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Will there be a 7G?

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Re: Will there be a 7G?

#141

Post by joecool1029 »

TheJoeMan wrote: post #137
ksec wrote: post #49

It needs to work backwards, much like Video Codec and ask what do the stakeholders really want or need? We are closing in to rolling out the last / final phase of 5G. And yet none of the Massive MIMO on FDD is happening. We are still stuck on 32T32R, hardly that impressive considering we have that in LTE already. Not to mention the insane complexity increase from 4G to 5G. And judging from the previews of 6G that see…

My pessimistic take is it’s being optimized for the “numbers” users benchmark with. The 5G repeater towers that display on your phone as full-bars but the tower itself is constrained, to juicing the speedtests. Apple even changed how the RSSI translates to the bars. There are engineers doing great work, and the marketing teams muddle the waters (like ATT’s “5Ge”).

ATT did a lot of this, android has a ‘feature’ they utilize to inflate the signal bar: https://android.googlesource.com/platform/frameworks/base/+/...

Re: Will there be a 7G?

#142

Post by kalleboo »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #63
walrus01 wrote: post #16

Note that "G" generally is a marketing term for consumers, the actual tech is 3GPP rev-whatever https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3GPP Like 3GPP release 15 or 16 is what we currently know as a lot of in production LTE/LTE-Advanced stuff.

No it is not. 2G->3G->4G->5G refer to real changes in technology and system architecture, as detailed in the Wikipedia page you linked to. 3GPP releases are more fine-grained than that. E.g. rel. 99 introduced 3G/WCDMA, rel. 8 introduced 4G/LTE, etc. Other releases only add features. In the industry Gs are used all the time to refer to the technology/architecture, then releases are used to refer to specific features,…

The "G" marketing gets especially confused in the US where carriers branded EDGE as "3G" and HSPA+ as "4G"

Re: Will there be a 7G?

#144

Post by vel0city »

dakolli wrote: post #119
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get 5G mmWave in my home and around my neighborhood in Seattle. In fact sometimes at home I’ll turn off WiFi on my phone just because I’m sitting in a WiFi dead zone but the mmWave still works great. This is on Mint Mobile, a budget MVNO now owned by T-Mobile. I pay $20/month for 15GB data.

You're ripping yourself off, you can get 1TB of 5G from tmobile for $50-60

I'm paying $15/mo. To pay $50/mo for in the end the same thing (I'm going to use the same amount of data regardless) just means I'm spending $420 a year more for the same outcome.

How is it a better deal to spend more money for essentially the same thing?

Imagine you're buying food that will go bad tomorrow. You can't keep it. You can't share it. You can buy enough food to fill you up today for $5, or enough food to fill you up 50x for $20. You will still eat that one unit of food, the other 49 units will just go to waste. Which do you buy?

For all the time I've had Mint, I've saved nearly $3,000 compared to your $50/mo plan. I've never felt the urge to really need more data personally, and it's worked well for me on my international travels around North America. If the outcome was the same, wouldn't you rather keep $3k in your pocket?

Re: Will there be a 7G?

#145

Post by Grombobulous »

devilbunny wrote: post #114
jayd16 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something I've noticed is that a phone is actually usable at a stadium or concert when 3g or 4g felt essentially useless at that density.

I've seen an interesting corollary: 4G on an airplane at the gate is much faster than the 5G microcells inside the terminal. If I'm downloading podcasts for a flight, I do it on WiFi beforehand or on 4G on the plane. 5G in the terminal is really useful at getting you some service, but it's slow. Probably a side effect of not enough backhaul speed.

That has not been my experience at all although that’s just another anecdote.

Re: Will there be a 7G?

#146

Post by socalgal2 »

When has technology ever stopped? I remember being told copper wires would never go above 2400 bps. I see people here saying 4G is all they need, sounds an awful lot like "640k is all you need". You have no idea what the future holds and how much bandwidth it will need but there's still tons of ideas what could happen with faster connections.

Re: Will there be a 7G?

#147

Post by inkyoto »

abroszka33 wrote: post #62
b3orn wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3G has been shut down in several countries to free up frequencies. 2G was also shut down in several countries, it seems to be still up in most european countries with shut downs being scheduled in the next few years up to 2030.

2G is hard to shut down, because it just works, and many of the core services and old phones rely on it. It will survive 5G, 6G, 7G an other Gs.

Australia (2018), New Zealand (2018), US (2017), Iceland (2025), Switzerland have shut down 2G networks.

In Norway, Telia shut down 2G in 2025, but Telenor is holding out until the end of 2027.

In Sweden, Telia is holding until 2027, and all other telcos have already switched it off.

France is shutting down 2G this year.

So the 2G shutdown is a real thing.

Re: Will there be a 7G?

#148

Post by kccqzy »

prmoustache wrote: post #118
wolvoleo wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't just look at the indicator on your phone though. Providers are free to scheme with those. Some honestly show the icon when you are on 5G. Others use the option of showing it when you are on 4G (not even 5G NSA) but the network offers 5G on the cell. The marketing guys got involved with this indicator and completely ruined its trustworthiness.

Isn't the icon decided by the operating system?

The operating system vendor can be bribed. AT&T for example asked Apple to show a 5GE icon when an “advanced” LTE network is in use.

Re: Will there be a 7G?

#149

Post by kulahan »

lxgr wrote: post #132
kulahan wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not in the industry, so I can’t speak intelligently on this, but as a user, literally the only change I’ve actually noticed in my day-to-day is that when they removed 3G, I lost a shitload of connectivity. I live probably half a mile from the capital building in a greater metro region of over a million people and I still get shit connection at home on TMo. Maybe physics is the problem, but why waste time making t…

More likely, data usage has increased greatly in your area since 3G was still available and your carriers spectrum or backhaul hasn’t caught up. 4G/5G make things more efficient but ultimately can’t fight physics.

Does this affect signal strength? I'm just annoyed I can't get more than two bars at home, or talk on the phone and take a shit at the same time.

Re: Will there be a 7G?

#150

Post by arcfour »

abroszka33 wrote: post #62
b3orn wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3G has been shut down in several countries to free up frequencies. 2G was also shut down in several countries, it seems to be still up in most european countries with shut downs being scheduled in the next few years up to 2030.

2G is hard to shut down, because it just works, and many of the core services and old phones rely on it. It will survive 5G, 6G, 7G an other Gs.

We don't have it in the US, I remember being annoyed that there were no more cheap cellular modules for microcontrollers for a while.
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