Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

5G networks meet consumer needs as mobile data growth slows

spectrum.ieee.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 376 posts

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

#71

Post by atian »

Lammy wrote: post #50
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...

Yeah…

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

#72

Post by kmlx »

AkshayGenius wrote: post #69

Is there a reason we keep trying to use higher frequencies in every new wireless standard (Wi-Fi, 5G, now 6G) instead of trying to increase the maximum possible bitrate per second into lower frequencies? Have we already reached the physical limits of the amount of data the can be encoded at a particular frequency? Lower frequencies have the advantage of longer distances and permeating through obstructions better. I s…

We don’t move to higher frequencies just because we’ve run out of ways to pack more data into lower bands. The main reason is that higher frequencies offer much wider chunks of spectrum, which directly leads to higher potential data rates. Advanced modulation/coding techniques can squeeze more capacity out of lower bands, but there are fundamental physical and regulatory limits, like Shannon’s limit and the crowded/heavily licensed spectrum below 6 GHz that make it harder to keep increasing speeds at those lower frequencies.

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

#73

Post by thrownblown »

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).

I just leave mine in LTE and upgrade to 5G only when I know i'm gonna DL something big.

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

#75

Post by bsimpson »

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…

Part of it is hardware too.

Only the newest routers do gigabit over wifi. If most of your devices are wireless, you'll need to make sure they all have wifi 6 or newer chips to use their full potential.

Even if upgrading your router is a one-time cost, it's still enough effort that most people won't bother.

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

#76

Post by vel0city »

AkshayGenius wrote: post #69

Is there a reason we keep trying to use higher frequencies in every new wireless standard (Wi-Fi, 5G, now 6G) instead of trying to increase the maximum possible bitrate per second into lower frequencies? Have we already reached the physical limits of the amount of data the can be encoded at a particular frequency? Lower frequencies have the advantage of longer distances and permeating through obstructions better. I s…

5G can operate at the same low frequencies as 2G/3G/4G. It's not inherently a higher frequency standard.

It just also supports other bands as well.

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

#77

Post by Animats »

> Of course, sophisticated representations of entire 3D scenes for large groups of users interacting with one another in-world could conceivably push bandwidth requirements up. But at this point, we’re getting into Matrix-like imagined technologies without any solid evidence to suggest a good 4G or 5G connection wouldn’t meet the tech’s bandwidth demands.

Open-world games such as Cyberpunk 2077 already have hours-long downloads for some users. That's when you load the whole world as one download. Doing it incrementally is worse. Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 can pull 100 to 200 Mb/sec from the asset servers.

They're just flying over the world, without much ground level detail. Metaverse clients go further. My Second Life client, Sharpview, will download 400Mb/s of content, sustained, if you get on a motorcycle and go zooming around Second Life. The content is coming from AWS via Akamai caches, which can deliver content at such rates. If less bandwidth is available, things are blurry, but it still works. The level of asset detail is such that you can stop driving, go into a convenience store, and read the labels on the items.

GTA 6 multiplayer is coming. That's going to need bandwidth.

The Unreal Engine 5 demo, "The Matrix Awakens", is a download of more than a terabyte. That's before decompression.

The CEO of Intel, during the metaverse boom, said that about 1000x more compute and bandwidth was needed to do a Ready Player One / Matrix quality metaverse. It's not that quite that bad.

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

#78

Post by tliltocatl »

AkshayGenius wrote: post #69

Is there a reason we keep trying to use higher frequencies in every new wireless standard (Wi-Fi, 5G, now 6G) instead of trying to increase the maximum possible bitrate per second into lower frequencies? Have we already reached the physical limits of the amount of data the can be encoded at a particular frequency? Lower frequencies have the advantage of longer distances and permeating through obstructions better. I s…

> Have we already reached the physical limits of the amount of data the can be encoded at a particular frequency?

Basically, yes (if you take into account other consideration like radiated power, transmitter consumed power, multipath tolerance, Doppler shift tolerance and so on). Everything is a tradeoff. We could e. g. use higher-order modulation, but that would result in higher peak-to-average power ratio, meaning less efficient transmitter. We could reduce cyclic prefix length, but that would reduce multipath tolerance. And so on.

Another important reason why higher frequencies are preferred is frequency reuse. Longer distance and penetration is not always an advantage for a mobile network. A lot of radio space is wasted in areas where the signal is too weak to be usable but strong enough to interfere with useful signals at the same frequency. In denser areas you want to cram in more base stations, and if the radiation is attenuated quickly with distance, you would need less spectrum space overall.

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

#79

Post by ai-christianson »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #64
ai-christianson wrote: post #61

We live in a rural location, so we have redundant 5G/Starlink. It's getting pretty reasonable these days, with download speeds reaching 0.5 gbit/sec per link, and latency is acceptable at ~20ms. The main challenge is the upload speed; pretty much all the ISPs allocate much more spectrum for download rather than upload. If we could improve one thing with future wireless tech, I think upload would be a great candidate.

I can pretty much guarantee you that your 5G connection has more bandwidth for upload than my residential ISP does

Yeah?

We're getting 30-50 mbit/sec per connection on a good day.

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

#80

Post by vel0city »

throitallaway wrote: post #21
harrall wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Sure but I'll take the latency, jitter, and reliability of that fiber over cellular any day.

The reliability is definitely a bigger question, jitter a bit more questionable, but as far as latency goes 5G fixed wireless can be just fine. YMMV, but on a lot of spots around my town it's pretty comparable latency/jitter-wise as my home fiber connection to similar hosts. And connecting home is often <5ms throughout the city.
Post reply on HN