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

91–100 of 100 posts

Re: 5G Rollout Disappointments

#91

Post by JohnFen »

The real problem with 5G, in my opinion, was the usual problem with tech -- the hype. All of the exaggerated and unrealistic tales about the possibilities were heard as promises by most people, and those are promises that 5G cannot meet in the real world.

The reality is that 5G was hugely desired by the telecoms because it eases their problem with the amount of load the cell system has to carry. And deploying it is very expensive, so they wanted public money to help. Which means they wanted to get people excited about it, thus the hype machine was put into overdrive.

Re: 5G Rollout Disappointments

#92

Post by JohnFen »

solarkraft wrote: post #79
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?

> It's crazy to me how much telephony still sucks.

I think about this every time I use make a voice call on a cellphone -- in terms of audio quality, it blows my mind how inferior it is to what we had on POTS lines in the 80s.

Re: 5G Rollout Disappointments

#94

Post by Eavolution »

CaptainZapp wrote: post #60
muro wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar if you are from Switzerland and cross any border. If you are in Switzerland semi-regularly, either get a plan that has cheap roaming in and out of EU, or two SIMs.

Swisscom, for quite some time now, includes roaming in EU countries and the UK with unlimited calling and SMS and 40GB highspeed Internet per month. Ironically, calling a friend in Paris from Prague is free, while calling from Zurich is 70 cents a minute. My sister, who lives in Vienna, is shocked about our subscription prices (ca 70 EUR a month, unlimited everything and EU roaming as described above) while I'm more…

That makes my sub £9.00 pm (unlimited calls/texts, around 20gb data although unsure on exact amount), europe treated as the UK, seem very cheap.

Re: 5G Rollout Disappointments

#95

Post by lucumo »

usr1106 wrote: post #85
lucumo wrote: post #48

I just figured I'd do some measurements of the different speeds. Location: in the center of a modern well isolated family home, with HR++ glass. So not ideal for optimal reception, but I didn't care to get up from the kitchen table. Tested with speedtest.net in the browser with Android Chrome. Network is T-Mobile NL. 5G: 69.52 Mbps down, 37 ms ping 4G: 56.79 Mbps down, 34 ms ping 3G: 4.01 Mbps down, 56 ms ping I'm no…

> I'm not sure if T-Mobile is still keeping their 3G network at optimal performance. All their competitors have phased out 3G. They'll probably follow soon (though only 2G phase out is announced). Are you saying in the NL 2G networks will be closed before 3G networks? In Germany 3G networks are already closed, in Finland closing has been announced. But 2G networks are promised to run still for years.

It looks like T-Mobile is the only one to phase out 2G before 3G. The other two networks (KPN, Vodafone) have already phased out 3G, but will keep 2G until 2025. T-Mobile announced 2G phase out will finish in June this year, but hasn't announced 3G phase out yet.

Re: 5G Rollout Disappointments

#96

Post by m348e912 »

fafzv wrote: post #52
f6v wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

They are not, because if you stay in 4G, your experience will only worsen with time.

Exactly, the same way 3G became unusable for internet anytime your phone reverted to it, even thought at as a protocol it is perfectly appropriate for things like loading basic websites. Throttled 3G makes 4G look amazing. Rinse and repeat for 5G.

Re: 5G Rollout Disappointments

#97

Post by zaptrem »

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!

This but unironically. Now the spies ultimately have to answer to my vote.

Re: 5G Rollout Disappointments

#99

Post by throwaway4good »

SSLy wrote: post #56
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…

>just Ericsson Uh, Nokia? Samsung? Whatever Amazon and the startups are cooking?

In Denmark I think it is all Ericsson. Never heard of Samsung or Amazon (???) around here.

Re: 5G Rollout Disappointments

#100

Post by SSLy »

throwaway4good wrote: post #99
SSLy wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>just Ericsson Uh, Nokia? Samsung? Whatever Amazon and the startups are cooking?

In Denmark I think it is all Ericsson. Never heard of Samsung or Amazon (???) around here.

I don't know whether it's vapourvare but Amazon has a private 5G offering described here https://aws.amazon.com/private5g/pricing/

Yes, really.

Post reply on HN