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'At This Point, 5G is a Bad Joke'
from the lowdown-downloads dept.
An anonymous reader shared this skeptical opinion piece from Computerworld:
Let's start with the name itself. There is no single "5G." There are, in fact, three different varieties, with very different kinds of performance... But, what most people want, what most people lust for is 1Gbps speeds with less than 10 milliseconds of latency... [T]o get that kind of speed you must have mmWave 5G — and it comes with a lot of caveats. 

First, it has a range, at best, of 150 meters. If you're driving, that means, until 5G base stations are everywhere, you're going to be losing your high-speed signal a lot. Practically speaking, for the next few years, if you're on the move, you're not going to be seeing high-speed 5G. And, even if you are in range of a 5G base station, anything — and I mean anything — can block its high-frequency signal. Window glass, for instance, can stop it dead. So, you could have a 5G transceiver literally on your street corner and not be able to get a good signal. How bad is this? NTT DoCoMo, Japan's top mobile phone service provider, is working on a new kind of window glass, just so their mmWave 5G will work. I don't know about you, but I don't want to shell out a few grand to replace my windows just to get my phone to work.

Let's say, though, that you've got a 5G phone and you're sure you can get 5G service — what kind of performance can you really expect? According to Washington Post tech columnist Geoffrey A. Fowler, you can expect to see a "diddly squat" 5G performance... ["roughly the same as on 4G LTE," while some places "actually have been slower."] It wasn't just him, since he lives in that technology backwater known as the San Francisco bay area. He checked with several national firms tracking 5G performance. They found that all three major U.S. telecom networks' 5G isn't that much faster than 4G. Indeed, OpenSignal reports that U.S. 5G users saw an average speed of 33.4Mbps. Better than 4G, yes, but not "Wow! This is great!" speeds most people seem to be dreaming of. It's also, I might add, much worse than any other country using 5G, with the exception of the United Kingdom.
Posted by EditorDavid 6 hours ago
cellphones communications

