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Ask HN: Is it just me or is 5G strictly worse than LTE?

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Re: Ask HN: Is it just me or is 5G strictly worse than LTE?

#121

Post by throwanem »

raverbashing wrote: post #106
spookthesunset wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “real” 5g isn’t for your phone, it is to replace your home internet. For that, you want fast and low latency and that means a dense amount of cell towers. The fact that “real 5g” has a shorter range is actually a positive. It means you can make your shit super dense.

So whoever doesn't live in the city center gets a poor signal? Sounds like short sighted view of the decade

Don't be silly. If anyone wanted to live outside cities, people would build cities there.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me or is 5G strictly worse than LTE?

#122

Post by anderspitman »

mdasen wrote: post #88
anderspitman wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm on Visible, which is a Verizon MVNO.

This is likely your problem. My first question is whether you're on one of the new plans or one of the old plans. This is actually important because the old plans are provisioned differently. The old plans use Visible's cloud APN while the new plans run off Verizon's. A lot of people have complained that Visible's was pretty terrible. The old plans were $25/mo if you had Party Pay. The new plans start at $30, but don…

Awesome, thanks!

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me or is 5G strictly worse than LTE?

#124

Post by jmopp »

guhidalg wrote: post #99
headsoup wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost like we could just go back to cables and have a plenty good experience again...

But why? If you had the choice of EQUIVALENT (bandwidth, latency, jitter, reliability, etc…) network connectivity, why pick a wire over wireless?

I don't trust that the wireless solution would be equivalent, though this may be because I've been burned too many times living in concrete houses that block cellphone signal rather effectively.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me or is 5G strictly worse than LTE?

#125

Post by pony_sheared »

tremere wrote: post #102
spookthesunset wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “real” 5g isn’t for your phone, it is to replace your home internet. For that, you want fast and low latency and that means a dense amount of cell towers. The fact that “real 5g” has a shorter range is actually a positive. It means you can make your shit super dense.

Why would I want to replace my home internet with something less secure, less reliable, lossier, and slower?

In London, in an apartment block, I tried BT broadband (60Mbps max), then Virgin cable (100Mbps for £55 / month, prices go up for more speed), then EE 4G (£30 / month for 200Mbps +/-50Mbps, unlimited d/l upload is also over 60Mbps, about 6x on Virgin).

I don't game, so don't care about ping.

So, where I am, using 4G for my home internet is faster and cheaper, and I can gift data to my phone. I have not had any issues with reliability.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me or is 5G strictly worse than LTE?

#126

Post by raverbashing »

tremere wrote: post #111
raverbashing wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same arguments apply to wireless headphones. (And I'm not disagreeing with you)

No, that's specious. The user experience matters a lot more when using headphones. The weight and tension and tethered nature of a wire degrade the user experience when it comes to an apparatus that goes on your head. In contrast, I personally do not derive any pleasure from liberating my home internet gateway from a cable that goes to the wall.

> The user experience matters a lot more when using headphones.

Sure, for the use cases where, for example, you're moving too much, wireless is good

But you get an inferior experience on most other cases, for example, switching it from one device to another, not to mention spectrum crowding etc

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me or is 5G strictly worse than LTE?

#127

Post by indy »

tremere wrote: post #102
spookthesunset wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “real” 5g isn’t for your phone, it is to replace your home internet. For that, you want fast and low latency and that means a dense amount of cell towers. The fact that “real 5g” has a shorter range is actually a positive. It means you can make your shit super dense.

Why would I want to replace my home internet with something less secure, less reliable, lossier, and slower?

It may be worse for the end user but it's great for corporations. Samsung could sell you a smart TV with built-in 5G so that it can always serve you ads even if you never connect it to your wi-fi.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me or is 5G strictly worse than LTE?

#128

Post by Sunspark »

joecool1029 wrote: post #77
askvictor wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Stand Alone 5G without relaying on 4G Network Back End What's the difference in the backends? Is it just a question of bandwidth, or is there something more?

Different signalling, better privacy/security (resistance to IMSI catchers), lower latency. It's not a ton better in bandwidth for sub-6ghz but the latency improvement is noticeable.

I still use 3G intentionally until it is sunset or disconnected. It uses less battery power than LTE, and comes with the nice advantage of that it doesn't support alerts. The latter is an issue because in Canada, the absolute morons who made the decision, decided that all alerts, every last one, are to be sent at the level of Presidential.

So, this means an amber alert for some kid who is with one of their parents 500+ miles away blasts through.

So people are forced to do complicated stuff like rip out the alert module through the terminal, or set up some sort of schedule where the phone is airplane mode or turned off at night, etc.

Too much hassle, 3G is easier.

And 3G does use less power. LTE is faster with lower latency but beyond that.. I don't have VoLTE either because the provider is being cheap with my cheap plan.. so why bother.

5G will have lots of battery consumption if the example of LTE is any indication, and no user-facing improvements that I am aware of. Real ones, not theoretical. Wireless data prices are very high here. Nobody is going to use 5G for an internet connection.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me or is 5G strictly worse than LTE?

#129

Post by pmontra »

spookthesunset wrote: post #96
kjellsbells wrote: post #45

Having the 5G logo on your phone doesnt necessarily mean your phone is speaking 5G. It's...complicated. - Most US operators do not have ubiquitous 5G radio coverage, so, they do what is called 5G NSA where your traffic ultimately ends up veing processed by the 4G core infrastructure that they have. Which is already overloaded and a bit creaky. - Some operators can do real 5G, "5G SA", where the whole flow end to end…

The “real” 5g isn’t for your phone, it is to replace your home internet. For that, you want fast and low latency and that means a dense amount of cell towers. The fact that “real 5g” has a shorter range is actually a positive. It means you can make your shit super dense.

In getting my home internet from a 4G tower some 3 km away. It's anything between 10 to 40 Mb/s upload and download. I think that we'll never have dense 5G towers here because the area is not dense. At most one tower where most of the houses are.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me or is 5G strictly worse than LTE?

#130

Post by chrisbolt »

13of40 wrote: post #38

In my experience "bars" of 5G don't have much correlation with actual (tethered) megabits. In some places it's like broadband speeds, and in some places I've had to explicitly switch back to LTE to get a decent connection even though my phone claimed it had a perfect 5G connection.

In my experience this applies to "bars" of all Gs, I've been in many places with full bars and unable to load anything. Seems that bars don't indicate backhaul bandwidth or congestion.
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