Ask HN: Is it just me or is 5G strictly worse than LTE?

[apitman]

I feel like signal is lower in general, and I run into a lot more cases where connections seem to hang entirely. In theory 5G should offer a lot more bandwidth, but I don't remember ever being bandwidth-limited on LTE. 20Mbps is plenty on my phone. Same for latency. I'm not playing FPS games on my phone.

5G seems worse, but I used to work on a physical layer wireless technology and it might be placebo knowing that the higher frequencies used for 5G don't go as far or penetrate as effectively.

[kjellsbells]

Having the 5G logo on your phone doesnt necessarily mean your phone is speaking 5G. It's...complicated.

- Most US operators do not have ubiquitous 5G radio coverage, so, they do what is called 5G NSA where your traffic ultimately ends up veing processed by the 4G core infrastructure that they have. Which is already overloaded and a bit creaky.

- Some operators can do real 5G, "5G SA", where the whole flow end to end runs on 5G infrastructure, but whether this is faster than LTE or not depends on the spectrum band in use. Verizon have some high bandwidth spectrum, but it doesnt propagate as well as lower (and slower) frequencies like what Tmo has. But if you expect to get those blazing multi gig speeds, you really have to be on that high bandwidth stuff. For most people, most of the time, they wont, so they wont see much improvement over LTE.

- I assert that it is dawning on operators that consumers are not interested in paying $10 extra per month for 5G. This is a bit of a problem when those same operators spent or borrowed billions to obtain the spectrum in the first place. Did I mention that the era of cheap money is now over and those debt payments are due?

- Telcos desperately need a killer app or use case that drives 5G adoption. They havent got one. And remember, the app must be one that telcos can monetize. They still have scars from their failure to capture the value of smartphone applications in the LTE era.

[dehrmann]

> I assert that it is dawning on operators that consumers are not interested in paying $10 extra per month for 5G

I agree with this. For the most part, LTE is enough for everything from casual web browsing to streaming video. There just isn't that much of an improvement jumping to 5G in the end-user experience. The is very different from the 3G to 4G jump. I still remember using an original 2G iPhone. Maps basically couldn't load over 2G.

[Animats]

> Telcos desperately need a killer app or use case that drives 5G adoption. They haven't got one.

* Self driving cars? No.

* Internet of Things? No.

* Metaverse? No.

* Remote surgical operations? You gotta be kidding.

Everyone in a big stadium can watch the show on their phones, though. If someone was willing to pay for the hundreds of tiny cell sites required.

[saghm]

> - Most US operators do not have ubiquitous 5G radio coverage, so, they do what is called 5G NSA where your traffic ultimately ends up veing processed by the 4G core infrastructure that they have. Which is already overloaded and a bit creaky

Interesting! The first time I ever remember my phone claiming it had a 5G connection was late 2020/early 2021 (I forget the exact month, but it was within a few months of me moving to a new city). I had taken an Uber downtown, and when trying to do the same to return, I was surprised to see that I couldn't get anything to load, and my phone claimed it had a strong 5G signal. I couldn't find any way to tell it to try to use LTE instead, so I ended up having to walk maybe 10 minutes back in the direction of my apartment before my phone finally could load anything, which coincided with it showing LTE and not 5G.

never knew exactly what had caused the issue, but I suspected it might have something to do with a cell tower reporting 5G to my phone but there not actually being infrastructure to support that in the area. I wonder if something similar to what you describe was happening, and due to an OS bug or something my phone had different expectations of what communication would look like when the other end reported that 5G was supported. Does "5G SA" require any different behavior on the phone's side of things, or would any communications it receives be indistinguishable from those of "proper" 5G?

[CottonMcKnight]

Verizon even markets "5G Nationwide" as "performance comparable to our award-winning 4G LTE". So what's the point?

You have to spend more $$ to get "5G Ultra Wideband" on your plan, which is the real deal.

[tqi]

> They still have scars from their failure to capture the value of smartphone applications in the LTE era.

That's makes a lot of sense and truly, fuck telcos.

[gerad]

Here in the US I think the killer app is breaking the local cable company’s monopoly on providing high speed internet to the home.

