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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?

#251

Post by twoodfin »

simplotek wrote: post #199
jasonkester wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Demand for power and gas—or banking services—doesn’t scale by orders of magnitude every few years.

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

#252

Post by throwaway892238 »

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…

> This is a bit of a problem when those same operators spent or borrowed billions

Not to worry, they'll just pass the cost to customers or ask for a bailout and get it. Being a giant corporation is awesome.

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

#253

Post by antihero »

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…

In London 5G is definitely way better, tested with Vodafone and Virgin (O2? Voda?)

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

#254

Post by gerad »

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…

Here in the US I think the killer app is breaking the local cable company’s monopoly on providing high speed internet to the home.

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

#255

Post by chrisco255 »

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.

Of course, but having been to an F1 race recently, the tracks are so irregularly shaped and long that it's usually impossible to see the whole track (or even more than some small section of track) from the stands. And even the big screens can be sparse.

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

#256

Post by mnw21cam »

wincy wrote: post #212
dezgeg wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I just benchmarked from my suburban second floor bedroom in the US, and got mmWave (it says 5G UC which is apparently mmWave) and got 500mbit/sec So I guess some people have it, and use it? It’s basically always on around my neighborhood, but I guess I live in a nice city and Sprint’s old HQ is down the street so that probably has a lot to do with it.

Half a bit per second?

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

#257

Post by BuildTheRobots »

Ekaros wrote: post #206
chrisbolt wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Haven't they always been signal strength? Which is only an issue when it is really low. And with 5G we are dealing with so many frequency bands, users and so on that the strength of signal really tells little.

It's not even true signal strength. Certainly on 2G (I'd have to double check on later technologies) the radio can inform the UE to treat the recieved signal level as being an arbitrary amount better than actually measured.

This applies to signal level as reported to the user as well as internal metrics, eg handover (is this other cell better, should I switch to it?).

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

#258

Post by somehnguy »

I run into the ‘hung connection’ issue all the time with an iPhone 13 Pro on Verizon. It’ll just sit there and never load anything - to get network back I have to toggle airplane mode and force a reconnection. It does seem to be related to 5G - if I disable it entirely in the settings I don’t ever notice it happening.

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

#260

Post by amateurdev »

novia wrote: post #2

Are you using T-mobile or another provider that uses them? My 5G connection is trash, but I just switched up Google Fi, which is using T-Mobile's network. Inside my apartment pictures on websites are loading like it's the early 2000's again. I'm in a major city, I thought that would help.

Im a 5G Google Fi user (Pixel 7) in Boston (I live in the city) and its honestly trash. There have been so many times where it says 5G but there's actually no network (maps keeps using the downloaded ones, music doesnt play etc). I finally gave up after 3 months and limited it to use LTE and have had no complaints since.
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