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What 5G Will Mean for You

nytimes.com

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Re: What 5G Will Mean for You

#41

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

kbart wrote: post #34

It won't matter much because there's not much you could do with 5G that you can't do with 3/4G. Internet connection speed is rarely a bottleneck for casual usage now (browsing, watching steaming videos, chatting etc.) For IoT it won't matter too, because for most telemetry/control means even <3G was ok and WiFi/Bluetooth/ZigBee is still preferable solution as all these xG modems cost way too much. To sum up, unless w…

That is very wrong. There is for instance a lot you can do with 4G that was not possible with 3G. With 3G the more devices the worst the throughput for all. LTE time slices and runs qos for all devices so it does not degrade with increasing device count. However there is a general linit in the the cell which is hard to raise making it uninteresting as a replacement for fiber. Future standards want to remedy this.

Re: What 5G Will Mean for You

#42

Post by jjp »

> With 5G, downloading feature-length movies could take less than five seconds. With 4G, downloading feature-length movies could take as long as eight minutes.

But will it move everybody back to download versus streaming. Be interested to know how much of streaming start time is network time to first byte versus authenticate/authorise/check geo-fence admin activities? So would be slightly faster start time and may be less likely to degrade. However, streaming operators if they switch to download are going to have to deal with sending bytes that are never watched. Would be interesting to know how much is downloaded from Amazon Video that is never watched.

> These machines will have to communicate almost in real time with everything around them to avoid cyclists and other obstacles. That can happen only if carriers offer one-millisecond latency, something that may become a lifesaver if autonomous cars become a reality.

Will only be possible if there is a guaranteed quality of service. Would be interesting to see how your EULA/T&C of mobile service are written/rewritten to cover life critical usage scenarios.

> ability to go online no matter where they are, forcing operators to extend their networks to practically every corner of a country.

What sort of frequencies are available to 5G and how will that propagate compared to other options?

Re: What 5G Will Mean for You

#43

Post by joelrunyon »

navait wrote: post #19
joelrunyon wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Switch to T-Mobile. Unlimited data + LTE.

As a happy T-mobile customer, I do understand that limited coverage makes it unfeasible for many. For example, I live in rural New England and cannot reliably get signal (even for SMS) in certain towns nearby. I've never gotten signal in Vermont.

In major cities - I've found it's better than AT&T was for me.

Still a problem when I end up back in Indiana from time to time, but most of my time is in the cities or international (where they have free data + texting included in the plan).

Re: What 5G Will Mean for You

#44

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

f00fc0d3 wrote: post #28
condescendence wrote: post #5

4G definitions are still largely being fought over, and you're gonna try and jam "5G" down my throat? The entire article is complete speculation, and the sad part is that they don't even talk about the cooler ideas they're coming up with for the specification. For anyone wondering about 5G I think the coolest thing they've discussed so far is breaking down the different use cases (people in home, people traveling on…

This is totally wishful thinking. No one in industry has a slightest idea what 5G will be. We keep throwing fancy terms like eNodeB virtualization and then we have a reality check - LTE userplane cannot be virtualized due latency and performance reasons (LTE PHY on x86 - yeah, right...). Same goes to those mm waves with beamforming - no DSP (IP core) can handle it now and even soon. You need to stick with very expens…

> LTE userplane cannot be virtualized due latency and performance reasons

Care to elaborate? I fail to see what the technical challenges are. Many services are already virtualized just on different layers if I understand this correctly (for instance Wifi calling).

Re: What 5G Will Mean for You

#46

Post by staticelf »

post_break wrote: post #3

It seems like it will just mean you can hit your data cap faster.

Don't know what data caps are in your country, but if you max out one in Sweden (https://www.tele2.se/handla/mobilabonnemang/) 100GB, you can get it for quite affordable $40/month.

If you are using more than that on your mobile phone, something is wrong with you and not the data cap ;D

Re: What 5G Will Mean for You

#47

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

condescendence wrote: post #5

4G definitions are still largely being fought over, and you're gonna try and jam "5G" down my throat? The entire article is complete speculation, and the sad part is that they don't even talk about the cooler ideas they're coming up with for the specification. For anyone wondering about 5G I think the coolest thing they've discussed so far is breaking down the different use cases (people in home, people traveling on…

> 4G definitions are still largely being fought over

In which world (other than T-Mobile US) does 4G mean anything other than LTE Advanced? Sure, there was a fight for many years but it was because of carrier marketing, not because of real technical grounds.

At least on a basic level I am quite interested in what comes out of the 5G efforts because what's being discussed will be very interesting for new use cases that cannot be done on existing networks.

Re: What 5G Will Mean for You

#48

Post by kbart »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #41
kbart wrote: post #34

It won't matter much because there's not much you could do with 5G that you can't do with 3/4G. Internet connection speed is rarely a bottleneck for casual usage now (browsing, watching steaming videos, chatting etc.) For IoT it won't matter too, because for most telemetry/control means even <3G was ok and WiFi/Bluetooth/ZigBee is still preferable solution as all these xG modems cost way too much. To sum up, unless w…

That is very wrong. There is for instance a lot you can do with 4G that was not possible with 3G. With 3G the more devices the worst the throughput for all. LTE time slices and runs qos for all devices so it does not degrade with increasing device count. However there is a general linit in the the cell which is hard to raise making it uninteresting as a replacement for fiber. Future standards want to remedy this.

I agree that there a lot of technological advances and infrastructure will be much more efficient and robust, but I assume this article was what 5G means for me, not my carrier. Currently (good) carriers solve congestion problem by installing more and smaller cells which is costly solution and that's why their drive to 5G is understandable.

Re: What 5G Will Mean for You

#49

Post by creshal »

rb808 wrote: post #39
creshal wrote: post #2

> What 5G Will Mean for You Absolutely nothing for the next 20 years, seeing how my carrier just started deploying LTE (50 MBit, that is, not 300 MBit) at eye-watering costs ($20 a month for 5 gigabytes!).

Where can you LTE for get $20 a month? That is amazingly cheap.

Austria. The competition is around $15, actually.
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