[minton]

I live in a rural area (not a single Starbucks in the county), and in 50% of the town, my phone has 5GUW coverage. I can download apps, playlists, and movies quickly. I recently downloaded UPBGE (430MB) on my iPhone in only a few minutes. This wasn’t possible on LTE and is worth the extra $10 for me.

[joecool1029]

> Verizon have some high bandwidth spectrum, but it doesnt propagate as well as lower (and slower) frequencies like what Tmo has.

Eh.... nitpick. Let's ignore mmwave for a minute and focus on bands that matter for most people. T-Mobile and Verizon both have midband spectrum which is overall most useful. Verizon's is C-band 3.7ghz T-Mobile's BRS 2.5ghz midband is mostly backhaul limited where it's deployed, it'll do ~700mbit/s down but the actual spectrum is capable of at least double this. (in my market I can get 100mhz + 20mhz of N41+N41 aggregated, this is 2.5ghz spectrum). It doesn't matter if I'm next to a tower, it's limited by the backhaul.

I get between 600-700mbps real world if I stand outside my house. I live in semi-rural area and the tower is about 6 miles away nearly line of sight. Indoors the attenuation hits and I mostly use the other bands to reliable pull ~150mbit/s, which is fine for me (and traffic goes mostly over LTE).

> - Telcos desperately need a killer app or use case that drives 5G adoption. They havent got one.

The 'killer app' is called home internet in markets that have trash CLEC's which haven't upgraded infra in 20+ years. Mine is Blightspeed selling 'up to 3mbit/s' copper DSL in 2023. Other option is Comcast, which works but is ludicrously overpriced because there's nobody el> Verizon have some high bandwidth spectrum, but it doesnt propagate as well as lower (and slower) frequencies like what Tmo has.

[spookthesunset]

The “real” 5g isn’t for your phone, it is to replace your home internet.

For that, you want fast and low latency and that means a dense amount of cell towers. The fact that “real 5g” has a shorter range is actually a positive. It means you can make your shit super dense.

[jaredhallen]

I live in a rural area, so I obviously have my bias associated with that. But for me, investment in more coverage would have much more value than investment in higher bandwidth for areas that are already covered.

[baxtr]

Worked in Telco too.

I always wondered if it wasn’t enough to have 1 infrastructure provider like with streets or anything else. Why build the infrastructure twice or three times?

[samhuk]

I'm a bit confused about your last point. Could you elaborate?

Telcos are (in theory, at least) private utility companies, so why does it make sense for them to create the application/use case? Do you mean that Telcos like Verizon are reeling from not creating their own platforms (say, apps or app stores) that charge for use of LTE etc.?

Basically, why and how do you think that Telcos are reeling from not capturing LTE value? Didn't they already by charging for use of their network?

Side-note: If I'm not wrong in my assumption of what you meant, then you conjecture a rather depressing idea that companies feel the need to capture value from an increasing number of market segments and crave hegemonic monopolistic control, for example Microsoft since forever.

[discordance]

Here in Australia 5G is awesome:

https://imgur.com/gallery/BFTTMRS

Measurement was taken a decent distance from the city in the suburbs.

[antihero]

In London 5G is definitely way better, tested with Vodafone and Virgin (O2? Voda?)

[throwaway892238]

> This is a bit of a problem when those same operators spent or borrowed billions

Not to worry, they'll just pass the cost to customers or ask for a bailout and get it. Being a giant corporation is awesome.

[browningstreet]

Either way, my 5G iPhone is far less capable of connectivity out in the world than my last one, more so if I go indoors. Even just inside a door.

[disordinary]

You have to pay extra for 5g in the US?

[ksec]

OK, I will bite.

Comparing 5G vs 4G as Technology is completely different to 5G vs 4G in real world implementation. That is a bit like asking if Core i9 is faster than Core i7 without knowing the clock speed, core count, cache and power budget. Or for Software developers comparing Python vs Ruby without knowing the code and VM, JIT or not

Most 5G network around the world are deployed in higher frequency spectrum. Hence the receiving Bar ( signal quality ) will generally be lowered until they are deployed in sub 1Ghz Band. Refarming frequency from 4G ( or 2G and 3G ) to 5G takes time, MNOs using Ericsson could use Dynamic Spectrum Sharing ( 4G and 5G inside the same Spectrum ) for faster 5G Rollout. But it has its own set of problems.

