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5G networks meet consumer needs as mobile data growth slows

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

#361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last I looked the NASA's capabilities of NASA's space telescopes have been improving rapidly. I'm not aware of any competition. Roads where I live have improved immensely during my lifetime. I'd lay long odds yours have too over the decades, despite your claims. All without competition. I recently heard all the lead water pipes are being replaced in the USA. The water supply people have no competition. Open source pr…

God you really have just drunk the NBN koolaid havent you. > Roads, water, the telephone service, electricity supply Fun fact, the US has such a variety of fibre providers, because they have such a variety of electricity and water supply. Its called Subducting. They make partnerships with fibre providers and subduct in the fibre with the power lead in. So they have 3 speeds. 1. Cities, with ancient telstraesque legis…

> No their asset includes the last mile

As I'm sure you are aware the term least mile has always included everthing up to and including termination at the exchange. The only thing that's changed is the name of the exchange. It's now called a POI.

Yes there are fewer of them. It did reduce costs and engineering complexity. There is no consensus whether it effected competitiveness, but given the NBN has been in operation for a decade now and there are many, many ISP's, most small, any detrimental effect must be near negligible. It's time you put that tired old debate behind you.

> The NBN is literally welfare for Telstra Optus, AAPT and Vocus

Telstra earnings dropped off a cliff when the copper became worthless. If that's welfare I'd hate to see what some real competition would do to them. The other three never had fingers in the consumer last mile pie. They bought it off Telstra before, now the buy off the NBN. They buy at the same price as every other ISP. Where is this welfare you speak of?

> Net Neutrality in Australia has more to do with the big 4 peering agreement.

I'm not sure you know what net neutrality means.

> State based private/public co funding would have gotten you the same result faster and cheaper.

Wow. Such confidence. Admit it, you don't have a clue what that would cost. Also admit not one state offered to do it. I think you hallucinating random possibilities.

> It was Turnbull who slightly corrected the NBN funding model to make it halfway profitable

I have a lot of time for Turnbull. His rear guard actions managed to derail Abbotts attempt to kill the NBN. God knows what we would have done if our internet didn't support video during COVID. However, it did involve buying $800 million for the Optus HFC network that was so degraded it was written off. His FttN is being ripped out long before it's anticipated EOL, and replaced at great expense. That's because it costs a small to run air-conditioned nodes a few hundred metres from every house, and the performance topped out at a 1/10 of what the NBN is offering now. So sadly the compromises made to save the NBN are now having to be rectified at great expense. And knowing all this, you are saving it saved us money! Delusional.

> Rural australia ...

I wasn't referring to rural Australia. According to google the average population density of urban Australian is an order of magnitude lower than the USA. Cable runs are consequently much longer. Compared to the effort the USA would need to put in, replacing them was indeed a huge undertaking.

> Honestly I have never seen anyone as confidently wrong on the internet before.

Having reviewed the outright falsehoods you told above, I'm guessing I'm dealing with quite the bullshitter. And I guess, true to form, you will carry on.

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

#362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last I looked the NASA's capabilities of NASA's space telescopes have been improving rapidly. I'm not aware of any competition. Roads where I live have improved immensely during my lifetime. I'd lay long odds yours have too over the decades, despite your claims. All without competition. I recently heard all the lead water pipes are being replaced in the USA. The water supply people have no competition. Open source pr…

Im not reading all this so Ill just respond to the first paragraph. The space industry was dead in the water before spaceX showed up. Minimal innovation and spend trending down every year and now spaceX has sparked a complete reversal. Competition matters. > I recently heard all the lead water pipes are being replaced in the USA. We still have lead pipes to many houses in chicago, and will for the foreseeable future.…

> The space industry was dead in the water before spaceX showed up.

The point was space telescopes. Nice attempt goal post move.

You mention NASA and the space industry. Sorry, but I'm failing to see the connection. NASA does cutting edge space exploration. They have no customers, they sell nothing, they aren't by any definition "an industry". Anything that's simple enough to be taken on by "industry" they contract out. They only take on the near impossible stuff - like landing a rover on mars. And they have a near impecible record at pull those sorts of things off. Amazing. Literally world beating. Bravo.

Most of their feats are world firsts, almost all are far harder than the previous one they pulled off. They have no competition. Yet your claim was, and I quote, "Things don’t improve without competition". I'm getting cognitive dissonance here. Clearly they do.

> Because theyre extremely competitive.

Do you develop much open source? Do you even use it? The "man in Nebraska" meme is so common it even has a cartoon: https://xkcd.com/2347/ Trust me, that man truly wishes he had some competition. He doesn't, but he plods on, turning out the code that supports the internet without it. Again we have a clear counter example to your thesis "you can't have improvement without competition". These examples are everywhere. You would have to be willfully blind not to see them.

Look, no one argues competitive markets aren't a great tool. The trouble is they aren't that easy to create. Then competition weakens. The solution isn't to go into denial and claim there will be no improvement. Or worse claim being privately owned means there is competition, so we will be ok if we just sell it off. That's just daft. In fact it's worse than daft. Believing lies peddled corporations that want to control stuff you must buy from them at a price they dictate is like subscribing to a cult.

