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5G researchers manage record connection speed

bbc.co.uk

11–20 of 34 posts

Re: 5G researchers manage record connection speed

#11
post #3

I wonder if we'll still be stuck with our puny data caps when this arrives. Blowing through your monthly quota in a minute might be astounding from a technical point of view, but it only takes one broken page with an ajax infinite loop to get you.

Data caps are a form of price discrimination, and will evolve with supply and demand. It's like Apple's upcharge for each jump in flash or SSD size--it's a way to push a higher proportion of costs onto those who value the product the most. The brackets will keep going up and be priced such that lots of people will pay it.

Re: 5G researchers manage record connection speed

#12
post #4

I don't even get 4G speeds almost ever. Bandwidth is always massively oversold. Often I can't even successfully load a random web page when I have 4+ bars of "4G".

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/i/1154366377.

Just posted 22/9 40ms ping in DC Union Station. It's 7pm and the place is packed with people playing on their cell phones while waiting. Maybe blame SF NIMBYs for not letting the cell companies put up enough towers or run enough fiber backhaul?

Re: 5G researchers manage record connection speed

#13
post #8
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

San Francisco, both AT&T and Verizon. It's terrible here.

With T-Mobile LTE in San Francisco, I get 20Mbps+ in a lot of locations, including about half my residence. (Unfortunately there are also a bunch of very-weak spots with low bandwidth and multi-second pings, and far more dead zones along highways in rural areas.)

Also super happy with T-Mobile's speed- it's faster (bandwidth-wise) than my stupid U-verse. But the whole text message issue they have is driving me nuts to the point that I'll probably switch to another carrier with less available bandwidth just to get sms that works.

Re: 5G researchers manage record connection speed

#14
post #3

I wonder if we'll still be stuck with our puny data caps when this arrives. Blowing through your monthly quota in a minute might be astounding from a technical point of view, but it only takes one broken page with an ajax infinite loop to get you.

Here in the North we have insane data caps on our regular DSL and Cable internet.

On a couple of the packages, it's possible to blow through your entire monthly cap in 6 hours - and I've seen people do it.

Re: 5G researchers manage record connection speed

#15
post #12
post #4

I don't even get 4G speeds almost ever. Bandwidth is always massively oversold. Often I can't even successfully load a random web page when I have 4+ bars of "4G".

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/i/1154366377 . Just posted 22/9 40ms ping in DC Union Station. It's 7pm and the place is packed with people playing on their cell phones while waiting. Maybe blame SF NIMBYs for not letting the cell companies put up enough towers or run enough fiber backhaul?

To be fair, I've seen ISPs give special treatment for packets coming from speedtest.net. I'm looking at you Comcast.

Re: 5G researchers manage record connection speed

#16
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What part of the country are you located in? I can get full 4G LTE speeds in the middle of nowhere Appalachia where my brother lives, via AT&T. Streaming HD video on my phone there is a non-issue.

San Francisco, both AT&T and Verizon. It's terrible here.

San Francisco has notoriously bad infrastructure due to all the NIMBYs blocking any kind of development. I don't think it's very representative.

Re: 5G researchers manage record connection speed

#17
post #3

I wonder if we'll still be stuck with our puny data caps when this arrives. Blowing through your monthly quota in a minute might be astounding from a technical point of view, but it only takes one broken page with an ajax infinite loop to get you.

If you look out to 2020, and assume 5G will be ready, what you'll get in production is nowhere near 1tbps. You might see 500mbps - 1gbps commonly deployed across the US and Europe during the 2020-2025 time frame. Deploying the initial infrastructure was very expensive, but now it's in place. That's part of the reason why the US was able to transition relatively quickly to 4G LTE, there was no need to build 200,000 to…

You're entirely optimistic, I fear:

"One of the new AT&T plans will cost $25 per month and offer two gigabytes of data per month, which AT&T says will be enough for 98 percent of its smart phone customers. Additional gigabytes will cost $10 each."

This is in 2010.

Today that $25 will actually get you HALF the data it did in 2010, five years ago.

Re: 5G researchers manage record connection speed

#18
post #2

"We need to bring end-to-end latency down to below one millisecond" The incredible bandwidth is surely great but they don't mention how to improve latency here, they forget to tell what was the latency of this 100m transfer from an antenna to a receiver. One of the big issues with today apps is latency, this is easily frustrating. It also prevents apps such as real time multiplayer games to be viable.

As a user, my impressions is that the latency involved with routing mobile data around is a lot higher (more like a second, even with LTE) than the latency involved with the physical transmission. Mobile data connections are generally more reliable than WiFi, but usually there is a significant lag before results are returned. Is that not correct?

Re: 5G researchers manage record connection speed

#19
post #12
post #4

I don't even get 4G speeds almost ever. Bandwidth is always massively oversold. Often I can't even successfully load a random web page when I have 4+ bars of "4G".

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/i/1154366377 . Just posted 22/9 40ms ping in DC Union Station. It's 7pm and the place is packed with people playing on their cell phones while waiting. Maybe blame SF NIMBYs for not letting the cell companies put up enough towers or run enough fiber backhaul?

Actually, transportation hubs are usually outfitted with specialized microcells so the throughput is higher there even though the user density is large.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcell

Re: 5G researchers manage record connection speed

#20
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/i/1154366377 . Just posted 22/9 40ms ping in DC Union Station. It's 7pm and the place is packed with people playing on their cell phones while waiting. Maybe blame SF NIMBYs for not letting the cell companies put up enough towers or run enough fiber backhaul?

To be fair, I've seen ISPs give special treatment for packets coming from speedtest.net. I'm looking at you Comcast.

Doesn't speedtest use lots of mirrors that have different IPs and hostnames?
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