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

5G Rollout Disappointments

spectrum.ieee.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 100 posts

Re: 5G Rollout Disappointments

#31

Post by f6v »

ksec wrote: post #24
mschild wrote: post #4

I live in a large European city and am very often out and about and use my phone to navigate and consume content. I simply don't see the need for 5G. 4G was a major stepup in speed and given the rise of smartphones and platforms like YouTube, the speed increase made sense. There was an actual use for it. The speed increase for 5G seems to not really be needed though? At least for a majority of people 4G seems to do e…

5G is about capacity, if you want more people to use the network, using more Data, and more affordable. Then you want 5G. Yes, your 1Gbps Ethernet is enough for majority of your needs. Except you are not the only one using the 1Gbps Ethernet.

> 5G is about capacity

If that’s right, then all the consumer-oriented ads for 5G are pointless.

Re: 5G Rollout Disappointments

#32

Post by makeitdouble »

ksec wrote: post #24
mschild wrote: post #4

I live in a large European city and am very often out and about and use my phone to navigate and consume content. I simply don't see the need for 5G. 4G was a major stepup in speed and given the rise of smartphones and platforms like YouTube, the speed increase made sense. There was an actual use for it. The speed increase for 5G seems to not really be needed though? At least for a majority of people 4G seems to do e…

5G is about capacity, if you want more people to use the network, using more Data, and more affordable. Then you want 5G. Yes, your 1Gbps Ethernet is enough for majority of your needs. Except you are not the only one using the 1Gbps Ethernet.

I think this message should have been at the top of the 5G marketing, and would have helped the reception of the technology as bringing an altruistic angle.

Right now, as it was pushed as something we're supposed to want for ourseleves and allow us to do rocket surgery from our phones, people just got burned and either learned to kill it in the settings or bitch about it all day long.

I was watching a wireless home bridge review, and half of it was the reviewer looking into the settings and documentaton how to force 4G to get better speeds (spoiler: 4G was effectively faster). And that's a bog standard consumer targeted video with 700K views at launch.

Re: 5G Rollout Disappointments

#33

Post by 0xy »

Fragoel2 wrote: post #12
nextweek2 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Faster speeds might not seem necessary, however you have to remember you are sharing the bandwidth. The quicker you can get your data the less time you spend using bandwidth. If I can halve the download time that allows another user to use the bandwidth sooner.

Indeed, the article mentions that the 'killer app' of 5G has yet to be found

The killer app of 4G hasn't been found, considering 4G can stream 10x 4K videos simultaneously in my area, at low latency.

Re: 5G Rollout Disappointments

#34

Post by 0xy »

nizmow wrote: post #14

Anecdata: in Sydney, Australia, 5G on Telstra is incredibly fast (I get more than 1 gigabit at my apartment, but more typical / busier cells seem to be between 300-500Mb), and my experience using it mostly just for web browsing is it’s streets ahead of 4G.

I get 250 on 4G, so it seems like it's far from streets ahead. 4G can do 10x 4K streams at once, while 5G can do 15-20? A solution in search of a usecase. Not to mention 5G is significantly more unstable and patchy. Good luck with latency with a single wall between you and the tower.

Re: 5G Rollout Disappointments

#35

Post by f6v »

throwaway4good wrote: post #13

Back when it was 4G western suppliers were under really strong competition from Chinese suppliers (ZTE and Huawei). Now these suppliers are banned/effectively banned in most Western countries. And we are left what seems to be just Ericsson and surprisingly things have gotten a lot more expensive, only slowly built-out, and not really that good. Having said that, I just went through Copenhagen airport and the 5G netwo…

But look, now it’s only Americans who can eavesdrop. Better than those damn commies!

Re: 5G Rollout Disappointments

#36

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

The almost hilarious situation in Austria is that people usually have (truly) unlimited or high volume contracts. You can pull terra-bytes if data a month, even with tethering. As a result the main way in which contracts differ are speeds.

The fastest 5G contract these days is 500Mbit. Most people are fine with paying for the much cheaper 100Mbit contracts.

So even if 5G has speed benefits, usually I wont notice.

Re: 5G Rollout Disappointments

#37

Post by fuzzfactor »

throwaway049 wrote: post #18
mschild wrote: post #4

I live in a large European city and am very often out and about and use my phone to navigate and consume content. I simply don't see the need for 5G. 4G was a major stepup in speed and given the rise of smartphones and platforms like YouTube, the speed increase made sense. There was an actual use for it. The speed increase for 5G seems to not really be needed though? At least for a majority of people 4G seems to do e…

In the UK there are companies offering 5g as an alternative to fixed line at your home. Do you have something like that where you live?

AT&T doesn't seem to intend to upgrade those of its older wired systems which are still at 1MB download.

Instead they expect you to migrate to a wirelss solution.

Re: 5G Rollout Disappointments

#38

Post by buggeryorkshire »

noisem4ker wrote: post #23
JW_00000 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that a case of the phone manufacturer lying, and not the carrier?

See previous discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18737008

When I worked on femtocells many years ago it was Apple who did their own thing with the signal strength bars, it was a source of massive frustration. They were also the ones least receptive to reports of radio layer issues.

Though coming back to the original discussion a lot of issues with 5g are backhaul problems which aren't indicated by the signal bar.

Re: 5G Rollout Disappointments

#39

Post by arnaudsm »

I have to mention the elephant in the room : many carriers push customers to replace their home wired connection with 4G/5G modems.

These short term gains ruin the game for everyone. Wireless bandwidth is precious.

Re: 5G Rollout Disappointments

#40

Post by indeyets »

f6v wrote: post #35
throwaway4good wrote: post #13

Back when it was 4G western suppliers were under really strong competition from Chinese suppliers (ZTE and Huawei). Now these suppliers are banned/effectively banned in most Western countries. And we are left what seems to be just Ericsson and surprisingly things have gotten a lot more expensive, only slowly built-out, and not really that good. Having said that, I just went through Copenhagen airport and the 5G netwo…

But look, now it’s only Americans who can eavesdrop. Better than those damn commies!

You mean Swedes? ;)
Post reply on HN