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 architecture and core, new radio, etc., and the third one -which is still a SA by the way- is the mmwave, what the article is referring.
This article has a thorough explanation (1)
In most nowadays 5G implementation is the first one, where you get a slight enhanced LTE, as it’s easier to implement, SA, which provide extra features is still not widely used -although it’s changing, and then you have the least adopted one is the mmwave due to its new bands (unlike the sub-6GHz) that require new radio/towers/etc. on a higher frequencies (also higher noise), and also new UE (or user equipment/device), which so far only very limited devices support that. In Canada, we did some cell surveys utilizing robots/drones to map the areas at different altitudes to find the deadzones and coverage, and you can say in most of the results, NSA can have the coverage as the LTE, mmwave in some cases we had not just to maintain a clear line of sight to get any signal, but also we have to be relatively close. So mmwave adoption might still in its early stages, it’s also why so operators went with C-band instead.
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.
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.
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 exactly what it needs to do.
(Outside Zürich) I see 5G as motivated by carriers, being able to pack more customers into the same cell. And I would never pay extra for it.
My carrier once called and wondered if the 5G is working, and how I experience it. I'm guessing that was a PR stunt, since otherwise I wouldn't have noticed the awesome things they do for me in the background... But I might be too negative on this point. Maybe they actually wanted to know if their technology was working, by calling me and asking...
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.
Agree. I have an Android tablet that is a few years old, and the bottleneck is already the device's processing power, not the network, when it comes to rendering fancy web pages, for instance. This is clearly visible on both 4G and wi-fi.
Of course, the counterargument is that higher speed enables a new generation of (web) applications. Perhaps that materializes one day, but at this point it mostly remains irrelevant for the consumer.
Where I live, mobile base stations are a popular form of home broadband since it's cheaper than fiber (the only other option for most homes). The 4G networks have long been inadequate as they are too overloaded and only with expanded 5G coverage have these solutions actually worked well.
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.
I think phones lying about their connection strength is a much broader problem. My phone isn't even 5G capable, but it will show me 4/5 bars or even 100% strength with full LTE when it is provably unable to transfer data. Carriers know that lying to people's faces makes them less likely to complain about poor service, just like how they lie to our faces about their service maps. There really needs to be some kind of legally codified standard for how phones report signal strength.
In India, 5G has been a godsend (Mumbai & Hyderabad). I'm sure it's because the number of people on 5G is drastically lower than the number of people on 4G/LTE. Let's see what the experience is like when everyone gradually starts using the 5G network, but for now the difference between 4G and 5G is massive.
Even in remote areas (various parts of western Maharashtra), whenever 5G is available, it's a noticeably better experience than 4G.
Rural coverage is the only problem I had with 4G, even living in the city, etc. These days, the land line phone company has abandoned our area, and the cell companies carpet bomb us for unlimited 5G home internet service that doesn’t exist near us (despite the fact that we get a 5G connection at home). So, it is starlink for us.
Count me as unimpressed with 5G. I wish they’d focus on better geographic coverage and more reliable coverage instead.
Anecdata: in Sydney, Australia, 5G on Telstra is incredibly fast (I get more than 1 gigabit at my apartment, but more typical / busier cells seem to be between 300-500Mb), and my experience using it mostly just for web browsing is it’s streets ahead of 4G.
I get 250 on 4G, so it seems like it's far from streets ahead. 4G can do 10x 4K streams at once, while 5G can do 15-20? A solution in search of a usecase. Not to mention 5G is significantly more unstable and patchy. Good luck with latency with a single wall between you and the tower.
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 network there is really good: Very low latency, very fast initial connect, and very fast download speeds.
So 5G can deliver the end-user experience it promised.
Is LTE and 5G performance degradation due to the wireless technology or is it somewhere upstream of that? Like what good is throwing more radio capacity at a stadium if it’s the backhaul, peering, or some other appliance in the middle that is getting overwhelmed?
I think it's a combination of all of the above. Plus, 5G is still new so there's still way fewer towers and less spectrum dedicated vs. LTE
One other thing is that 5G as it stands now is a bit of a hybrid, still relying on LTE networks and control planes to do management functions. Some networks are working on, and have partially built out, 5G-native control planes but it's not done, it's new, and that also means those functions are still working out the bugs
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 level ever since.
Plus lots of times it seems like it's no longer full-duplex, after a pause more like voice-activated from either end before it starts transmitting to the other party.
The almost hilarious situation in Austria is that people usually have (truly) unlimited or high volume contracts. You can pull terra-bytes if data a month, even with tethering. As a result the main way in which contracts differ are speeds.
