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The Disappointment of 5G

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Re: The Disappointment of 5G

#51

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

Odd take, the 5G hype was talking about devices that _might_ exist in the future and _might_ solve problems. I have used AI (or ML at least) 4 times today to solve problems. One was hype and I might use, the other is in my hands and real.

There were people like you telling me how great 5G is and showing me a video of gigabit speed speedtest on their phone.

Perhaps you talk about non-pop AI/ML - I mean GPT, LLMs and chatbots.

Re: The Disappointment of 5G

#52
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The point I’m making is that most people aren’t buying $110 phones and keeping them for years and most people making what the stereotypical HN user makes also isn’t buying $110 phones.

Re: The Disappointment of 5G

#53
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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... .

In remote areas, Starlink is probably a better bet than 5G to allow for low latency, high bandwidth use cases.

Re: The Disappointment of 5G

#54

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.

I agree. What I said is completely valid and I am being DV'd. And the minute I start talking about just the possibility that 5G could be harmful or used against us people think I believe that they also have nanobots in vaccines.

If someone wants to criticize the idea that 5G could be used for greater intelligence gathering please have at it. Otherwise, your DVs just make me more paranoid.

Re: The Disappointment of 5G

#55
It was the same with the initial rollout of 3G. There were all kind of crazy ideas for what this would enable, strange form factors of phones and so on. It usually takes a decade and turns out more boring, but in the end it _will be_ a better network. Nobody wants to go back to EDGE and many application now do rely on robust LTE.

Re: The Disappointment of 5G

#56
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In the US maybe. In Europe, at least here in France, there is plenty of 4G plan costing 25€-30 for 250Gb, 300Gb or even no limit

Re: The Disappointment of 5G

#58
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.

As someone who just went though a 3 month battle is one of the major ISP's in the UK to get a family members property connected I can suggest 1 big thing that many customers will notice a differnce between LTE and 5G. Gaming. First games are getting huge, so the extra speed is always a bonus for getting the title downloaded faster.

At the family members property inquestion their old fixed line boardband connection was 20meg (That was the fastest they could get on VDSL2 because of line quality and distance to the street cab - no G.Fast and no current plans for Openreach fibre nor OFNL), with two teenage kids in the house with current gen consoles each and the parents also wanting to stream on demand video and on of the parents working from home a few days a week, their connection would get overwhelmed all the time.

"Thankfully", their street is on the Virgin Media network however its only recently been added to the network and the property has a shared drive so the address was coming up as that VM was not avalable at the address even though there was a clear run of grass from the cable duct to the house.

3 months later we finally got VM to connect the house and now they have 500meg (did a cost benifit on the speed needed and opted for 500 over a gig cause for they also inisted on a phone line & calls, which was gonna add another £25 p/m on the bill for a gig and they should be fine with 500 - the kids are not contrubiting to the cost) and the kids love it and the parents like that the kids are not complaining about the net speed any more.

5G is rolling out in their area (Currently marked as avalable outdoors, weak indoors which I validated with a site visit), but had that been avaliable (and not over subscribed) it would have been a viable Home Boardband alt to their current fixed line providers as it would have provided the speeds the family required, a low latency so the kids can't complain while playing online and decent video calling for the WFM parent and saved the hassle of getting the property connected to the network (which I kind of expect to happen again once OpenReach finally plan the fibre build for their street, the current copper phone lines are underground not on telegraph poles and I'm not sure of the quality of the duct work that line runs though so it might be a PITA to get OpenReach - prob the reason the area is currently not on the plans) and would be cheaper per month than Virgin Media.

I used to use LTE for my home boardband for a while (was in temp accommodation helping with a family illness, landlord didn't want me putting in a fixed line and no 5G at the time), the speed was fine for me alone (about 100meg iirc, I just had to wait for big downloads), the kicker was the 100ms+ latency I was getting on LTE, which was a PITA esp playing first person shooters online. (EDIT: That and also being CGNAT'ed - not the end of the world, but gaming still preferes not being CGNAT'ed - but the shift to IPv6 _should_ fix that.) If all you can get is LTE its "ok", but I wouldn't recommend it if you have alt's such as 5G or (decent) fixedline.

Re: The Disappointment of 5G

#60
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Same marketing style played out in Sweden. Endless advertisements showing manically laughing people overcome by joy from doing video calls on flip-phones without cameras.

This sounds a bit too absurd, do you have a link to an example video?
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