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5G Just Got Weird

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21–30 of 300 posts

Re: 5G Just Got Weird

#21
post #8
post #2

As I’ve learned more and more about 5G (which is a nebulous term, really, but what I mean specifically is the planned upcoming releases of LTE 16 and 17, as well as the features of LTE 14 and 15 that users have yet to take advantage of) I’ve become convinced that it’s going to transform how so much of the world is designed. 5G technologies allow for more devices to send more data using less power. This is achieved us…

> As I’ve learned more and more about 5G Out of curiousity, what's a good source of information on 5G? I assume the standard itself is not the easiest thing to digest so I'd appreciate your input.

Last years CCC has a lot of 5G related videos.

Re: 5G Just Got Weird

#23

5G doesnt seem like its enabling anything fundamentally new. The talk of any ”killer app” based on having more throughput or on these optimizations always feels like demand generation and slightly inauthentic. Are there any technologies enabled by these techniques that are not possible today?

In a Periscope anecdote, Scott Adams of Dilbert fame went on about 5G bringing enrichment via eyewear such that profiles of people you meet pop up, and any other VR variation you can imagine. The geek can groove on turning cities into the holodeck on the Enterprise. But one surmises that the appeal of gadget-free living in the country will grow, also. Seems hard to derive a good balance point with "enough" technology…

Scott Adams seems to be pretty divorced from reality, so I would take his ideas with a pinch of salt.

(To clarify: He's also claimed that if Biden wins the election, Republicans will literally be hunted in the streets, and I think regardless of your political views that is pretty clearly not actually going to happen, so his ability to predict future events with any accuracy isn't something I'd trust. Source: https://twitter.com/ScottAdamsSays/status/127831632504405606...)

Re: 5G Just Got Weird

#24

Reading through this, it doesn't sound like the people involved considered the amount of outright misuse some of these features are likely to enable. Haven't we already seen bad actors will misuse mobile tech to track our movements, spy on people, (etc) on a wholesale scale? This seems to be wilfully charging down the road of making it worse?

I bet that the concerns of the average user are not really what 5G committee members thought was most important.

Re: 5G Just Got Weird

#25
The idea of vehicle to vehicle communication is a bit frightening. Imagine the obscenities and insults you yell at other drivers, are now able to be communicated directly to the object of ire.

Re: 5G Just Got Weird

#26

5G doesnt seem like its enabling anything fundamentally new. The talk of any ”killer app” based on having more throughput or on these optimizations always feels like demand generation and slightly inauthentic. Are there any technologies enabled by these techniques that are not possible today?

Last mile for fixed rural wireless broadband seems like the obvious one. Today, this is generally done with either LTE or various proprietary things (or if you’re particularly unlucky, satellite). 5G should allow for greater total bandwidth, reducing the impact of contention. And on the other side, it should be helpful for very dense urban usage. Try using LTE in a large city’s central train station at a busy time an…

I wonder how this will fare vs Starlink, which seems like it's trying to solve the same problem.

Re: 5G Just Got Weird

#27

5G doesnt seem like its enabling anything fundamentally new. The talk of any ”killer app” based on having more throughput or on these optimizations always feels like demand generation and slightly inauthentic. Are there any technologies enabled by these techniques that are not possible today?

Last mile for fixed rural wireless broadband seems like the obvious one. Today, this is generally done with either LTE or various proprietary things (or if you’re particularly unlucky, satellite). 5G should allow for greater total bandwidth, reducing the impact of contention. And on the other side, it should be helpful for very dense urban usage. Try using LTE in a large city’s central train station at a busy time an…

Starlink is going to dominate this. Cellular can't economically scale out to meet the vast rural coverage. There are still plenty of towns that don't have basic coverage even now, and to think that suddenly they're going to get 5G equipment... seems unlikely. Meanwhile, the Starlink satellites are up and base stations are in testing. Once they approve and start building out their ground stations, it's SpaceX's business to lose.

Re: 5G Just Got Weird

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last mile for fixed rural wireless broadband seems like the obvious one. Today, this is generally done with either LTE or various proprietary things (or if you’re particularly unlucky, satellite). 5G should allow for greater total bandwidth, reducing the impact of contention. And on the other side, it should be helpful for very dense urban usage. Try using LTE in a large city’s central train station at a busy time an…

I wonder how this will fare vs Starlink, which seems like it's trying to solve the same problem.

Starlink will probably do better than 5G for access to rural areas because you don't need to build out a physical cable. In highly dense urban areas with large numbers of simultaneous users, 5G is a better fit.

Re: 5G Just Got Weird

#29
post #15
post #2

As I’ve learned more and more about 5G (which is a nebulous term, really, but what I mean specifically is the planned upcoming releases of LTE 16 and 17, as well as the features of LTE 14 and 15 that users have yet to take advantage of) I’ve become convinced that it’s going to transform how so much of the world is designed. 5G technologies allow for more devices to send more data using less power. This is achieved us…

> For instance, with beamforming, the tower sends a directional signal to your phone based on its location instead of broadcasting an omnidirectional signal. This uses less power and supports for more users. I think the biggest advantage is the other way around: devices using less battery power for transmitting signals, so batteries would last longer. (And I'm betting that if receiving would be less power-intensive f…

Beamforming uses less power on both ends. There’s a regulatory maximum signal power for both the user equipment and the node B, and sending a unidirectional signal uses less electricity while producing the same signal power in the direction of the beam.

Re: 5G Just Got Weird

#30

5G doesnt seem like its enabling anything fundamentally new. The talk of any ”killer app” based on having more throughput or on these optimizations always feels like demand generation and slightly inauthentic. Are there any technologies enabled by these techniques that are not possible today?

In a Periscope anecdote, Scott Adams of Dilbert fame went on about 5G bringing enrichment via eyewear such that profiles of people you meet pop up, and any other VR variation you can imagine. The geek can groove on turning cities into the holodeck on the Enterprise. But one surmises that the appeal of gadget-free living in the country will grow, also. Seems hard to derive a good balance point with "enough" technology…

> 5G bringing enrichment via eyewear such that profiles of people you meet pop up

I don't see what 5g brings to this application. This could be a offline application with a one time face/profile database. More probably it would be released as offline face detection, upload face images to the cloud to match and get profiles. 5G has better dataspeeds, but uploading cropped faces over LTE would be fine.

Maybe you could use it more reliably at the ballpark where there's enough density to justify deploying base stations in the new high frequency / low range spectrum.

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