Until more users switch to 5G capable smartphone, and MNOs work their way to switch to 5G and especially 5G NR SA ( Stand Alone 5G without relaying on 4G Network Back End ). The full potential and advantage of 5G won't be noticeable if not, as in your case even worst than 4G.

Before anyone ask why switch to 5G then if it isn't better now. Well it really is a Chicken and Egg problem. But one way or another MNOs would like ( force ) you to switch to 5G as 5G offers better Network cost efficiency and much higher capacity.

[TheLoafOfBread]

Yeah, customer does not care where is a problem. Customer sees 5G on his phone, customer can feel that it is not faster than 4G (because it is that 5G on Sub 6GHz), customer has negative feelings about 5G because he does not understand why he should be paying more for same speed.

[manojlds]

> Or for Software developers comparing Python vs Ruby without knowing the code and VM, JIT or not

As far as consumers are concerned we are comparing Python 2 and Python 3

[askvictor]

> Stand Alone 5G without relaying on 4G Network Back End

What's the difference in the backends? Is it just a question of bandwidth, or is there something more?

[def_true_false]

Does 5G at least help with the push notifications? I remember reading somewhere that one of the reasons why non-centralized push notifications suck was that the telco hardware kills the connection (presumably due to limited memory)?

[Gigachad]

I just don’t feel like there is much need for faster than 4G right now. It almost feels like a meme to say this “why would anyone want more than 16 mb of ram”. But it’s been years now and not much has changed. I did a speed test and my 4G was 300mbps, that’s faster than the home internet speed of most people I know. I just can’t see why you’d want more than that on a phone.

[ninjha]

In my day to day, 5G uses more battery, has similar speeds to LTE, and is less reliable than LTE... I just go into settings and turn off 5G.

Occasionally I'm at the airport (or someplace with the "real" wideband 5G) and I want to download a movie quickly. At that point I turn on 5G and get 2 Gbit down, which is convenient!

[roxgib]

It wouldn't be so bad if phones were better at switching to the best available signal, they they could use the efficient 5G connection when it's available, but fall back to 4G when the 5G is blocked by a building or something (which I gather is more common due to the high frequencies used in 5G). But they seem to insist on connecting to a crappy 5G signal even if an excellent 4G signal is available. Same with 3G, which is often fine for many tasks.

[310260]

One of the reasons 5G seems worse is because most implementations are NSA (non-standalone) right now. As others have mentioned, this means you're using the LTE network for control/signaling and 5G just for data traffic. 5G SA improves latency because it ditches the LTE signaling but it's not available everywhere on most operators yet. Verizon and AT&T are just starting to implement it. T-Mobile US has been ahead of the curve in offering 5G SA nationally for a bit now.

However, probably the most important reason 5G performance can appear worse is because NSA works via a technology called ENDC - EUTRAN New Radio Dual Connectivity. This enables your device to receive LTE from one cell site and 5G from another. LTE being there to carry the control/signaling as previously mentioned as well as improve speeds by combining LTE and 5G channels.

When you're receiving 5G from one site and LTE from another. Depending on your device and your network operators settings, more of that traffic will flow over either LTE or 5G. If your 5G channel conditions are poor (say 5G is coming from a far away site but you're also on a closer, LTE-only site), but your device is still preferring to send data mainly over the 5G leg of the connection, you could potentially see worse performance than you would on LTE alone.

[est]

LTE Advanced (LTE+) is the sweet spot, they have nearly all the bells and whistles of 5G like CA, MIMO, etc. 5G is over-engineered, it's more like LTE advanced with new frequency, beamforming and some new channel coding while consuming much, much more power both on your cell-phone and cell-towers. The speed and latency benifits are almost negligible because the metrics advertised by telecom industry are measured only between the SA 5G devices and 5G towers, in reality the latency and bandwidth are deciede by the hops all the way to the IDC (unless the so-called "edge-computing" is a thing yet they aren't), so the 5G promises may never happen.