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Couple of reasons why today's Internet is useless: (-1)
Anonymous Coward 6 hours ago
(TrueScore: 4, Interesting)
In the year 1999, you went to a site, clicked "register", filled in basic info, and then you had an account. No CAPTCHAs. No e-mail verification in most cases. Absolutely no "phone verification". No fake error messages based on your IP address/"reputation score". No underhanded "oh, wait, you cannot have the account after all" messages after you've already registered. No evil "shadowbans"/bubbles. No photo IDs had to be scanned in and sent to the owners of the site. Nothing like that whatsoever. Those days are long gone...
* The local auction site was bought by eBay a few years ago. I then tried to sell an item using my account created in 2003... only to be spat in the face with yet another "upload government photo ID to continue" message -- after I had spent hours upon hours creating and perfecting the description, photos, etc. For an account that was 10+ years old. With nothing but positive feedback on every transaction. I immediately ceased using it forever.
.
* I keep getting locked out of accounts when companies start using Google's reCAPTCHA even for logging in. All attempts to contact the companies in question in order for them to have my account "whitelisted" from having to jump through these hoops have been unsuccessful. Google must track every single mouse click, and blocking it means you can't even attempt to get past their harassments...
.
* I once (in recent years) actually managed to successfully create a Facebook account, with a lot of trickery and swearing. In no time, they locked me out, forcing me to upload a face photo "for my protection". I naturally sent them a fake photo and that's the last time I ever saw that account.
.
* I tried numerous times to create an account on Plenty of Fish (dating site). Every single time, no matter what information I inputted into the registration form, it would give fake error messages about how the "username is already taken" (even when trying impossible, ridiculous ones full of random alphanumeric characters).
.
* I registered an account at Reddit and started posting. After a while, it seemed like it was eerily, suspiciously dead. I tried copying the URLs into a new browser instance (with a different set of cookies) and all of the links returned "not found" errors. I e-mailed the site owners about this and they flat-out admitted to me that my account had been silently put in a "bubble" immediately upon registration due to the IP address being owned by a VPN/proxy service. Needless to say, I immediately stopped using the site forever.
.
* To my horror, I discovered one day in 2019 that "anonymous" posting has been disabled on Slashdot. (As if the constant insult of being called a "coward" wasn't already bad enough...) Registering an account involves a massive form of information, e-mail verification with an annoying forced "password reset", and of course a Google reCANCER blob. In other words, it's no longer possible to properly comment on articles. It was the last place where I could in any way make my little voice heard to a couple of other people.
.
* Have you noticed how insanely unhelpful error messages have become in recent years? It seems to be a disgusting new practice to actively and consciously make every error message as useless as possible, frequently downright lying, and to only show these at the very last step, to maximize the amount of time and energy you steal from the person trying to register. The excuse given (if any) is to "stop bots", but since I'm not a bot yet keep getting these BS messages everywhere, they clearly very much affect humans trying to use these trashy services. It's beyond insulting to get some worthless gibberish about "username is already taken" when the real "error" is "you are not using your home connection directly so that we can track you uniquely and know you by name and address and see exactly which pages you load from us even if you filled in zero personal information".
.
* A couple of years ago, I needed a basic website for my software project. Not just every single server host, but even "webhost" (called "web hotel" in some languages) demanded that I sent a scanned copy of my (nonexistent) government-issued photo ID and Visa debit card for the privilege of getting to pay them money. None of them of course mention this prior to wasting my time and energy filling out their endless forms...
.
* I've long since lost count of the number of times when a registration form has claimed that "an e-mail containing a verification link has been sent" but I never actually received any e-mail. (No, it's not "in the spam folder"...)
.
* As with countless other "decentralized" things, I looked into The Federation / Fediverse. From their site: "we expect sites we list to have a humane code of conduct in place. Should sites who fail to ban content that can be found generally harmful, that node will be blocked from listing here." That makes no sense grammatically, but it continues: "Harmful content can be, but not limited to, malware, graphical material of minors, abusive images, hateful content, racist content and climate denialism." In other words, the whole thing is controlled by the exact same truth-suffocating, hateful scumbags as the centralized giants, rendering it utterly pointless.
.
* Recently, after Microsoft had bought GitHub, I tried to log in to an account of mine in order to reply to a reply on an issue thread. I was only mildly shocked to learn that they had locked me out with a message about having sent a "verification code" to the throwaway e-mail address I used when registering, obviously long since abandoned and inaccessible. Apparently, having the right password is no longer enough to prove that you control an account. (I could never get back into it, resulting in a dead end for the issue.)
.
And yes, this is on-topic no matter which news article discussion field it is posted in, because it fundamentally affects us all.
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Re: Couple of reasons why today's Internet is usele 
Anonymous Coward 5 hours ago
Fuck off already
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Re: Couple of reasons why today's Internet is usele (-1)
Anonymous Coward 2 hours ago
Why don't you shut up and die? He makes a bunch of great points, and the sole editor who can comprehend the points turns his back to them. The points go over the rest of the fake news editors' heads. BeauHD especially is a useless MORON. He knows nothing and is proud of it.
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Re: Couple of reasons why today's Internet is usele (+1)
SirKveldulv an hour ago
He does make some good points, but this posts ends up in every story and has for months and months and months. There's no way to filter it (is there?), so by now it's really annoying noise. Less annoying than the ascii swastikas, but both are f*cking annoying.
