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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?

#191

Post by thefz »

> I feel like signal is lower in general, and I run into a lot more cases where connections seem to hang entirely.

Exactly my use case.

I recently had to buy a new phone (broken mine) which has support for 5G. Thought that was worth a shot and enabled it on my SIM. I have now disabled it completely in Android and use 4G all the time, which works perfectly fine. I'm not downloading anything from the phone anyway and the most stress I put on its network is streaming music occasionally.

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

#192

Post by thefz »

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?

Wireless should be the exception, not the norm. When you really need a device to move.

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

#193

Post by kenhwang »

distances wrote: post #190
rocqua wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The utilities need owner approval to initially run the lines into the building and into every unit.

You're welcome to get your own contract, but if they don't have permission by the owner to dig into the ground and drill into walls to run the lines to you and a place to put meters and equipment, you're not getting the internet/gas.

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

#194

Post by Gigachad »

HPsquared wrote: post #186
Gigachad wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's still more expensive because you are digging 100km of easy trenches to connect a thousand people vs 1km of complex trench to connect tens of thousands.

In Australia we have mostly failed to provide good wired internet to rural areas so they are moving to starlink while the cities are largely connected to fiber now.

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

#195

Post by secondcoming »

dehrmann wrote: post #136
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…

> I assert that it is dawning on operators that consumers are not interested in paying $10 extra per month for 5G I agree with this. For the most part, LTE is enough for everything from casual web browsing to streaming video. There just isn't that much of an improvement jumping to 5G in the end-user experience. The is very different from the 3G to 4G jump. I still remember using an original 2G iPhone. Maps basically…

5G is great for those who want > 100MBs internet connections without having to be locking in to a multi-month contract with a fibre broadband provider.

You can just buy a SIM card and you’re on.

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

#196

Post by clnq »

CottonMcKnight wrote: post #92
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…

Verizon even markets "5G Nationwide" as "performance comparable to our award-winning 4G LTE". So what's the point? You have to spend more $$ to get "5G Ultra Wideband" on your plan, which is the real deal.

Wow, they actually said the "quiet part" out loud.

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

#197

Post by youngtaff »

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?

I’ve been using 5G while waiting for fibre to be laid and use it for day-to-day internet connectivity

It’s 20-30x faster than my VDSL2 line and only £8/month more expensive

And apart from the day of the Queens funeral it’s been really reliable

On the day of the funeral throughput was like 28kbps, whereas 4G from the same tower was 100Mbps so I presume the teleco had an internal network issue with their 5G backhaul / network (probably sold all the capacity to broadcasters)

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

#198

Post by throwaway2037 »

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 thought the killer app would be to replace at home wired broadband with 5G wireless. I still think it looks compelling.

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

#199

Post by simplotek »

jasonkester wrote: post #188
simplotek wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> But do you have any examples of this having ever happened?

Yes, there are whole Wikipedia lists of this having ever happened.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interbank_network

This is no rocket science. I mean, even utilities grids in open markets work like this, for stuff like power and even gas. Nowadays even railway networks in Europe are decoupled from operators. Why do people still cling to old monopoly tales?

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

#200

Post by disordinary »

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…

You have to pay extra for 5g in the US?
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