The Disappointment of 5G • Hacker News Board

Re: The Disappointment of 5G

#11

Post by darthrupert » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 11:31 AM UTC

5G gave me an incredible, almost magical, connection for in my home that's located 30km from the nearest city. On a good day, I'm getting 600/50Mbps with ~20ms latencies which is about 10-100 times better than the previous connection was giving me. It made my family's life possible in the lockdown times of Covid-19.

Fiber will be soon available here, though, and I'll be replacing 5G with it, to get a more stable, less energy-hungry connection that is less tied to chinese suppliers of networking hardware and software.

edit perhaps what I have is only some ultimate final form of 4G, I don't know nor care really.

Re: The Disappointment of 5G

#12

Post by qwertyuiop_ » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 11:32 AM UTC

reportgunner wrote: post #3

Looking back I realized it felt similar hearing about 5G all the time just as it feels hearing about AI now.

5G and Metaverse are closely linked in hype.

Re: The Disappointment of 5G

#13

Post by phoboslab » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 11:33 AM UTC

In Germany you can pay 35€/mo for 5GB of data traffic (t-mobile) and then enjoy the bandwidth of 5G for a full 40 seconds. It's a total joke.

Re: The Disappointment of 5G

#14

Post by daneel_w » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 11:34 AM UTC

It's curious how telcos' incessant blabbering about 5G ended up getting so deep into people's heads that they began thinking it was something that would make every interaction on their smartphones instantaneous. 5G was never about the individual user. It was always about the grid; the ability to provide expected bandwidth/connectivity to more users at the same time.

Re: The Disappointment of 5G

#15

Post by kotatsuyaki » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 11:34 AM UTC

Zealotux wrote: post #2

>5G would enable doctors to perform surgery remotely from across the country I never, ever understood that argument; I simply can't imagine a hospital relying on a cellular network for such sensitive work.

Not for surgery per se (which is too high of a risk), but in my country people did manage to find a similar, reasonable use case. They equipped ambulances with high-res cameras and cellular network for senior medical technicians in hospitals to give advices to medical technicians on the ambulance in real-time, which seems like a nice addition.

Re: The Disappointment of 5G

#16

Post by OJFord » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 11:35 AM UTC

blueflow wrote: post #10

DeathArrow wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I never, ever understood that argument; I simply can't imagine a hospital relying on a cellular network for such sensitive work. Maybe the argument was more for government officials, not for people like you.

What does this tell us about government officials?

That the majority are career politicians, not domain experts.

Re: The Disappointment of 5G

#17

Post by NDizzle » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 11:35 AM UTC

I for one am enjoying 500 mbit service at my rural home for $30/month with T-Mobile 5g home internet.

Re: The Disappointment of 5G

#18

Post by martinald » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 11:35 AM UTC

dale_glass wrote: post #7

It's a bit of a myth of the modern age that desire is unlimited. I think this is wrong. At some point our desire can be sated. Eg, I'm pretty sure Bill Gates or Elon Musk don't buy the newest, latest phone that comes out every single time. Because at some point you find something that works well enough, and just thinking of using something else involves effort. Even if V2 is theoretically faster or has more RAM, mayb…

Until 5G gets congested though. You wouldn't notice the difference between a uncongested LTE site with say 3CA, and a 5G site. The reason 5G feels good is that it isn't as congested (yet), unlike LTE.

Re: The Disappointment of 5G

#19

Post by OJFord » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 11:37 AM UTC

daneel_w wrote: post #14

It's curious how telcos' incessant blabbering about 5G ended up getting so deep into people's heads that they began thinking it was something that would make every interaction on their smartphones instantaneous. 5G was never about the individual user. It was always about the grid; the ability to provide expected bandwidth/connectivity to more users at the same time.

It reminds me of 3G - at least in the UK, the rollout/marketing of it seemed synonymous with video calling.

Re: The Disappointment of 5G

#20

Post by agumonkey » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 11:37 AM UTC

kotatsuyaki wrote: post #15

Zealotux wrote: post #2

>5G would enable doctors to perform surgery remotely from across the country I never, ever understood that argument; I simply can't imagine a hospital relying on a cellular network for such sensitive work.

Not for surgery per se (which is too high of a risk), but in my country people did manage to find a similar, reasonable use case. They equipped ambulances with high-res cameras and cellular network for senior medical technicians in hospitals to give advices to medical technicians on the ambulance in real-time, which seems like a nice addition.

Very nice

ps: reminds me that emergency team came with a broken 2G portable EKG that couldn't transmit data to the cardiologist when my mother had a spasm.. driver told me that the device was around 10000 euros, it was quite shocking.