The fastest 5G contract these days is 500Mbit. Most people are fine with paying for the much cheaper 100Mbit contracts.
So even if 5G has speed benefits, usually I wont notice.
I am thinking should I flag this. And thinking how low can ieee get? ieee publishing 20+ years ago were not great, but they wont bad. Right now this piece has no engineering insight into it, zero understanding of how MNOs across the planet earth work, no idea of 5G upgrade cycle both backend and front end, and zero mention of Pandemic / COVID delaying upgrading work. So what is the point of this article? Or are they now simply another marketing / PR company to downplay the 5G and hype 6G next?
Are we still at the stage people think Real 5G = mmWave? Which is what I believe 99.99999% of the internet comments were suggesting and at least 90% of HN believes in 2022.
I'm not going to argue with you, but it would be really helpful to me or us if you could be more informative and perhaps less insulting to the crowd. After all, most mobile tech is done in the dark and few are truly versed in all of it.
I for one didn't think 5g == mmWave, but I specifically chose TMobile because their initial 5g rollout plan made way more sense for me, as it wasn't mmWave, where others seemed to be focusing there.
To me this piece can be summed up as "5G isn't performing well, this can be due to many reasons".
Your comment seem to come up with more reasons it isn't doing as well as it could, while basically going into the same direction as the article. Why would you flag it for being basically right, even in a boring way ?
Why would you flag this? That’s not what flagging is for and is one of the asbolute worst features of HN. It amounts to censorship based on user preferences. It’s a real article from IEEE, just because you don’t like it or agree with it doesn’t mean you flag it.
> What does [flagged] mean?
>Users flagged the post as breaking the guidelines or otherwise not belonging on HN.
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.
5G is preliminary sensing infrastructure. Don't take my word for it, go read and watch all the IEEE and 5G/6G industry literature that spells this out in great detail.
"Integrated sensing and communication" is the search term to get you started.
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 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).
Anyway, 4G → 5G is an improvement, but not orders of magnitude. That might be a bit much to expect though.
I also measured my wifi/fiber connection. Got to 162.86 Mbps and 17 ms ping. Still much better than the mobile networks. (And lower than I expected, so probably time to debug a bit.)
> 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.
I think 5G is more of an enterprise technology than consumer tech. For me latency and "campus networks" (or simply the ability to apply for a license to operate your own 5G network in a fixed location) are the two most interesting things about 5G. Those are clearly valuable if you think about a production line of connected devices in some fixed geographic location (factory etc.). Pure download speeds etc. don't matter that much to me, 4G was already plenty.
The rollout is a bit curious though. In Germany providers are incentivised to connect people no cover area (iirc they have to connect at least x% of the population). Sort of makes sense but also cuts off potentially very interesting use cases (for example rural areas where 5G could be used for agricultural machinery).
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.
[+] [-] AHOHA|2 years ago|reply
This article has a thorough explanation (1)
In most nowadays 5G implementation is the first one, where you get a slight enhanced LTE, as it’s easier to implement, SA, which provide extra features is still not widely used -although it’s changing, and then you have the least adopted one is the mmwave due to its new bands (unlike the sub-6GHz) that require new radio/towers/etc. on a higher frequencies (also higher noise), and also new UE (or user equipment/device), which so far only very limited devices support that. In Canada, we did some cell surveys utilizing robots/drones to map the areas at different altitudes to find the deadzones and coverage, and you can say in most of the results, NSA can have the coverage as the LTE, mmwave in some cases we had not just to maintain a clear line of sight to get any signal, but also we have to be relatively close. So mmwave adoption might still in its early stages, it’s also why so operators went with C-band instead.
(1) https://dgtlinfra.com/5g-standalone-sa/#:~:text=What%20is%20....
[+] [-] SSLy|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qtwhat|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mschild|2 years ago|reply
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 exactly what it needs to do.
[+] [-] tommiegannert|2 years ago|reply
My carrier once called and wondered if the 5G is working, and how I experience it. I'm guessing that was a PR stunt, since otherwise I wouldn't have noticed the awesome things they do for me in the background... But I might be too negative on this point. Maybe they actually wanted to know if their technology was working, by calling me and asking...
[+] [-] ksec|2 years ago|reply
Yes, your 1Gbps Ethernet is enough for majority of your needs. Except you are not the only one using the 1Gbps Ethernet.
[+] [-] nextweek2|2 years ago|reply
If I can halve the download time that allows another user to use the bandwidth sooner.
[+] [-] carschno|2 years ago|reply
Of course, the counterargument is that higher speed enables a new generation of (web) applications. Perhaps that materializes one day, but at this point it mostly remains irrelevant for the consumer.
