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5G Rollout Disappointments

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Re: 5G Rollout Disappointments

#71

Post by afavour »

SSLy wrote: post #54
AHOHA wrote: post #28

5G is an umbrella for different types and technologies, and I believe that’s the confusion part of what the artice mentioned and the reader views. 5G has three main categories (technically two but separating the 2nd one to further explain it), 5G NSA (non stand alone), where the 5G RAN uses an existing 4G LTE core, 5G SA (stand alone), as the name implies, is stand alone from previous generations and has its own arch…

5G mmWave is best used in dense - ie. not so often in North America - urban areas. I's going to work great in busy metro stations, shopping streets/malls, concerts. Not in suburbia.

I’m in NYC and use mmWave for my home internet and it’s genuinely game changing: ~1Gbps internet with no wires at all. Given the monopolies internet providers have in NYC it’s liberating.

But my nearest antenna is a block away with pretty good sight lines. If I move my radio even 6ft in the wrong direction my speeds go through the floor. I think the 5G hype was excessive for a technology that only works in very specific circumstances and it’s led to some disappointment.

Re: 5G Rollout Disappointments

#72

Post by afavour »

SSLy wrote: post #55
Klathmon wrote: post #9

I've just found that any time my phone says it's on 5G, it barely works at all. I've actually gone in and set the preferred network to LTE and every now and then I try setting it back, and almost every time I set it back within the day. Doing some speed tests back and forth, LTE tends to have significantly less latency, higher bandwidth, and just works while every single web page load on 5G feels like a gamble.

That's a problem with your UE (phone), what model is it?

FWIW I’ve experienced this a lot with an iPhone on Verizon. 5GUW literally won’t load a thing. If I put it into airplane mode then out again it’ll reconnect to 5GUW and work fine.

Re: 5G Rollout Disappointments

#73

Post by zeroimpl »

nextweek2 wrote: post #10
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…

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.

Am I charged less for that data transfer when it’s 5G? To me the important consideration is the cost of the data. 1Gbps seems pointless if the cost is still $10+/GB.

Re: 5G Rollout Disappointments

#74

Post by izacus »

ohazi wrote: post #42
arnaudsm wrote: post #39

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.

Sure, but is anyone (who has an actual choice) actually choosing to do this? From what I can tell, carriers seem to run a lot of really stupid ads and keep the marketing money faucet flowing for a long time before they finally give up.

Yes, many people are deciding to use mobile-only connections, suffer through the usual performance degradation when everyone decides to Netflix at once... and also actively "Who needs this?" complain against building out wired infrastructure which would fix this issues en masse.

Re: 5G Rollout Disappointments

#75

Post by s3p »

This article is a disappointment, not 5G. Cellular speeds have been increasing at an increasing rate over the last few years. Things have been getting much better for consumers. The article cites the lack of mmWave as the reason 5G is getting "slower" but then kills its own argument by explaining how mmWave has almost zero range.

What is this article even trying to accomplish?

Re: 5G Rollout Disappointments

#76

Post by m348e912 »

afavour wrote: post #71
SSLy wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5G mmWave is best used in dense - ie. not so often in North America - urban areas. I's going to work great in busy metro stations, shopping streets/malls, concerts. Not in suburbia.

I’m in NYC and use mmWave for my home internet and it’s genuinely game changing: ~1Gbps internet with no wires at all. Given the monopolies internet providers have in NYC it’s liberating. But my nearest antenna is a block away with pretty good sight lines. If I move my radio even 6ft in the wrong direction my speeds go through the floor. I think the 5G hype was excessive for a technology that only works in very speci…

If mmWave is also known as 5gUW, I have been very underwhelmed and I would prefer that I could turn it off in favor of traditional 5g.

The push for 5g in general has been a bit of a head scratcher for me. I don't think consumers have been clamoring for multi gigabit wireless en mass. If they're like me, they would prefer consistency and reliability.

Speed is less important when you can use WIFI at home and in many places, which is going to be faster and more reliable. I always suspected something else was pushing the massive investment and marketing of 5g. Maybe cost massive savings on new spectrum leases?

I don't know for sure, but when the I saw a commercial that said 5g would help doctors at a hospital diagnose illness faster (using networked equipment) I was like why the hell would hospitals even want to use 5g?

Ethernet, Fiber, maybe wifi. But 5g?? Craziness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpzF2JOgiwE

Everything this guy talks about can be accomplished by traditional wifi and ethernet.

Re: 5G Rollout Disappointments

#77

Post by qtwhat »

AHOHA wrote: post #28

5G is an umbrella for different types and technologies, and I believe that’s the confusion part of what the artice mentioned and the reader views. 5G has three main categories (technically two but separating the 2nd one to further explain it), 5G NSA (non stand alone), where the 5G RAN uses an existing 4G LTE core, 5G SA (stand alone), as the name implies, is stand alone from previous generations and has its own arch…

In China it is about SA only now, maybe since 2022 if I remember it correctly, all cell phone that support SA can only be allowed to enter the market. and all base station shall support SA too.

Re: 5G Rollout Disappointments

#78

Post by ksec »

f6v wrote: post #31
ksec wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They are, and so are 99% of articles ( even Tech Enthusiast focused ) on the internet.

One could understand, why they need to market the hype ( or bait ) to switch to 5G. On the other hand, most of the marketing point, like self driving vehicles, remote surgery operation, mmWave for everyone, or so called up to 20Gbps are by most's [1] people's standard "lying". They could have used other marketing points , but somehow marketing for tech has become something else.

If you talk to most if not all engineers working on 5G, whether that is the 3GPP spec, or actual network implementation in both software and hardware. They would all tell you the truth, 5G is simply a better 4G. And to be honest, as an Engineers, Tech Enthusiast, and also a consumer. That is good enough for what it is.

[1] May be not America because it seems you could get away with Tesla type of marketing and hype without immediate penalties.

Re: 5G Rollout Disappointments

#79

Post by solarkraft »

fuzzfactor wrote: post #45

When Sprint first built out its digital cellphone network, their slogan was "you can hear a pin drop". It was basically true, this was more clarity and intelligibility than the full-quality land line POTS. After a year or two their airwaves got crowded and it became apparent they were compressing the audio enough to be noticeably way worse than the POTS was. Cell carriers seem to have kept performance at that low lev…

It's crazy to me how much telephony still sucks. We can stream 4K video but not some audio in reasonable quality?

Re: 5G Rollout Disappointments

#80

Post by blensor »

mrighele wrote: post #25
blensor wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tangentially, if you are from outside Switzerland make sure to know your roaming charges very very well. Swiss carriers have gigantic roaming charges. Every time. I fly through Zurich (from Austria) I blow through my roaming limit 60 seconds after landing because I forgot to disable data. 1MB/16€ Yes that is Megabyte not Gigabyte

AFAIK It’s your operator that decides the roaming charges, based on your contract (they may be different based on the country though). So you may want to check with them

Yes, it's definitely something that you (I) need to solve with the own carrier. I do still feel that there is something iffy about that, because Switzerland and Austria being direct neighbors it seems strange that they don't have at least a somewhat reasonable roaming agreement by default.
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