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The Disappointment of 5G

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Re: The Disappointment of 5G

#71

Ignoring all the hype and BS, all the cell infrastructure really comes down to a battle between user bandwidth needs and available spectrum (multiplied by spectral efficiency and density of towers). Get this wrong and customer service tanks as cell sites get congestied. There are virtually no new applications enabled IMO with 5G speeds vs LTE speeds/latency, assuming they are both not congested. 100mbit/sec LTE with…

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

Yup, that's what I did while I was waiting for fibre to be installed

I've got a 5G router that gives me 400Mbps download at around 30ms latency and have been working full-time over it for more than a year

Was £50 / month for unlimited data on a two year plan (bit more than that now due to inflation)

Re: The Disappointment of 5G

#73
I find 5G to be pointless personally, the speeds and latency I get on 4G is already good enough, 166mbps down, 30mbps up, all the operators here cap the speeds of 5G or just don't offer it unless you pay for unlimited data

Re: The Disappointment of 5G

#74
It's pretty funny how T-Mobile has rolled out 5G in my small town (with a single cell tower), but have not bothered to upgrade the connection to the tower so we still only get about 2mbps on a good day.

Even better is the local ISP offers 10gbps fiber service and has lines directly next to the tower, but the cell tower doesn't use that, and instead has some long range microwave backhaul.

I always wonder what the point of spending the money to upgrade the tower to 5G was.

Re: The Disappointment of 5G

#75

Ignoring all the hype and BS, all the cell infrastructure really comes down to a battle between user bandwidth needs and available spectrum (multiplied by spectral efficiency and density of towers). Get this wrong and customer service tanks as cell sites get congestied. There are virtually no new applications enabled IMO with 5G speeds vs LTE speeds/latency, assuming they are both not congested. 100mbit/sec LTE with…

> 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 can reasonably replace your home internet with 5G

Doing that at scale is an amazing way to drive 5G speeds and latency into the ground, making it worse than old cable connections.

Re: The Disappointment of 5G

#76

Ignoring all the hype and BS, all the cell infrastructure really comes down to a battle between user bandwidth needs and available spectrum (multiplied by spectral efficiency and density of towers). Get this wrong and customer service tanks as cell sites get congestied. There are virtually no new applications enabled IMO with 5G speeds vs LTE speeds/latency, assuming they are both not congested. 100mbit/sec LTE with…

> 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 can, but it's definitely better if you have an ultra wideband 5G close to your home. That's a pretty legitimate no-compromise replacement for typical cable internet service.

Re: The Disappointment of 5G

#77

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.

What problems? Did it actually solve them, or just convince you that it did?

Re: The Disappointment of 5G

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's a fair point, my apologies.

I meant more in the sense that I have 5G on my phone, but don't use it because its not very great.

Meanwhile I have CoPilot, use ChatGPT at work and am integrating Azure ML currently in side-projects.

There is just so much material value I am getting today from AI which makes comparison to faster Internet moot.

Re: The Disappointment of 5G

#79
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Rolling backwards slightly, here's a good one for "Internet on your phone" I remember from about the year 2000: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkvNW3do-9g I did my dissertation project in WAP. This ad grossly oversold the concept of "Internet on your phone" (which properly kicked off in a way that the 'regular person' would embrace the UK around 2007, I think). The 'future' is always mis-sold.

A couple of videos I uploaded years ago;

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xKwHVQ3GA_A

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OCj9RDl3PgA

Re: The Disappointment of 5G

#80
post #73

I find 5G to be pointless personally, the speeds and latency I get on 4G is already good enough, 166mbps down, 30mbps up, all the operators here cap the speeds of 5G or just don't offer it unless you pay for unlimited data

Efficiency improvements are good for everyone, even if you don't see it on your bill.
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