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Re: Couple of reasons why today's Internet is usele (+1)
parityshrimp 3 minutes ago
In the year 1999, you went to a site, clicked "register", filled in basic info, and then you had an account. No CAPTCHAs. No e-mail verification in most cases. Absolutely no "phone verification". No fake error messages based on your IP address/"reputation score". No underhanded "oh, wait, you cannot have the account after all" messages after you've already registered. No evil "shadowbans"/bubbles. No photo IDs had to be scanned in and sent to the owners of the site. Nothing like that whatsoever. Those days are long gone...
* The local auction site was bought by eBay a few years ago. I then tried to sell an item using my account created in 2003... only to be spat in the face with yet another "upload government photo ID to continue" message -- after I had spent hours upon hours creating and perfecting the description, photos, etc. For an account that was 10+ years old. With nothing but positive feedback on every transaction. I immediately ceased using it forever.
* I keep getting locked out of accounts when companies start using Google's reCAPTCHA even for logging in. All attempts to contact the companies in question in order for them to have my account "whitelisted" from having to jump through these hoops have been unsuccessful. Google must track every single mouse click, and blocking it means you can't even attempt to get past their harassments...
* I once (in recent years) actually managed to successfully create a Facebook account, with a lot of trickery and swearing. In no time, they locked me out, forcing me to upload a face photo "for my protection". I naturally sent them a fake photo and that's the last time I ever saw that account.
* I tried numerous times to create an account on Plenty of Fish (dating site). Every single time, no matter what information I inputted into the registration form, it would give fake error messages about how the "username is already taken" (even when trying impossible, ridiculous ones full of random alphanumeric characters).
* I registered an account at Reddit and started posting. After a while, it seemed like it was eerily, suspiciously dead. I tried copying the URLs into a new browser instance (with a different set of cookies) and all of the links returned "not found" errors. I e-mailed the site owners about this and they flat-out admitted to me that my account had been silently put in a "bubble" immediately upon registration due to the IP address being owned by a VPN/proxy service. Needless to say, I immediately stopped using the site forever.
* To my horror, I discovered one day in 2019 that "anonymous" posting has been disabled on Slashdot. (As if the constant insult of being called a "coward" wasn't already bad enough...) Registering an account involves a massive form of information, e-mail verification with an annoying forced "password reset", and of course a Google reCANCER blob. In other words, it's no longer possible to properly comment on articles. It was the last place where I could in any way make my little voice heard to a couple of other people.
* Have you noticed how insanely unhelpful error messages have become in recent years? It seems to be a disgusting new practice to actively and consciously make every error message as useless as possible, frequently downright lying, and to only show these at the very last step, to maximize the amount of time and energy you steal from the person trying to register. The excuse given (if any) is to "stop bots", but since I'm not a bot yet keep getting these BS messages everywhere, they clearly very much affect humans trying to use these trashy services. It's beyond insulting to get some worthless gibberish about "username is already taken" when the real "error" is "you are not using your home connection directly so that we can track you uniquely and know you by name and address and see exactly which pages you load from us even if you filled in zero personal information".
* A couple of years ago, I needed a basic website for my software project. Not just every single server host, but even "webhost" (called "web hotel" in some languages) demanded that I sent a scanned copy of my (nonexistent) government-issued photo ID and Visa debit card for the privilege of getting to pay them money. None of them of course mention this prior to wasting my time and energy filling out their endless forms...
* I've long since lost count of the number of times when a registration form has claimed that "an e-mail containing a verification link has been sent" but I never actually received any e-mail. (No, it's not "in the spam folder"...)
* As with countless other "decentralized" things, I looked into The Federation / Fediverse. From their site: "we expect sites we list to have a humane code of conduct in place. Should sites who fail to ban content that can be found generally harmful, that node will be blocked from listing here." That makes no sense grammatically, but it continues: "Harmful content can be, but not limited to, malware, graphical material of minors, abusive images, hateful content, racist content and climate denialism." In other words, the whole thing is controlled by the exact same truth-suffocating, hateful scumbags as the centralized giants, rendering it utterly pointless.
* Recently, after Microsoft had bought GitHub, I tried to log in to an account of mine in order to reply to a reply on an issue thread. I was only mildly shocked to learn that they had locked me out with a message about having sent a "verification code" to the throwaway e-mail address I used when registering, obviously long since abandoned and inaccessible. Apparently, having the right password is no longer enough to prove that you control an account. (I could never get back into it, resulting in a dead end for the issue.)
 And yes, this is on-topic no matter which news article discussion field it is posted in, because it fundamentally affects us all.
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Re: Couple of reasons why today's Internet is usele 
Anonymous Coward 3 hours ago
Gnarly dude. It's like this one time I had locked myself outside of my house (because the big corporations, don'tchaknow), and I had to take a shit really bad and instead of going behind a bush or asking a neighbor I just did it in my pants while i was calling the locksmith and then I realized that my keys were in my pocket the entire time.
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Except for the UK? (+1)
Dutch Gun 6 hours ago
I've heard their 5G infrastructure is blazing fast. Did I misunderstand?
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Re: Except for the UK? (+4, Funny)
Patent Lover 6 hours ago
Just blazing.
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Re: Except for the UK? (+2)
timeOday 6 hours ago
I think the point of the short range 1Gbps stuff is to serve a massive number of people in a small space, like a stadium, without a complete collapse of performance. (Of course with Covid there currently ARE no crowds...)

