Technology

One of my most disappointing moments as an adult, which is really saying something, was getting my wife a 5g phone and realizing it was not noticeably faster in any way to the one it replaced while on a 5g network using any data service.

What’s the point of breakneck speeds when you get downgraded after hitting a specific data limit. It’s like pumping water through a bigger hose but it all comes from a small bucket that turns it into a trickle when you hit the bottom.

That because they just released improved 4G and called it 5G for marketing reasons. Then everyone else did it too.

This is a US problem but Americans don't travel enough to understand.

In the US I get shitty coverage and frequent tower handoffs to lower bandwidth signals. In a downtown capital city, I generally get 30Mbps to maybe 100Mbps outside on a clear day.

Contrast that with where I usually am, using actual good technology and true 5G, I get fibre-like pings with 1Gbps all the time, even inside buildings. If I'm outside near a tower like in the US, I get 2Gbps nearly symmetrically. Constant excellent signal, no disconnects, no dead zones.

It's just sad how easily the American populace is duped. Even the article mentions how there were continuous lies and the actual rollout to 5G will take many many years. The rest of the world has already done it. Heck, even Korea has announced 6G consumer installations in the next 5 years. And if you're by the Samsung Campus with a demo tech, you can use it now!

I still don't have 5G service because the cellular companies in Canada seem to think it is worth an extra $15/mo when even LTE is faster than I need on my phone.

5G mms is the high speed service. But its affected by wind, buildings and cars. And the phones that have it are expensive because the circuitry uses heaps of power and the battery is the most expensive part of the phone.

So mms is mainly being promoted for stationary devices, and in buildings that have repeater emitters.

The 5G low band phones are cheaper to make than 4G because the circuitry is more efficient so you can use smaller batteries.

5G has a more efficient algorithm for ordering incoming/outgoing signals, so like-for-like there is higher speed and less freezing. But in new areas the telcos just build fewer towers so the speed is no better than 4G.

FTA:

"Then, it (Verizon) tried to sell us on low-band 5G, which actually turned out to be slower than 4G in some cases. The company is now slowly converting its existing network into standalone 5G as it lights up mid-band spectrum, but that’s a yearslong effort."

This is why I have a 5G phone and a "5G" connection, but my speeds are shit.

14.9 down, 0.13 up.

I pay for 5g in London with EE with an LTE phone

I've turned it off - it's too unreliable even 3 years later... Feels like 1 bar of 5g spends an age trying to get a connection, then slowly reverts to 3 bars of 4g, which is ultimately just worse than just using 4g

Could just be my oldish phone, or the concrete jungle, but feels like shite to me

I pray for Mint unlimited and still struggle to load a YouTube video. This 480p limit is a fucking joke! I should just start downloading movies and shit.

But they still get to charge customers for the potential service they’re not getting, right?

I've noticed that while 5G is not much faster than 4G, it seems to be more reliable.

With 4G I'd get max speeds of 30mbps but often times it would be under 1mpbs, or dialup speeds if in a stadium.

With 5G, the max speed is more like 80mbps and it handles crowded spaces much better than 4G.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Verizon and AT&T wrote massive checks for new spectrum licenses, and T-Mobile swallowed another network whole because it was very important to make the 5G future happen as quickly as possible and win the race.

CES 2024 is just around the corner, and while telecom executives were eager to shout about 5G to the rafters just a few years ago, you’ll probably be lucky to hear so much as a whisper about it this time around.

But deploying 5G at the breakneck speeds required to win an imaginary race resulted in one fewer major wireless carrier to choose from and lots of debt to repay.

One problem standing in the company’s way, RCR Wireless News editor-in-chief Sean Kinney explains to The Verge, is that carriers aren’t really set up to sell their services to specific industries.

It’s nice for people to have more than one option for high-speed internet, but it’s hardly robot surgery — it’s not even necessarily the best way to improve the dismal state of home broadband.

And according to founder Charlie Ergen on the company’s last earnings call, of those 7.5 million people, the “vast majority” don’t have a phone that works on Dish’s own network.

The original article contains 1,743 words, the summary contains 200 words. Saved 89%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

I'm guessing this is an issue with the US implementation? In Australia, I notice a significant improvement when I'm in a 5g coverage area. 4g is fast, but 5g is something else

I think this is down to telecom in the US and Canada either being completely incompetent or scamming their customers. I've been roaming all across Europe on 5g with no issues this year. My combined 500/500mb broadband + 15gb/month 5g + 70gb/month 4g costs me ~50 usd in Sweden (and that's with the notoriously expensive provider Telia).