Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 339 posts

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

#181

Post by temp0826 »

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?

Speak for yourself...my parents live in a rural area and just switched from a local wireless isp (via some directional/long range 802.11 setup) to a tmobile 5g router and it's been an absolute godsend in terms of speed and reliability. Growing up there was depressing and I was flabbergasted to see them join this century with something I'd consider "high-speed" (seen it hit 200mbps personally).

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

#182

Post by TheLoafOfBread »

ksec wrote: post #36

OK, I will bite. Comparing 5G vs 4G as Technology is completely different to 5G vs 4G in real world implementation. That is a bit like asking if Core i9 is faster than Core i7 without knowing the clock speed, core count, cache and power budget. Or for Software developers comparing Python vs Ruby without knowing the code and VM, JIT or not Most 5G network around the world are deployed in higher frequency spectrum. Hen…

Yeah, customer does not care where is a problem. Customer sees 5G on his phone, customer can feel that it is not faster than 4G (because it is that 5G on Sub 6GHz), customer has negative feelings about 5G because he does not understand why he should be paying more for same speed.

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

#183

Post by Sakos »

mekster wrote: post #31
ninjha wrote: post #9

In my day to day, 5G uses more battery, has similar speeds to LTE, and is less reliable than LTE... I just go into settings and turn off 5G. Occasionally I'm at the airport (or someplace with the "real" wideband 5G) and I want to download a movie quickly. At that point I turn on 5G and get 2 Gbit down, which is convenient!

Is the only good usage of 5G to download movie on the way?

I use my smartphone on 5g (with unlimited volume) as a modem for my laptop when I'm not home. It's fantastic. I'm glad nobody here is in a position to decide "nah, 4g is good enough". Nothing but luddites here.

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

#184

Post by HPsquared »

rocqua wrote: post #153
guhidalg wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Wireless is inherently easier to accidentally get disrupted. When wired internet fails, it is rarely the wire. More importantly, if it is the wire that is easy to check and fix. With wireless internet, disruption can be caused by many things. That makes diagnosing a problem so much harder. Incidentally it also tends to be less reliable. Besides that, the massive complexity of the technology stack makes wireless harde…

Wireless does has an advantage in terms of redundancy. If the nearest tower fails, you can probably also use another one nearby. Not so with wired connections, where the whole signal chain needs to be intact. Even if the whole network fails, you can probably switch SIM and use a different network.

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

#185

Post by _puk »

efitz wrote: post #133
baxtr wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worked in Telco too. I always wondered if it wasn’t enough to have 1 infrastructure provider like with streets or anything else. Why build the infrastructure twice or three times?

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…

“how can we guarantee stability of the network if anybody can connect anything they want to it?”

Sounds hauntingly familiar.. "How can we guarantee the security of the phone if owners can just side load anything onto it."

https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/23/22546771/apple-side-loadi...

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

#186

Post by HPsquared »

Gigachad wrote: post #164
dehrmann wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Supposedly lots of India will never build out data networks that go to homes because it makes no sense when you have LTE and 5G.

Wireless is probably good enough. Wired is still much faster, more reliable, and has lower latency, but if the cost is unaffordable, none of that is essential. I expect the future is that rural moves to mostly wireless and inner city areas continue to be connected to fiber.

The trend I've seen is the opposite: it's much easier to dig trenches and install cables in suburban/rural locations than it is in a densely packed city, so they often have better wired internet.

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

#187

Post by dezgeg »

TheLoafOfBread wrote: post #179
Kudos wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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+

They are certainly not using mmWave 5G. Numbers show (1st Google result) that less than 1% of time connected is to a mmWave network. I don't personally get why mmWave part of 5G is talked so much about.

5G over the same cmWave frequencies 4G uses still has a benefit - but mainly for the operator! It allows them more users and throughput for the same amount of spectrum. So in a rational market, the operators should be giving you discounts for using 5G instead of charging more for it!

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

#188

Post by jasonkester »

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…

It's quite possible to have a single infrastructure provider that does it's job

I don’t doubt it. But do you have any examples of this having ever happened? Every case I’m aware of has gone much like the person your replying to describes.

For example, I moved to England and spent the better part of ten years trying to get British Telecom to install a working telephone and internet connection at a house in the center of a large town. They’d send a truck out a few times a year to fix the same line fault, which consisted of having a guy climb a pole, unplug somebody else’s house from the “good” connection, and plug them into one of the bad ones. Presumably that neighbor would get the truck to come back at some point, starting the cycle again.

There are no other providers. Or rather, the other providers all subcontract from BT, so you eventually get the same truck to come out. But now you’ve added another layer of pain to the equation.

If there were a second option, they would get all the business. But there is not, so you’re stuck with what you’re given.

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

#190

Post by distances »

rocqua wrote: post #149
ilyt wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In dense permanent environments a bunch of cables will most likely be cheaper than having enough 5G cells to give everyone few hundred Mbits of transfer. In scattered environment the range is too short to excuse the cost of covering it with 5G There is no niche for it except for "my landlord didn't install proper internet so I use 5G" coz it happened to be alreadhy in range

I could imagine some place like new york, where everyone rents and you are dependent on landlords for your internet contract as well as your actual ethernet connection, 5g for home network could work.

Why would a renter be dependent on the landlord for Internet? I rent (non-US) and have my own Internet, electricity, and gas contracts.
Post reply on HN