Can't see why any one phone would want 1 Gbps, but maybe somebody will show me up on that.
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Re: Except for the UK? (+1)
Aighearach 5 hours ago
I can't see why somebody would imagine that they'd be using it in a car. With a range of 150m, even if there are base stations "everywhere" you're not going to be moving from cell to cell that fast, with your data transactions moving transparently with you, without either a lot of latency, or a lot of lost network connections. Think about the network load for moving all those connections around and re-transmitting all the lost packets.
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Re: Except for the UK? (+1)
timeOday 4 hours ago
Yeah. I'm thinking, rush hour foot traffic in a train station in China/Japan/Singapore.

I mean good lord

https://www.standard.co.uk/new...
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Re: Except for the UK? 
NFN_NLN 5 hours ago
> Of course with Covid there currently ARE no crowds...
There are still practical applications. What if BLM/Antifa wants to live stream the burning and looting of cities after the election. They could save the video to SD cards, but then they'll be too lazy to upload it. They really need fast streams and that translates to 5G towers that are fire resistant.
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Re: Except for the UK? (-1)
Anonymous Coward 5 hours ago
Sorry you hate equal rights, fucking racist bitch.
We're coming for you next
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Re: Except for the UK? (+1)
rtb61 5 hours ago
5G it to control and monitor you at all times, with internet appliance. Don't bother with a router and wires you control, we can control all your devices for you, from 5G, your front door, your back door, you airconditioner, you fridge, your microwave, your TVs, your radio's, your phones, you computers, your game console, ALL OURS FUCKER, 'er', all connected directly to 5G, no wiring, no router, that's all too hard, let us to it for you and no hard disk drive, use ours, we will scan and delete all unwanted files for you.
5G was never about performance is was all about psychos being psychos, anal retentive control freaks wanting to control every aspect of your life to be able to torture and terrorise you when ever they want. Really sick shite and make no mistake.
PS why the fuck would you change the windows, just an an antennae outside that connects to an antennae inside. Ohh wait brickwalls, OK, antennae hooks up to a booster and router and wires network, shh can't fucking do that, that's not the idea, total continuous monitoring and total continuous digital control.
5G is not about your access to the world, it is all about corporations access to you and control of you and your entire family.
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Re: Except for the UK? 
Anonymous Coward 2 hours ago
Just wait until Obama mandates that you buy 5G. And makes it illegal to leave your home without it.
You'll be safe regardless. Your basement is probably lead lined, and all your clothes are tinfoil.
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Re: Except for the UK? (+1)
billyswong 3 hours ago
I think the point of the short range 1Gbps stuff is to serve a massive number of people in a small space, like a stadium, without a complete collapse of performance. (Of course with Covid there currently ARE no crowds...)

Can't see why any one phone would want 1 Gbps, but maybe somebody will show me up on that.

Such scenario can be served a lot better with wifi. When there are massive number of people, the bottleneck is always the celltower / router, not the wireless technology part. Gigabit wifi is useful. Gigabit wifi that can serve thousands and thousands of people is useful. Gigabit wifi that connect to 10Gbps internet is useful. Gigabit 5G that is still data-capped is not.

