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The Disappointment of 5G

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Re: The Disappointment of 5G

#41

All the BS hype about 5G was a red flag for me. They were always showing how doctors could operate on people in far away places (never mentioning the fact that the people in the far away places probably have no health care) and it is also all supposed to lead to everything from energy efficiency to higher efficiency. But all I get is a higher phone bill and no option to opt out of a 5G plan even though I turn it off…

I sometimes wonder if the dumber 5G conspiracies were seeded as part of a psyops campaign to paint anyone negative of 5G as a fringe lunatic.

Re: The Disappointment of 5G

#42
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.

And couldn’t they already do it over the internet? Presumably they mean doctors can have an internet connection in remote places. But that’s not the same as being far from their patient.

Not in remote unwired terrain.

Examples for "wireless" (roadless) transport of physical packets

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipline_(drone_delivery_comp....

Re: The Disappointment of 5G

#43
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does this tell us about government officials?

That the majority are career politicians, not domain experts.

I expect those politicians should have advisory staff exactly for handling such cases, as there's never a domain expert in the lead (and there are different opinions also in every field). Now if that advisory works as expected, that's another story - maybe the politicians won't ask, maybe the advisors would represent some interests, maybe...

Re: The Disappointment of 5G

#44
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

4G can comfortably stream 1080p video with low latency. What does 5G being to this scenario?

Nothing really special for 5G. The governmental bodies (and the tech firms involved) use the term "5G" just to gain visibility.

I did see some of those ambulances running multiple streams from different perspectives, though. Is the bandwidth of 4G networks capable of doing that?

Re: The Disappointment of 5G

#45
post #35

> No wireless technology has been a bigger flop than 5G when comparing the hype to the eventual reality. Well that’s obviously not true. I was at the launch event for WiMAX which had huge hype and now you’ve probably never heard of it. 5G actually exists and works. In my home (admittedly near a tower) it’s faster than my gigabit Fios over wifi.

Maybe it was a flop as seen by people who expected it to make them grow a third arm or get mind-controlled by the secret government. That plan flopped greatly. /s

Re: The Disappointment of 5G

#46
I don't think OP is wrong, but it more of a rambling comment than an article.

To understand what's going on, we need equivalent of table of 5G spec features, with columns for:

* what use case the feature enables for users * how widely the feature is implemented, * what extra cost it would could incur to include the feature in a device or connection.

The article says that "extra speed is wasted" but also says that it "enables watching video" (and I presume sending video too).

That's a huge win, isn't it?

OP also forgot to mention, in the complaint about 8G, that we already have Fake G in "4G LTE" which isn't full 4G.

Re: The Disappointment of 5G

#47
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are virtually no new applications enabled IMO with 5G speeds vs LTE speeds/latency You can reasonably replace your home internet with 5G

You could do that with LTE a decade ago. It is more than fast enough for 4K video streaming, and typical latencies are below 50 ms. Most users would not notice any difference between LTE and 5G.

It’s not about the speed, it’s about data limits. LTE had fairly restrictive data caps due to congestion constraints whereas more mature 5G deployment will allow for reasonable data caps and still acceptable service for enough people.

Re: The Disappointment of 5G

#48
post #26

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…

> 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, maybe you have no need for that yet. I don't think you have to look to billionaires for that - surely for the majority of HN user…

Anecdotes aside the average user keeps their phone 2.6 years.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/619788/average-smartphon...

The ASP of a new phone in 2021 (latest non pay walled site i could find) was $321

https://statinvestor.com/data/35666/smartphone-average-selli...

And if someone makes over $100K a year, statistically they are probably an iPhone user.

https://www.computerworld.com/article/3668913/you-are-the-pr...

The ASP of an iPhone is $825

Re: The Disappointment of 5G

#49

All the BS hype about 5G was a red flag for me. They were always showing how doctors could operate on people in far away places (never mentioning the fact that the people in the far away places probably have no health care) and it is also all supposed to lead to everything from energy efficiency to higher efficiency. But all I get is a higher phone bill and no option to opt out of a 5G plan even though I turn it off…

Phones have had GPS since the 2G era. 5G is the least of your problem.

Re: The Disappointment of 5G

#50
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, maybe you have no need for that yet. I don't think you have to look to billionaires for that - surely for the majority of HN user…

Anecdotes aside the average user keeps their phone 2.6 years. https://www.statista.com/statistics/619788/average-smartphon... The ASP of a new phone in 2021 (latest non pay walled site i could find) was $321 https://statinvestor.com/data/35666/smartphone-average-selli... And if someone makes over $100K a year, statistically they are probably an iPhone user. https://www.computerworld.com/article/3668913/you-are-the-pr…

I'm not sure if that's supposed to contradict my point, but I don't think an iPhone user earning $100k is skipping a model, upgrading only every 2.6y, because they can't afford to upgrade faster.
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