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

#363
post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but why is my Samsung tumble dryer "enhanced with AI" now? You know what it does? You turn it on, it shows "optimising with AI" on the screen....to show you the most used programme. That's not AI, that's a counter in a text file somewhere. But of course everything has to have AI now so my tumble dryer now has AI. The market has spoken.

What "programs" does a tumble dryer even need? You press the ON button, and it should continue until its contents are dry.

Well that's another gimmick, right. It has like 20 different programs, but the one I only ever use is "Cotton - extra dry" because that's the one that actually gets everything properly dry. Every other setting leaves things slightly wet which I don't understand how that's desirable by anyone.

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

#364
post #345
post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On that note, the BBC deployed a temporary 5G SA non-public-network to broadcast King Charles' Coronation, giving over 1Gbps uplink over 1km of the procession route. More details are in the award-winning white paper linked from this[0] blog post. [0]: https://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2023-05-5g-non-public-network-...

I could not imagine any private news-gathering organization to set up a temporary cell network for coverage.

Eh, I wouldn't be that surprised if it happens from time to time for big events. You'd be talking the very big sophisticated ones, but it is possible to get temporary licenses, and the equipment isn't _catastrophically_ expensive, particularly if you're just renting it.

This: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_Communication_Congress usually has a temporary cell network (I think up to LTE last year) set up for the duration of the event, on a temporary license. And that's basically just done for fun.

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

#365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most places it's 2G/3G/4G bands, either repurposed or through dynamic spectrum sharing, plus sub-6 bands. mmWave is a flop.

mmWave is amazing in any kind of packed arena/stadium. Never was able to even use my phone at a basic level before, now can get low latency gigabit+ speeds which is insane.

In practice sub-6 bands are just good enough in most scenarios. We're 5+ years into mmWave deployments in the US and there's still very little interest or regulatory push worldwide.

For instance it's completely stalled in South Korea which has one of the highest 5G coverage and market penetration. In Japan I found articles from 2023 claiming the mmWave coverage was "0.01%" then, I don't know if it expanded in the meantime. In Europe there's virtually zero production deployments or devices sold with the compatible modem/antennas. While there are small deployments in Australian cities, Apple doesn't bother selling compatible models. Etc.

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

#366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Several Western European countries have deployed XGS-PON at scale, offering up to 10 Gbps, peaking at ~8 Gbps in practice. Hell I even have access to 25 Gbps P2P fiber here in Switzerland. Also you can deliver well over 1 Gbps over coax or DSL with modern DOCSIS and G.fast respectively. But most countries have started dismantling copper wirelines.

Very few people have home equipment that can do anything close to 10Gbps, of course; this is all largely future proofing. Years back, when FTTH started rolling out in Ireland, some of the CPE for the earliest rollouts only had 100Mbit/sec ethernet (on a 1Gbit/sec service)...

Of course but that's a bit beyond the point.

- If you deploy XGS-PON, unlocking the max speed doesn't cost you anything.

- I have six devices that can hit 1~2 Gbps over Wi-Fi 6/7 in my household, a wired 2.5GbE connection to my desktop computer, and my TV.

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

#367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im not reading all this so Ill just respond to the first paragraph. The space industry was dead in the water before spaceX showed up. Minimal innovation and spend trending down every year and now spaceX has sparked a complete reversal. Competition matters. > I recently heard all the lead water pipes are being replaced in the USA. We still have lead pipes to many houses in chicago, and will for the foreseeable future.…

Illinois is mandating lead service line replacement. I'm not wild about it. Solubility of lead in Chicago municipal service water is very low, because the lines are mineralized by the phosphates in the water. Have your water service tested; you're probably more than fine. But replacing the water lines disrupts those lines, which ironically does introduce lead into your water (for a time). Regardless, Illinois munis d…

Yes replacing the pipes basically Flint's ourselves but still needs to be done in the long run so better sooner than latter imo.

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

#368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

15 Mb·s⁻¹

Mb•Hz

Okay, this was way funnier than it has any right to be.

Мб and хз are both common acronyms in Russian, so this reads as “может быть, х** знает”, roughly: “maybe, f--- if I know”

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

#369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's usually not a speed of light problem. It's a problem of everyone optimizing for bandwidth, not latency, because that is the number that products are advertised with. Speed of light is 200'000-300'000 km/s in the media used, that should not be very noticeable when talking to someone in the same country.

See my comments about L4S.

Well, fucking finally! But it seems like it's going to take a few more years until L4S is deployed everywhere.

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

#370
post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cellular technologies can be configured to degrade differently to WiFi. The device gets fewer assigned slices, so the bandwidth reduces, but latency should remain static.

How does voice call quality degrade? Does it switch to a tinny bit rate?

On 4G or 5G, if voice quality is degrading it's either being switched to a lower quality codec, or it's an upstream issue.
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