Even if they say 5G tower can better handle crowded scenes, telecoms history give me no faith that they won't underbuild and oversell again.
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Re: Except for the UK? 
Anonymous Coward an hour ago
Get your Capitalist telcoms to compete then and get your money.
Or move to Communist China, and get much faster 5G.
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Re: Except for the UK? (+2)
Rick Schumann 5 hours ago
I've heard their 5G infrastructure is blazing, fast.
Fixed that for you, you were missing the comma.
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Complementary tech (+1)
Ancalimar 6 hours ago
Isn't the point of 5g that is had to be supplemented and partnered? Here's one of at least three complementary technologies that I know AT&T is working on. https://www.fiercewireless.com...
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Let me get this right (+1)
ArchieBunker 6 hours ago
The first version of a new technology is slow and power hungry? You're shitting me! Brick phones used to have an hour of battery time but tech improved and here we are.
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Re: Let me get this right (+1)
Anonymouse Cowtard 6 hours ago
It'll be interesting to see how they solve the "stopped by glass" problem
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Re: Let me get this right 
Anonymous Coward 5 hours ago
The same way you solve all Windows problems. A brick.
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Re: Let me get this right 
Anonymous Coward 5 hours ago
The first version of a new technology is slow and power hungry? You're shitting me!
Except it's not the first version. It's the 5th version. That's why it's called 5G and not 1G.
When version 5 is significantly worse than version 4, that's a problem. How did this even happen? How do multiple companies spend several years and lots of $shekels$ developing something that doesn't even work worth a shit?
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Why did the chicken cross the road? (+1)
goombah99 5 hours ago
5G
Sorry, bad joke
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Re: Let me get this right (+4, Insightful)
squiggleslash 4 hours ago

Not only that, but it misses the point in 5G anyway. I know this is all "640K is enough for everyone", but who the hell needs a 1Gbps connection to their cellphone? If you tether it to your home network, and have four Rokus plugged into 4K TVs, in each room and they're all streaming at Blu-ray 4K quality (which isn't going to happen), you'd still have 80% of your bandwidth to spare.

4G, or rather LTE, was about ensuring that mobile data rates were high enough to be as useful as wirelines. 5G is about capacity. 4G networks work great, but they can get overloaded when multiple people are trying to stream video, for example.

So the focus on 5G's technological development is as much about offlloading network load to smaller networks that use otherwise useless spectrum as it is about incremental improvements to data rates using conventional frequencies.

1Gbps would be nice, but it's not really what they're aiming for here.
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Re: Let me get this right 
Anonymous Coward 4 hours ago
I know this is all "640K is enough for everyone", but who the hell needs a 1Gbps connection to their cellphone?
When the Arpanet backbone was sold off to the commercial telecoms and first became the Internet, who *needed* Internet access at all?
No one needed it, and the ones who simply wanted it numbered down in the area of a rounding error.
But now look at our world today. The Internet is about as much of a need as is running water, access to transportation, and radio/TV. (it's all but supplanted radio for nearly all uses terrestrial broadcast used to serve, and TV would be the same if not for licencing terms preventing it)
People can't easily get jobs without it, kids can't do homework without it (ignoring 2020 here), it equals the knowledge available from libraries even if they two are still related as a venn diagram.
It serves as rival for shopping in sheer availability, and is already heavily encroaching into shopping for necessities.
All of this in just over a quarter of a century.
I'm not disagreeing with you that ubiquitous RF data transfer ability needs to have priorities, and do agree we should be placing "ubiquitous" over bandwidth *to the end user* (not to be confused with shared bandwidth to an area)
But gigabit data to a computing device in your pocket, need or not, should not be simply dismissed. I know you weren't doing so trivially, but things like this need to be kept firmly in our vision for a future that is far better than what we have now.
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Re: Let me get this right (+1)
Darinbob 23 minutes ago
I was surprised it went to great effort to point out how you might lose the super fast connection while driving. Well.. duh? If you're driving, you don't need the internet (and neither does your car). Your passengers can manage to survive without it too for brief instances; give the kids a book. If you're a commuter on mass transit, they'll give you wifi in some other way, but it's far better to just take it easy than try to work while commuting, sheesh.
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New technology not available or mature is a joke (+1)
thegarbz 6 hours ago
news at 11. Seriously at this point 5G is what every wireless technology was at their comparable points. Get over it.
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Re: New technology not available or mature is a jok (+1)
reboot246 6 hours ago
Yes, but how are you going to get around the laws of physics?
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Re: New technology not available or mature is a jok (+1)
Aighearach 5 hours ago
Yes, but how are you going to get around the laws of physics?
They don't need to, they have Murphy's Law to blame when they fail.
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Re: New technology not available or mature is a jok (+1)
EABinGA 5 hours ago
Yes, but how are you going to get around the laws of physics?
Exactly, the limits are not in the encoding scheme or technology, but in the bandwidth available.As long as 5G runs in the same bandwidth as 4G, don't expect miracles.