This combined US/EU boyccott of questionable but cheap suppliers like Huawei makes the cost of 5G not worth it.

[mdasen]

It's not strictly worse than LTE, but it's not quite just you. A lot of it will depend on a bunch of factors.

If you're in an area with mid-band 5G (5G UC on T-Mobile USA, 5G UW on Verizon, 5G+ on AT&T), 5G will provide a meaningfully better experience most of the time. TDD (time-divided rather than frequency divided) 5G on mid-band spectrum is seeing great results. T-Mobile's 5G network is averaging 217Mbps (including both their low-band and mid-band networks, but it shows how much mid-band 5G can do).

If you're in an area with low-band 5G, it's complicated. If you're on Verizon, they're using DSS (dynamic spectrum sharing) to use the same spectrum for both LTE and 5G. This means that the network is constantly context switching between LTE and 5G and it provides pretty crappy service. If you're on T-Mobile, their low-band 5G network is using new spectrum and does often offer some moderate advantages. Another complication is that you might be sharing that 5G with all the heavier users while an LTE channel is less used. You could also be connecting to a tower farther away to get a 5G signal.

It's probably not that it's higher frequencies since you're probably in an area where it's using similar frequencies. I'd say that this is more likely carrier-related than 5G related.

[TradingPlaces]

Depends which flavor of 5G you are talking about. mmWave is still terrible unless you are right next to a cell. Midband is slower, but a huge improvement over LTE, and uses adjacent bands in many cases.

Verizon and ATT pursued a mmWave first buildout, and now they are catching up on midband. That’s why the C-band issue was so huge last year for them. Unique in the US, T-Mobile did midband-first (it was the point of the Sprint merger —- to get Sprint’s frequency licenses that were good for midband), and they have the most useful 5G network, mostly because of availability.

[snailmailman]

My iPhone will say “5GE” in some areas.

My iPhone is physically incapable of using 5G. It has no 5G antenna. AT&T just makes it say 5G anyway. They use this to “advertise that 5G is available in that area” or some other weird lie. It’s not 5G for me, and I honestly doubt it’s 5G for others either

Completely anecdotally, the internet in these “5GE” areas is usually worse. In fact, nearly everywhere I go anymore my cell service is atrocious now. I have to actually seek out WiFi networks to get usable speeds sometimes. My cellular speeds have noticeably tanked in the past 2 years or so. I used to get like 50mbps sometimes when doing a speed test. Now I usually get ~1mbps at restaurants, or less.

[therealdrag0]

Same. I get 1.2Mbps with ATT on 5GE in Seattle metro.

[glasshead969]

Its been a clear upgrade for me. I am on T-Mobile and in my apartment i see around 200-300mbps and across Seattle metro area i hit 200mbps consistently.

T-mobile has better coverage here compared to ATT and Verizon because of Mid-band spectrum they got with sprint merger. I think other 2 are in process deploying more mid band spectrum and may be that will improve it in future.

In Seattle I see 5G UC (Marketing term for their MidBand Spectrum) for TMobile pretty much everywhere.

[robjan]

I use 5G home broadband because I live in an old building with rusty DOCSIS 2 cables (and also because there was a risk of being sent to quarantine camp in recent years). I get a very stable 200mbit connection and can ping Google with 5-7ms latency.

Note that I live in one of the most busy parts of Hong Kong so YMMV elsewhere. In case anyone's interested, I'm using SmarTone which is the only provider in HK offering unlimited full speed 5G

[xwolfi]

Depends where you are, for me in the center of Hong Kong, with a Huawei phone, it's a net improvement, it's way way faster. I even use it instead of wifi on my phone because my router slows down with distance while 5G stays fast in every room.

It consumes more battery so when I need to save I go back to 4G and I notice the slog.

Maybe your phone doesnt have a fast chip, your city isn't dense enough to have budget for antennas, or the providers doesnt want to give you 100Mbps... I was telling a friend recently how much of a miracle the internet speed on phones were these days, to tell you how 5G is positive here. It's not even that expensive.

