mmwave, of course, will unload the other spectrum too somewhat in the densest areas).

Re: 5G Just Got Weird

#164

Post by wdb »

thinkingkong wrote: post #11

5G doesnt seem like its enabling anything fundamentally new. The talk of any ”killer app” based on having more throughput or on these optimizations always feels like demand generation and slightly inauthentic. Are there any technologies enabled by these techniques that are not possible today?

What about we first try to meet the internet speeds that is suggested can be met with 4G? Don't know any provider in the UK which allows the ~500mbps?

Re: 5G Just Got Weird

#165

Post by tootie »

Havoc wrote: post #73

>5G for cars to communicate with each other That's pretty good news. Even a simple "sharp braking" type coms between cars has decent potential to save lives beyond what can be achieved with radar & the like.

A signal like that would require a tiny amount of bandwidth. Latency is important, but it could also be done peer to peer without a network.

Re: 5G Just Got Weird

#166

Post by jiggawatts »

erulabs wrote: post #149
partyboat1586 wrote: post #133

Someone debunk this for me please: http://www.5gappeal.eu/about/ Edit: I'm legitimately looking for good sources on this. Not trolling.

What is supposed to be debunked? The main claim seems to be: > RF-EMF has been proven to be harmful for humans and the environment. Which... is true-ish? That's a bit like saying water is harmful to the environment and humans. For sure it is, if it's rushing at you with incredible velocity and mass (power). Electromagnetic radiation could certainly harm a human - with enough power. Drinking a glass of water or sendin…

Oddly, the same anti-5G people seem to have no interest in protesting against government inaction related to the unshielded nuclear reactor that causes millions of cases of cancer every year through ionising radiation.

Also the same people that are the type to complain vocally about the harmful effects of 5G seem to be the type to complain just as vocally about the fine they get when they're caught texting while driving.

I'm not outright saying they're all a bunch of loud-mouth hypocrites, I'm just saying I've made some observations that warrant more research. I think we should ban them all, just to be safe, until we have more information. Don't you agree?

Re: 5G Just Got Weird

#167

Post by tuatoru »

HeWhoLurksLate wrote: post #77
aaomidi wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of rural areas have backbone just fine. It's the last mile that's the issue. You can find gigabit business internet basically anywhere.

Woah, that's an enormous sweeping generalization. I have a friend whose parents live in rural Kansas who to this day can't get more than dialup or satellite, even though they've called up every single semi-local ISP (way more than once) and said they'd be willing to pay for installation. At this point, they have more than $20K saved for the chance that some company says maybe . It's simply way more complicated than y…

Rule of thumb for cable laying is between $20K and $100K per kilometre (0.609 mile) depending on environment. (Besides the actual laying, there's design, permits, landowner agreements, surface restoration, testing, certification, blah blah).

So your friend's parents' $20K gets them a kilometre of dark fibre. Maybe.

Edit to add: point-to-point wireless links might work better, but there again for a reliable wireless repeater you're looking at tens of thousands of dollars minimum in a rural environment. And in Kansas you're going to get bad Fresnel occlusion, so you need really big towers.

Re: 5G Just Got Weird

#168

Post by coronadisaster »

progval wrote: post #159
cupofjoakim wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could see wi-fi (even if I don't believe it) but how would this compete with BLE/NFC/Bluetooth? It's not like I want my wireless earbuds or my apple pay to go up to the internet and then back to device i'm using it from, right?

"Sidelinks will allow 5G-connected vehicles to communicate directly with one another, rather than going through a cell-tower intermediary."

I bet google wont implement that part... Just like they didnt implement ad-hoc wifi

Re: 5G Just Got Weird

#169

Post by jiggawatts »

partyboat1586 wrote: post #133

Someone debunk this for me please: http://www.5gappeal.eu/about/ Edit: I'm legitimately looking for good sources on this. Not trolling.

An easy way to debunk it is to point out that the RF power spectrum of a typical 5G device is basically the same as a 4G or 3G device. The battery sizes are the same! It's not like suddenly every mobile phone is hooked up to a Tesla battery and got water cooling so that it can put out kilowatts.

The difference between 3G, 4G, and 5G is largely the protocol, not the radio power!

The reason we can have 5G now, and not twenty years ago, is largely due to Moore's law. It is now possible for embedded and mobile devices to have sufficient computer power to "talk" using much more complex protocols than was practical before. They can use better encodings, more complex symbols, smarter echo and multi-path detection, clever error-correction, complex scheduling, etc, etc...

All of this efficiency actually serves to reduce the amount of time the radio is "on", because more data can be sent in the same amount of time. That's what "higher spectral efficiency" means! Arguing against 5G is to say that their preference is the older, less efficient, and more RF polluting standards like 3G and 4G.

(Mind you, first-generation 5G devices eat more battery, but that's largely because they're right on the edge of what's possible for the logic component. Using the latest and greatest 5nm technology saves little or no power, and it'll be the next-gen 3nm process that will truly unlock the power savings. There was a similar transition with 4G from 3G.)

However, such arguments with such people are futile. They didn't arrive at their position through evidence or logic. They got there entirely as an emotional, tribal reaction to what they see as an external group entering their boundaries without their permission.

Re: 5G Just Got Weird

#170

Post by tuatoru »

FeepingCreature wrote: post #86
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that sounds like a huge limitation, no? The number of people living in places that sparsely populated must be very limited, how does it make economical sense to launch that huge number of satellites?

Google says there's two million satellite internet users. At $50/mo, if SpaceX can grab all of them, which seems well possible, that's 1.2 billion income a year, even assuming that the improved service doesn't result in anybody else switching from bad rural internet to Starlink. A fifth of the US population lives outside of big cities. That's not a big fraction, but it's a small fraction of a very big number. Being a…

> A fifth of the US population lives outside of big cities

And there are people living rurally outside of the USA, too.

Starlink could bring rural Asia and Africa into the 21st century with one terminal per village.

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