See Shannon's Law. Good explanation can be found here: https://www.waveform.com/blogs...
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Re: New technology not available or mature is a jok (+1)
phantomfive 5 hours ago
Yeah, I was just thinking, "I've read this story before...." About 4G, about 3G
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always oversell (+1)
fermion 6 hours ago
A while ago I tried to do a hotspot at home. I saw good speed outside, but inside it was sub MB range. I was within a kilometer of one tower, a couple kilometers of two others. Officially I should have have speed of a few MB per second, in reality the usefulness was way oversold. I know ATT got in trouble for advertising 5G. I don't know how Verizon gets away with it's ad, which basically implies that 5G is available in select cities, but is really on in select neighborhoods. We are seeing improvement, cellar speed on my devices are a couple hundred Mbps, better than my home wireless sometimes. But it is very location dependent. There are places outside of the US where it is better. There are places in pacific northwest and rural southwest where is almost non existant.
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So in summary, (+1)
Captivale 6 hours ago
the author made up an imaginary hypothetical definition of 5G and then denounced the industry for not living up to his non-existent standard.
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Move to a developed contry * (+2)
williamyf 6 hours ago
Like South Korea or Japan, and see 5G in all its glory.
More seriously: The article shows a complete lack of technicall understanding from the author. Saying that 5G is three standards depending on the frequency is like saying that GSM was 5 standards because there are implementations in 450Mhz, 800Mhz, 900Mhz, 1800Mhz and 1900Mhz. No, in GSM (and indeed in all cellular standards) the signanling, framing, etc is done in the same way, no matter which frequency the operator happens to use. Besides, 5G is called 5G because is the ONLY 5G standard worldwide. In 4G we had 2 standards, in 3G he had 3, and 3 standards also in 2G.
And this also neglects other benefits that 5G brings to the table, both for users (network slicing, improved latencies), operators (new markets, possibility to have more users attached to a single tower), or industry (autonomous freight trucks, edge computing).
So no, 5G is no joke, is simply in its early stages, wait and see.
* In terms of Telecoms. The USoA is a developed country allright, but in terms of telecoms in general, and Cellular in particular, you guys are middle of the pack at best.
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Re: Move to a developed contry * (+1)
Quakeulf 6 hours ago
How is 5G in Israel? Aren't they the world leaders, or at least the most invested in this technology, co-operating with China?
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Re: Move to a developed contry * (+1)
Methuselah2 5 hours ago
I am currently a bit North of NYC, along the river. I get 5G, buy my phone doesn't do mmWave. Not that it matters, because of the short distance it has, I'll probably never have it here, even if I had a phone that could do it. I understand the problems with the differences in 5G, and the over hyped PR of it. But when I got my new phone, I connect with 5G, and my speeds increased to where I can notice the difference. Granted it's not silly fast, but noticeably faster.
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Re: Move to a developed contry * (+1)
DontBeAMoran 3 hours ago
* In terms of Telecoms. The USoA is a developed country alright, but in terms of telecoms in general, and Cellular in particular, you guys are middle of the pack at best.
For bottom of the pack, see "Canada".
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Re: Move to a developed contry * (+1)
DontBeAMoran 3 hours ago
Forgot to add our carriers moto: "Yesterday's technology at tomorrow's prices!"
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Re: Move to a developed contry * (+1)
williamyf 2 hours ago
Forgot to add our carriers moto: "Yesterday's technology at tomorrow's prices!"
Mod parent up as funny. while I do not live in the USoA, I see a lot of media from there. And what you say is true.
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Re: Move to a developed contry * (+1)
williamyf 2 hours ago
* In terms of Telecoms. The USoA is a developed country alright, but in terms of telecoms in general, and Cellular in particular, you guys are middle of the pack at best.
For bottom of the pack, see "Canada".
I live in Venezuela. You telecoms "plight" is just 1st world problems. You get no simpathy from me. ;-) :-P
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Why is it cool to dis on 5G now? (+1)
Quakeulf 6 hours ago
I was, and still am, skeptical from its promises and premises from the start. However everyone voted my posts down on here. What happened?
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Re: Why is it cool to dis on 5G now? (+1)
phantomfive 5 hours ago
It was probably because of your tone, not your content.
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Re: Why is it cool to dis on 5G now? (+1)
Mspangler 3 hours ago
Because Marketing promised the moon, and delivered 100-Base-T from 1998 (or there abouts).
https://dilbert.com/strip/1999...
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Computerworld really ???? (+1)
Bradac_55 6 hours ago
It's 2020, who would read Computerworld at this point for anything remotely more than something to do while on the toilet ?
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Re: Computerworld really ???? (+1)
WeaselCom 5 hours ago
The first website I open on my iPad when seated on the white throne is /.
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Let's say, though.. (+1)
WeaselCom 5 hours ago
> Let's say, though, that you've got a 5G phone and you're sure you can get 5G service
Lets say, though that you've already got a 4G LTE phone and it works perfectly fine for everything a pocket sized internet communicator needs to do.
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Is Huawei mmWave? (+1)
aj1929 5 hours ago
Is Huawei mmWave?
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I still don't get why we even need this? (+2)
Rick Schumann 5 hours ago
Seriously, why do we even need this? I don't want to hear about 'Internet of Things' crap, either, because most of that is useless garbage, and I don't want to hear about 'All the industrial uses for Internet of Things' because I just don't believe that, either, what we already have should serve all those things more than adequately. That leaves consumers; why do you need 1Gbps on a smartphone? Can it even use speeds that high? Aside from watching a 1080p movie on your phone (and why would you do that, either, on some tiny little screen) what could you possibly be doing with your phone that you need more than 100Mbps, ever?
Seriously, what has happened to our civilization that you've all been convinced that we need things like this?
