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5G networks meet consumer needs as mobile data growth slows

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Re: 5G networks meet consumer needs as mobile data growth slows

#41

Post by kelnos »

dale_glass wrote: post #36

Higher bandwidths are good to have. They're great for rare, exceptional circumstances. 10G internet doesn't make your streaming better, but downloads the latest game much faster. It makes for much less painful transfer of a VM image from a remote datacenter to a local machine. Which is good and bad. The good part is that it makes it easier for the ISPs to provide -- most people won't be filling that 10G pipe, so you…

I have 1Gbps down, and the only application I've found to saturate it is downloads from USENET (and with that I need quite a few connections downloading different chunks simultaneously to achieve it).

I have never come remotely close to downloading anything else -- including games -- at 1Gbps.

The source side certainly has the available pipe, but most (all?) providers see little upside to allowing one client/connection to use that much bandwidth.

Re: 5G networks meet consumer needs as mobile data growth slows

#42

Post by reaperducer »

harrall wrote: post #17
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #8

> Transmitting high-end 4K video today requires 15 Mb/s, according to Netflix. Home broadband upgrades from, say, hundreds of Mb/s to 1,000 Mb/s (or 1 Gb/s) typically make little to no noticeable difference for the average end user. What I find fascinating is that in a lot of situations mobile phones are now way faster than wired internet for lots of people. My parents never upgraded their home internet despite there…

5G can be extremely fast. I get 600 MBit over cellular at home. …and we only pay for 500 MBit for my home fiber. (Granted, also 500 Mbit upload.) (T-Mobile, Southern California)

5G can be extremely fast. I get 600 MBit over cellular at home.

Is your T-Mobile underprovisioned? Where I am, T-Mobile 5G is 400Mbps at 2am, but slows to 5-10Mbps on weekdays at lunchtime and during rush hours, and on weekends when the bars are full.

Not to mention that the T-Mobile Home Internet router either locks up, or reboots itself at least twice a day.

I put up with the inconvenience because it's either $55 to T-Mobile, $100 to Verizon for even less 5G bandwidth, or $140 the local cable company.

Re: 5G networks meet consumer needs as mobile data growth slows

#43

Post by msh »

chris_va wrote: post #24

With 5G, I have to downgrade to LTE constantly to avoid packet loss in urban canyons. Given the even higher frequencies proposed for 6G, I suspect it will be mostly useless. Now, it's possible that that raw GB/s with unobstructed LoS is the underlying optimization metric driving these standards, but I would assume it's something different (e.g. tower capex per connected user).

In my part of the world 5g actually is rolled out on lower frequencies than 4g so I actually get better coverage.

Re: 5G networks meet consumer needs as mobile data growth slows

#44

Post by msh »

kelnos wrote: post #41
dale_glass wrote: post #36

Higher bandwidths are good to have. They're great for rare, exceptional circumstances. 10G internet doesn't make your streaming better, but downloads the latest game much faster. It makes for much less painful transfer of a VM image from a remote datacenter to a local machine. Which is good and bad. The good part is that it makes it easier for the ISPs to provide -- most people won't be filling that 10G pipe, so you…

I have 1Gbps down, and the only application I've found to saturate it is downloads from USENET (and with that I need quite a few connections downloading different chunks simultaneously to achieve it). I have never come remotely close to downloading anything else -- including games -- at 1Gbps. The source side certainly has the available pipe, but most (all?) providers see little upside to allowing one client/connecti…

Steam and the ps5 store can fill out my 1 gigabits connection.

Re: 5G networks meet consumer needs as mobile data growth slows

#45

Post by joshstrange »

> Instead, the number of homes with sufficient connectivity and percentage of the country covered by 10 Mb/s mobile may be better metrics to pursue as policy goals.

Hard pass.

5G is far from ubiquitous as it. Though how would we even know? I feel like my phone is always lying about what type of network it's connecting to and carrier shave the truth with shit like "5Ge" and the like.

I have not, ever, really thought "Yeah, my phone's internet is perfect as-in". I have low-signal areas of my house, if the power goes out the towers are sometimes unusable due to the increased load, etc. I do everything in my power to never use cellular because I find incredibly frustrating and unreliable.