In case it's relative and you expected much more, here is a speedtest from my phone, middle of Central HK, 40th floor inside my toilets, where I often browse HN from: https://www.speedtest.net/my-result/a/9021015738

[kpozin]

I have a Pixel 6A on T-Mobile. I keep 5G turned off because it's usually slower and flakier than LTE, visibly chews through the battery (a percentage point every couple of minutes), and heats up the phone.

[LarsAlereon]

Most providers have optimized their 5G service for dense urban environments where you have direct line-of-sight (meaning no walls or even foliage) to a nearby transmitter. The idea is to improve the experience in major cities and at event centers. T-Mobile is the only provider I'm aware of that has optimized for higher performance when you're not next to a tower. They operate a long-range 5G network that is a direct upgrade from their long-range LTE service.

[airbreather]

It can be a factor of infrastructure as well.

When 4G first started I noticed really fast 4G service at 2am in the morning, but super slow during the day.

Most of the cells I was connecting to were in the city.

Over time as they built out the 4G infrastructure it got better, but for well over a year if you were at work and struggling to get mobile bandwidth then a switch to 3G was almost always significantly faster, double upside because everyone wanted to be on 4G and deserted the 3G bands, so no bottlenecks.

[trifurcate]

I feel it heavily depends on the modem. I used to have a Pixel 5a, which has an SoC (Snapdragon 765G) that was released during the late stages of the transition from LTE to 5G. On that phone, 5G was a terrible experience and my data wouldn't work half the time when I was outside. I switched to a Galaxy Z Flip 4 a few months ago, and 5G is just fine for me since then (i.e. I don't notice a difference compared to LTE). Same carrier, same locations.

[rr808]

I wish I could get a 2G phone. 3G I'd settle for. All I want is email, Maps, Uber and a Camera. Everything else is just addicting time wasting behavior. I love when my plan runs out of fast data and puts me on that throttled level.

[oefrha]

Lol, 2G for (2023) Uber? I don’t think you know what you’re talking about. I was once rate limited to 2G speeds due to a problem with the carrier, and Uber took like ten minutes to get past a blank screen.

[maven29]

Android 13 has eBPF-based network throttling options in the developer options, which will give you a similar 128kbps experience without sacrificing battery life.

This applies on all interfaces, including WLAN, with the affordance of being able to switch back without dropping flows.

I wouldn't recommend it for WLAN from a total system capacity perspective, as throttling eats up air-time.

[dilyevsky]

Oh you can get one except us providers have turned off their 2g base stations

[Nursie]

In a lot of places there are no longer 2G networks.

[phantomathkg]

But email, map or uber use tons of data where 2G and 3G were not decided for? So you will still need a 4G, no?

[satvikpendem]

Light Phone exists, don't know how good it is.

[Nursie]

Fantastic here, but heavily area dependent, low-latency and I often see speeds above 250Mbps.

20Mbps is not enough for a phone I use for tethering. 5G home internet is a thing here now too (Australia), and in a lot of cases beats the alternative.

[ElliotH]

In the UK it seems a clear upgrade. I can be sitting on a train downloading Netflix shows between stops before we go underground. Speed tests often higher than I get at home over VDSL. Couldn't do that on 4G.

[Nux]

> the higher frequencies used for 5G don't go as far or penetrate as effectively.

Not true. 3G & 4G bands are being refarmed to 5G, I am seeing freqs as low as 700 mhz being used around here, so they'll penetrate far and wide.

That said, the presence of a 5G icon on your phone doesn't mean you're actually using 5G, that's very cheeky from operators.

The really meaty 5G band here in UK is N78, 3500mhz, some operators got big chunks of those, for example Three UK has 100mhz of that, contiguous, and people often see 1Gbps+ downloads. I found this frequency does a reasonable job and inrural areas, with high gain antennas, you can still receive it miles away.

mmWave bands - not currently in use in Europe, will indeed be only useful in small (and crowded) places like stadiums, shopping centers, etc. Of course, they could install them on top of many street lights or telegraf poles, then they will become much more useful, in reach of most of us - basically very high speed, low latency "broadband", wireless.