No, I'm not a 'troll', and no, I'm not 'flamebait' either so leave off with the misapplied moderation points. Just because you don't like the questions doesn't mean you abuse your ability to apply moderation points. I want someone to explain to me why it is we even need 5G in the first place because I just don't see it, it really looks to me like it's all marketing hype making you think you 'need' it when you really aren't even using what you already have, i.e. the telecoms aren't making enough profit as-is.
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Re: I still don't get why we even need this? (+1)
RhettLivingston 4 hours ago
I agree we don't need this. But, the IoT is exactly why we don't. I have upwards of 40 WiFi devices in my little 1600 sq ft home. I pay $65 per month for my internet. There is no way the idea of putting every device on 5G and paying the phone company for the service could ever compete. Even at $2 per month per connection I'd be losing money.
My phone service is also fine. Though we go beyond 20 GB of usage on each of our phones, we get by on less than 1 GB of actual mobile data usage because the phones connect to WiFi almost everywhere we go. Even when driving, I almost always have a WiFi connection to a Spectrum WiFi. If we simply improve the WiFi to connect and switch faster, I'd be using even less mobile data.
The whole 5G thing is just an attempt to replace free WiFi with something that phone companies can charge monthly fees for.
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Re: I still don't get why we even need this? (+2)
williamyf 3 hours ago
[...] But, the IoT is exactly why we don't. I have upwards of 40 WiFi devices in my little 1600 sq ft home. [...]
The whole 5G thing is just an attempt to replace free WiFi with something that phone companies can charge monthly fees for.
No, the IoT devices that will attach to 5G will not be y(our) toys and gadgets at home, will be the smart power, gas and water meters from your utilites, smart weather and seismic sensors for scientists, Smart HVAC control systems for your building, the elevator's monitoring sensors. The autonomuos trucks, vans and drones that will deliver your shopping. The tracking systems of your car in case of theft. The traffic lights and emergency buttons in your city that currently use a bespoke RF system. You see, 5G not only has High Bandwidth modes, it has low bandwidth - low power - LOW LATNECY modes that were simply not available in the Gs before (well, in 4G those were bolted on as an afterthough late in its life, and did not get popular). In 5G, those modes are very versatile, and developed from the ground up for the protocol.
Let me give you an example. In GSM (2G), be it plain GSM, GPRS or EDGE, you DO NOT have power control for data timeslots, only for voice. This means that devicies using a 2G modem (up until now, the most popular modem for IoT) consume a lot of power, and, since there is no power control, the noise floor is raised when you have a lot of devices (like all the metters in a apt building) transmitting data on the same cell...
Also, in GSM the latency is 300~1000ms, while in 5G is 10~20ms INDEPENDENT OF THE FREQUENCY (the article's aurthor is wrong). As long as both the radio is New Radio, and the Core is a 5G core (5G is the first G that let's you mix and match core and radio if you wish, see Stand Alone 5G vs Non-Stand-alone 5G)*. By the way, 4G's latency is 20~50ms (if memory serves).
Your toys at home (like y(our) vacuum robot, mop robot, chromecast, cell phone, desktop**) will still hook up to your home wifi, do not worry, 5G will not replace your wonderfull WiFi with something that the phone company can charge monthly fees for... ;-)
So, next time remember, IoT is not only about toys and gimmicks for consumers, it has legitimate use cases.
PS: If you want a 100% Stand Alone 5G network, wait for Dish, since they are unencumbered by the past, they will surely launch a 5G Stand Alone Network, the core is actually cheaper (because of the cloud native implementation) ;-) .
* You can deploy a 5G core (5GC) with only 4G towers and still call the resulting thing a 5G network. You will get improved latencies, and the benefits of a cloud based core architecture, and certain other goodies, but with the speed of 4G. Likewise, you can deploy 5G NewRadio cells to a 4G core (EPC Evolved Packet Core), and call the resulting network 5G. As a matter of fact, all operators in the USoA are using 5G NR towers conected to a 4G core, in what is known as NSA 5G (i can't recall the mode, there are many, i think in the USoA all are using option #3)
**My desktop connects to the internet via wifi, the two eth ports go bonded and direct Attached to the DS1515+, and only the DS.
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Re: I still don't get why we even need this? (+1)
Rick Schumann 40 minutes ago
No, the IoT devices that will attach to 5G will not be y(our) toys and gadgets at home, will be the smart power, gas and water meters from your utilites, smart weather and seismic sensors for scientists, Smart HVAC control systems for your building, the elevator's monitoring sensors. The autonomuos trucks, vans and drones that will deliver your shopping. The tracking systems of your car in case of theft. The traffic lights and emergency buttons in your city that currently use a bespoke RF system. You see, 5G not only has High Bandwidth modes, it has low bandwidth - low power - LOW LATNECY modes that were simply not available in the Gs before (well, in 4G those were bolted on as an afterthough late in its life, and did not get popular). In 5G, those modes are very versatile, and developed from the ground up for the protocol.
Sorry, I just don't see all that happening, or it's all being done some other way and why would they change it? Also many of those things should not be on the Internet in the first place, they should airgapped from the internet at all times for safety reasons. I think this is a disaster waiting to happen and I hope it all just falls apart.
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Re: I still don't get why we even need this? 
Anonymous Coward 4 hours ago
Seriously, why do we even need this?
Maybe so that the NSA can download the entire contents of your phone with all your pics and videos in seconds? Download contents of phones of large number of individuals connected to the same tower?
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Re: I still don't get why we even need this? (+1)
Rick Schumann 39 minutes ago
Good thing I don't and won't ever have a smartphone then.
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Re: I still don't get why we even need this? (+2)
ArchieBunker 3 hours ago
Yeah who would ever fill up a 10 megabyte hard drive? Who would ever need multiple cpu cores? Who would ever need a GPU for displaying pixels...
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Re: I still don't get why we even need this? (+1)
Rockoon 3 hours ago
Yeah who would ever fill up a 10 megabyte hard drive?

