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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?

#171

Post by californical »

simplotek wrote: post #144
efitz wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We used to have that - Bell Telephone. It never improved; there was zero need to innovate. Consumers had to fight like hell for the right just to buy their own phones. Telephones were OWNED by Ma Bell and leased to consumers; their argument was “how can we guarantee stability of the network if anybody can connect anything they want to it?” [ed] Government broke them up in the early 80’s; overnight we saw innovation l…

> You do NOT want to return to that. I'm not sure your assessment is reasonable. You're putting up a strawman by claiming that the only way to have shared infrastructure is to have an abusive monopoly that stifles innovation and screws consumers over. This is false. It's quite possible to have a single infrastructure provider that does it's job, such as a consortium of telcos shipping in to deploy and run shared infr…

But just imagine. All of the incumbent providers use shared 1gb fiber. That’s what you get. You can pick your provider, but it’s all the same fiber infrastructure.

Some scrappy company comes in saying they can offer 10gb fiber for the same price or less, but it takes an infrastructure upgrade. The consortium of incumbents shoot down the idea because it will “cause problems” or whatever. So they’re never forced to spend money to upgrade the shared tech, and your service never improves.

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

#172

Post by dizhn »

zuron7 wrote: post #79
roxgib wrote: post #50

It wouldn't be so bad if phones were better at switching to the best available signal, they they could use the efficient 5G connection when it's available, but fall back to 4G when the 5G is blocked by a building or something (which I gather is more common due to the high frequencies used in 5G). But they seem to insist on connecting to a crappy 5G signal even if an excellent 4G signal is available. Same with 3G, whi…

Phones seem to optimize for the fastest network instead of network quality. At least on Android it's possible to manually override and select a network through the hidden settings menu accessible through the phone dialler. Just hit # #4636# # and you're in.

Does not seem to work on Samsung and Huawei.

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

#173

Post by tambre »

rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #156

5G only really shines in super crowded situations like sports stadiums and music festivals. In normal everyday situations 5G just drains more battery and causes more glitches due to the more frequent handoffs. It's also much faster than 4G, of course, but it's quite rare for me to need speeds above 4G on my cell phone. I'm usually not downloading large files when I'm out and about away from WiFi.

You seem to be confusing the set of standards called 5G and the high-frequency mmWave bands that are an option part of it. mmWave makes little sense except in special areas and that's also why there's very very limited deployements of it. On 5G as a whole? Lots of network-level architecture and signalling improvements still, but depends on NSA/SA, used bands, implementation quality, end-user equipment bugginess, etc.

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

#174

Post by squokko »

gambiting wrote: post #159
rocqua wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would expect that to work great for a F1 race.

It working great and people actually wanting to use it are two different things. In my experience people go to sports events to experience the atmosphere and enjoy themselves while having a beer, not to look into every minute detail of what's happening.

Exactly... the most fanatical football nuts I know are the ones watching the game on TV with the different angles and the slow-motions and the replays... the people going to the game are very tribal, they love painting their faces and shouting [CITY NAME] and they do genuinely get very happy when [TEAM] wins but they aren't the ones talking about the 0-technique of the defensive lineman and so on.

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

#175

Post by mdp2021 »

Animats wrote: post #89
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…

> Telcos desperately need a killer app or use case that drives 5G adoption. They haven't got one. * Self driving cars? No. * Internet of Things? No. * Metaverse? No. * Remote surgical operations? You gotta be kidding. Everyone in a big stadium can watch the show on their phones, though. If someone was willing to pay for the hundreds of tiny cell sites required.

I know people who are implementing server-based "responses" in cars (e.g. tyre slip control - similar contexts) and need the lowest possible latencies for that.

Of course, some of are of the position of "You try to place remote access, control and delegation to critical pieces of my vital infrastructure, expect the most violent level of personal reactions".

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

#176

Post by Kudos »

szundi wrote: post #145
Animats wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Telcos desperately need a killer app or use case that drives 5G adoption. They haven't got one. * Self driving cars? No. * Internet of Things? No. * Metaverse? No. * Remote surgical operations? You gotta be kidding. Everyone in a big stadium can watch the show on their phones, though. If someone was willing to pay for the hundreds of tiny cell sites required.

5G highspeed signals are so high frequency that they penetrate no kind of matter anymore. Good luck. Only usecase maybe the stadium with a central antenna.

I live in a poured concrete house built in 1950s Ireland. My 2.4Ghz doorbell struggles to speak to an AP about 1 meter away from it through the external wall. I just did a 5G speedtest from my bed and got 250Mbps.

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

#177

Post by godzillabrennus »

harpratap wrote: post #112
Animats wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Telcos desperately need a killer app or use case that drives 5G adoption. They haven't got one. * Self driving cars? No. * Internet of Things? No. * Metaverse? No. * Remote surgical operations? You gotta be kidding. Everyone in a big stadium can watch the show on their phones, though. If someone was willing to pay for the hundreds of tiny cell sites required.

> If someone was willing to pay for the hundreds of tiny cell sites required. We are already doing that, it's called WiFi. 5G SA is nothing but a souped up WiFi signal, and it should be treated as such and not how we have been treating 4G up until this point. Telcos need to change their business model otherwise the tech giants might end up eating their lunch

The tech giants spy on us to sell advertising inside of their products. If Verizon starts listening into my calls to sell me products I would switch to any carrier who wasn’t doing that.

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

#179

Post by TheLoafOfBread »

Kudos wrote: post #176
szundi wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5G highspeed signals are so high frequency that they penetrate no kind of matter anymore. Good luck. Only usecase maybe the stadium with a central antenna.

I live in a poured concrete house built in 1950s Ireland. My 2.4Ghz doorbell struggles to speak to an AP about 1 meter away from it through the external wall. I just did a 5G speedtest from my bed and got 250Mbps.

And which 5G it was? Because mmWave one won't really penetrate anything on 10GHz+

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

#180

Post by tsimionescu »

raverbashing wrote: post #126
tremere wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Well, the use case where your headphones are connected to one device and you are moving around accounts for, say, 80% of the time spent using headphones. So even if other use cases get more annoying, it really doesn't matter unless they become unbearable (and disconnecting BT on my phone and then connecting from my laptop to the headphones, which is about the worse case scenario, is not unbearable).
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