Cell service has literally unlimited headroom to improve (technologically and business use-cases). Maybe we need more 5G and that would fix the problems and we don't need 6G or maybe this article is a gift to fat and lazy telecoms who are masters at "coasting" and "only doing maintenance".

Re: 5G networks meet consumer needs as mobile data growth slows

#46

Post by msh »

crazygringo wrote: post #39
jquery wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was hoping to see any mention of large file downloads and uploads. Nevermind the article’s ponderous “I can’t imagine any use case for more than 5GB/s”, that’s a use case today where higher speeds above 5GB/s would be helpful. For example, a lot of AAA games are above 100GB, with the largest game in my steam library being over half a terabyte (DCS World). Ideally I wouldn’t have to store these games locally, but I…

The article is about mobile bandwidth only. Are you downloading AAA games or backing up your computer over mobile? Also, I hope you're doing differential backups, in which case it's only the initial backup should be slow. Which it's always going to be for something gargantuan like 18 TB!

5g Home internet is getting common

Re: 5G networks meet consumer needs as mobile data growth slows

#47

Post by mikepurvis »

kelnos wrote: post #41
dale_glass wrote: post #36

Higher bandwidths are good to have. They're great for rare, exceptional circumstances. 10G internet doesn't make your streaming better, but downloads the latest game much faster. It makes for much less painful transfer of a VM image from a remote datacenter to a local machine. Which is good and bad. The good part is that it makes it easier for the ISPs to provide -- most people won't be filling that 10G pipe, so you…

I have 1Gbps down, and the only application I've found to saturate it is downloads from USENET (and with that I need quite a few connections downloading different chunks simultaneously to achieve it). I have never come remotely close to downloading anything else -- including games -- at 1Gbps. The source side certainly has the available pipe, but most (all?) providers see little upside to allowing one client/connecti…

This tracks. I recently upgraded from 100mbps to 500mbps (cable), and barely anything is different— even torrents bumped from 5MB/s to barely 10MB/s. And there's no wifi involved there, just a regular desktop on gigabit ethernet.

Re: 5G networks meet consumer needs as mobile data growth slows

#48

Post by [deleted] »

rsynnott wrote: post #28
mbesto wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When 5G first rolled out this was absolutely not the case. Not only was it not 1ms, it was like full 1000's of ms to the point where I actively turned off 5G on my iPhone because it was so bad. I can only speculate 5G was so saturated on the initial rollout so it led to congestion and now its stabilized. But latency isn't only affected by distance and hops - congestion matters.

Could be lots of things. I'd go with "your telco was doing something stupid" as a first guess, tbh.

[deleted]

Re: 5G networks meet consumer needs as mobile data growth slows

#49

Post by kelnos »

DannyBee wrote: post #3

Um, the airspeed analogy used up front is remarkably silly. Nobody would shrug at being able to fly 2x faster. The reason it stopped is because it made lots of noise and was expensive. Not because it was not needed. I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who would not want faster flights if it could be done at reasonable cost.

Yeah I think the level of diminishing returns takes a while to reach when you're taking about flights. I'd be thrilled to drop a 6 hour flight down to 3 hours. Or 1.5. Or 45 minutes. Or 20. Or 10. Or instantaneous teleportation.

But if there are little to no applications for faster Internet speeds -- which for the most part there aren't -- then it just kinda doesn't matter.

Re: 5G networks meet consumer needs as mobile data growth slows

#50

Post by Lammy »

James_K wrote: post #18

I got a 5G capable phone a few months back, and I can't say I've noticed a difference from my old one. (Aside from the new phone being more expensive, worse UI, slower, heavier, unwieldy, filled with ads, and constantly prompting me to create a "Samsung account".)

It spies on you a lot more effectively :)

https://www.fastcompany.com/90314058/5g-means-youll-have-to-...

https://venturebeat.com/mobile/sk-telecom-will-use-5g-to-bui...

https://www.ericsson.com/en/blog/2020/12/5g-positioning--wha...

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