You arent making a point. There were lots of people who filled their first 10meg RLL or MFM disks and could articulate why they needed to do so.



So have not articulated a need for 5G.
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Re: I still don't get why we even need this? (+1)
ArchieBunker 2 hours ago
As others have stated, say an event at a stadium.
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Re: I still don't get why we even need this? (+1)
Rick Schumann 38 minutes ago
Oh shut the fuck up.
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Re: I still don't get why we even need this? (+1)
williamyf 2 hours ago
 [...] and I don't want to hear about 'All the industrial uses for Internet of Things' because I just don't believe that, either, what we already have should serve all those things more than adequately. [...]
With network Slicing, 5G allows you to give QoS guarantees to the Industrial IoT in ways that were not possible in 2G, 3G and original 4G. In latter 4G (LTE Advanced) that was bolted on as an aftertought, but were not nearly as versatile and well integrated as in 5G.
Let me give you an example: In GSM (2G), be it plain GSM, GPRS or EDGE, you DO NOT have power control for data timeslots, only for voice. This means that devicies using a 2G modem (up until now, the most popular modem for industrial IoT applications) consume a lot of power (so, if those run on batteriues, you deplete those faster), and, since there is no power control, the noise floor is raised when you have a lot of devices (like all the meters in a apt building) transmitting data on the same cell... Also, in GSM the latency is 300~1000ms, while in 5G is 10~20ms INDEPENDENT OF THE FREQUENCY (the article's aurthor is wrong).
So no, what we have can not serve what we have and more importanly what is comming more than adequately.
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Re: I still don't get why we even need this? 
Anonymous Coward 2 hours ago
We're in a cold war with China.
Who can watch the most 4k dancing cat videos on TikTok?
China invents 5G. America just bans TikTok.
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Re: I still don't get why we even need this? (+1)
Shades72 an hour ago
If you have aging eyes (like myself), it is not difficult to understand why you think the form factor of a phone (or tablet) is not enough to enjoy content on. And I really get that point. I have a smart phone (a 2 year old Huawei P20) and it is a pretty capable phone. Yet I refuse to use it for almost anything else then Chats (WhatsApp, Skype, Teams) and 2FA.
For young eyes without experience how a real audio-system should sound like when immersing yourself into media, a phone in combination with earbuds is more than good enough. Youthful cockiness then doesn't allow those persons to consider anything else, because good enough for them is good enough for everyone. And those that are of a different opinion? Kill their comment with: 'OK, boomer' and discussion done.
5G is indeed barely faster, if you actually can get that type of connection. I believe there was an article here on Slashdot not so long ago that stated the '5G' indicator on your phone may be activated (GSMA rules) if your phone supports 5G and the antenna it is currently connected to supports 5G. There is no need to actually setup a 5G connection between your phone and antenna, just saying both devices support is already enough. Just to lure folks in, I'll guess.
5G antennas, you'll need a lot more of them to have a similar level of coverage as 4G does. And, to my understanding, 5G antennas require significantly more energy to operate than 4G does. If you would put up a similar amount of 4G antennas as you would need for the 5G network, the extra capacity would give the end user more bandwidth (as much less people are connected per antenna) and would that also have a positive effect on latency?
95% of the time my phone is connected through WiFi anyway and in places where I don't have that, I don't care and not use the phone for whatever little purpose I have for it anyway. This is not a good thing for people that choose to live in their phone. Then again, I grew up in a time before internet and only one phone connected by a landline. People born in 1995 or later have it way rougher in this regard than I do, I am aware of that.
Not a fan of the smart phone form factor, Android and iOS are a p.ss poor excuse for an operating system in my view and some of the idiosyncrasies in the interface from both systems fill me with awe regarding the level of stupidity that is allowed to pass as user experience. Yet, the young ones fling 'OK, boomer' to my head, because they don't know better and choose to believe whatever new thing is the new hype.
5G is the best example of 'over promise and under deliver' I have seen in a long, long time.
But it seems 5G needs to be the lesson for "not-'OK Boomer's" to learn the hard way. You should do the same as me, get all the enjoyment you can out of them holding the shiny turd that is 5G. I'm sure my father did the same when I was a young one holding the 'shiny' of those days. With the pace technology is going, 5G will be obsolete before it is properly implemented anyway. As far as I know, it is taking telecom companies already too long to roll out the collection of 5G standards as they are today. Prime example of: too little, too late.
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Re: I still don't get why we even need this? (+1)
khchung 9 minutes ago
Seriously, why do we even need this?
In the next 5-10 years, you will find out.
Nope, I do not have a crystal ball so I cannot tell you what those new things will be. But I know that no one predicted or expected Amazon, Facebook, TikTok, etc, before Internet access became as widespread as telephone. Nobody predicted Twitch before broadband became widespread.
The only thing slowing down 5G rollout in a country would achieve, is to let startups in other countries establish themselves first, in the same way FB and Google gained dominance in the US. Feel free to further slow down 5G rollout in your country, it gives advantage to the rest of the world.
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Speed (+1)
anoncoward69 4 hours ago
Is this lack of a speed bump related to the technology, or the fact that the cell towers have't had upgraded backhaul and are already over provisioned as is? I remember when 4G 1st came out and all new bands were deployed, it was screaming fast for the 1st year or so while people were still stuck on older slower HSPA/3G phones. Then the speed slowly degraded as more and more people made the upgrades to 4G. I remember being able to get a consistent 80mbps on my 1st LTE phone, now a days its somewhere averaging like 20-30mbps. Then there is the fact my provider t-mobile seems to be shuffling around spectrum, shrinking the actual frequency bandwidth of 4G to shoehorn 5G into some of that prized lower band frequencies, Over the last 2-3months the speed/coverage for 4G has become horrible.
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Sorry what? (+1)
dnaumov 3 hours ago
If/when driving, what exactly are you requiring 1Gbit sub-10ms connectivity for? What is the non-completely-tiny-niche use case?
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Re: Sorry what? (+1)
Carrier Lifetime 3 hours ago
Real time upload of video from self driving cars maybe?
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Re: Sorry what? (+1)
Rockoon 3 hours ago
ok, and what about the other 995Mbps?
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Re: Sorry what? (+1)
Gabest 3 hours ago
Maybe you could share it with 100 other people to get 10mbit for each of you, you selfish "it's only me" prick!
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Re: Sorry what? (+1)
williamyf 2 hours ago
If/when driving, what exactly are you requiring 1Gbit sub-10ms connectivity for? What is the non-completely-tiny-niche use case?
5G has low power+low bandwidth+low latency modes. And with network slicing, your autonomous vehicle has guaranteed QoS. this was not possible in 2G, 3G or early 4G. In 4G those modes were bolted on as an aftertought in the standard. In 5G, those modes are creaded from the ground up from day one, and are more versaltile and flexible than in 4G. So, a fleet operator, or your onstar, can have telemetry info in a fast and QoS guaranteed way.
But there is another posibility in 5G. Is called edge computing. You see, since with 5G you remove a lot of cruft (like 2G, 3G and eventually 4G) equipment from the sites, you end up with a lot of cooling, electricity and space in the shelters, and those shelters already have a cloud controller, kubernetes, yarn and all the cloud toys, since the 5G NR is cloud native, so you could potentialy fill the shelter with more servers, and ofload the car's inteligence to the datacenter, be the edge computing datacenter in the cell site, a datacenter in the core of the network, or a combination of both. The images, lidar and sensor info will consume a lot of bandwidth, and the latency is very important.
Also, there are studies in self driving card where, even if each car does its own processing, they benefit from having data from cars ahead on the road (especially if the autonomous cars drive as a platoon)... That also requires a lot of bandwidth to propagate the info...
Finally, those modes can be combined (for example low bandwith for telemetry info for fleet central HQ, high bandwidth for autonomous cars/trucks that offload to the cloud, and also high bandwidth to propagate sensor info from the platoon for those cars that do the processing onboard).
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Re: Sorry what? (+1)
SirKveldulv an hour ago
Solving the latency issue in the truck-full-of-tape problem ;)
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What were people expecting? New Physics? (+1)
Carrier Lifetime 3 hours ago
What were people expecting? New Physics that can help put electromagnetic field theory on its head? A breakthrough in information theory that would allow communication at rates higher that Shannon's theorem allows? Whoever is complaining is just ignorant.
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I'm staying with 1G thank you very much (+1)
DontBeAMoran 3 hours ago
Anything more than 1G feels kinda heavy.
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Time for a gold-foil hat 
Anonymous Coward 3 hours ago
Methinks the intent of 5G is a terrestrial GPS-like tracking system to keep track of [presumptive] 'social offenders'.
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Remember 4G LTE? (+1)
Ryzilynt 2 hours ago
 Now remember the first flat screen TV's.
All the sudden everyone was buying a new TV and the TV manufacturers where delighted and amazed.
They stopped making box TVs and started making flat TV's.
Then everyone had a flat TV and sales tricked off again. Then they tried a whole shit load of gimmicks , better resolution, LED, backlit LED.
Then they tried the "curved" display. Because no one had one of those , surely it would work.
Todays 5G is a like a curved TV. Sure it might be optimal in some applications but for now it's a gimmick.
I have no complaints about my current 4G LTE service. Or my non-curved TV.
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Not speed. (+1)
markdavis 2 hours ago
>"But, what most people want, what most people lust for is 1Gbps speeds "
No, that couldn't be more wrong. Very few people want or expect 1Gps. What we want is not even 1/10th that speed, but:
1) Reliable- where we actually get real 10, 25, or 50Mbs continuously. Not 1Gps for 2ms every now and then, and 1Mbs the rest of the time.
2) With range and coverage- where we actually STAY connected with reasonable speed, regardless of where we are.
3) With reasonable power requirements- where we don't drain our battery in just a few hours.
Super blazing speed that only works in one square block and only outside, without moving, and without anyone else on the network, is useless.
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What nonsense (+1)
johnw an hour ago
what most people want, what most people lust for is 1Gbps speeds with less than 10 milliseconds of latency...
Really? Who are these "most people"? What are they planning to do with this startling performance?
What most people really want is just a stable connection providing reliable performance. As with home broadband, anything above about 40 Mbps is not going to be noticed. For what one actually does with a phone, 10 Mbps is ample.
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