[+] [-] kalleboo|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway049|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Klathmon|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] yummypaint|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SSLy|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Superfrag|2 years ago|reply
Even in remote areas (various parts of western Maharashtra), whenever 5G is available, it's a noticeably better experience than 4G.
[+] [-] drclau|2 years ago|reply
5G has increased capacity over 4G, so even if all 4G users would switch to 5G, you will still have better service.
[+] [-] mjevans|2 years ago|reply
* More users on the 5G sites dragging that greenfield under-used speed mark down to the more typical value.
* Much of the hype 'best' with extremely high HZ spectrum that has short distance and low penetration E.G. Mostly giant sports stadiums.
* Suburbs and rural areas not a good match for the distance (frequency use) or capital investment required.
[+] [-] hedora|2 years ago|reply
Count me as unimpressed with 5G. I wish they’d focus on better geographic coverage and more reliable coverage instead.
[+] [-] nizmow|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 0xy|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway4good|2 years ago|reply
Having said that, I just went through Copenhagen airport and the 5G network there is really good: Very low latency, very fast initial connect, and very fast download speeds.
So 5G can deliver the end-user experience it promised.
[+] [-] SSLy|2 years ago|reply
Uh, Nokia? Samsung? Whatever Amazon and the startups are cooking?
[+] [-] f6v|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 27fingies|2 years ago|reply
This seems unsurprising.
[+] [-] mixdup|2 years ago|reply
One other thing is that 5G as it stands now is a bit of a hybrid, still relying on LTE networks and control planes to do management functions. Some networks are working on, and have partially built out, 5G-native control planes but it's not done, it's new, and that also means those functions are still working out the bugs
[+] [-] fuzzfactor|2 years ago|reply
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 level ever since.
Plus lots of times it seems like it's no longer full-duplex, after a pause more like voice-activated from either end before it starts transmitting to the other party.
[+] [-] smileysteve|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] solarkraft|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] the_mitsuhiko|2 years ago|reply
The fastest 5G contract these days is 500Mbit. Most people are fine with paying for the much cheaper 100Mbit contracts.
So even if 5G has speed benefits, usually I wont notice.
[+] [-] ksec|2 years ago|reply
Are we still at the stage people think Real 5G = mmWave? Which is what I believe 99.99999% of the internet comments were suggesting and at least 90% of HN believes in 2022.
[+] [-] silisili|2 years ago|reply
I for one didn't think 5g == mmWave, but I specifically chose TMobile because their initial 5g rollout plan made way more sense for me, as it wasn't mmWave, where others seemed to be focusing there.
[+] [-] makeitdouble|2 years ago|reply
Your comment seem to come up with more reasons it isn't doing as well as it could, while basically going into the same direction as the article. Why would you flag it for being basically right, even in a boring way ?
[+] [-] Mistletoe|2 years ago|reply
> What does [flagged] mean?
>Users flagged the post as breaking the guidelines or otherwise not belonging on HN.
[+] [-] arnaudsm|2 years ago|reply
These short term gains ruin the game for everyone. Wireless bandwidth is precious.
[+] [-] ohazi|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blurbleblurble|2 years ago|reply
"Integrated sensing and communication" is the search term to get you started.
[+] [-] lucumo|2 years ago|reply
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 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).
Anyway, 4G → 5G is an improvement, but not orders of magnitude. That might be a bit much to expect though.
I also measured my wifi/fiber connection. Got to 162.86 Mbps and 17 ms ping. Still much better than the mobile networks. (And lower than I expected, so probably time to debug a bit.)
[+] [-] usr1106|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] SSLy|2 years ago|reply
5G: Rx 233 mbps, Tx 90 mbps, ping 18 ms
4G (LTE): Rx 185 mbps, Tx 63 mbps, ping 19 ms
It's hard for me to tell where is the 5G tower, but the LTE one is on the condo block across the street. EDIT: I think they're co-located.
I guess it just depends on what is the infrastructure around you and how close is it.
[+] [-] kriro|2 years ago|reply
The rollout is a bit curious though. In Germany providers are incentivised to connect people no cover area (iirc they have to connect at least x% of the population). Sort of makes sense but also cuts off potentially very interesting use cases (for example rural areas where 5G could be used for agricultural machinery).
[+] [-] xchip|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joshspankit|2 years ago|reply
“5G towers are faster but they have less range. What problems would you expect when rolling it out across the nation?”
They identified all of the major ones in the article.
Just like many in tech did when 5G was announced.
And yet somehow we’re still here.
[+] [-] johnea|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JohnFen|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] pangolinja|2 years ago|reply
Of course broad-area surface-penetrating surveillance is not what this technology is being rolled out for at all.