The race to 5G is over — now it’s time to pay the bill | Networks spent years telling us that 5G would change everything. But the flashiest use cases are nowhere to be found — and the race to deplo…::AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile’s race to deploy 5G has failed to realize its flashiest outcomes while saddling carriers with debt and removing a competitor from the market.

  • grabyourmotherskeys@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    41
    ·
    11 months ago

    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.

    • RogueBanana@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      13
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      11 months ago

      I mean it is more about the bandwidth I would say. Usually I get about 40 Mbps on 4g and 300 on 5g so it is a massive difference but once more people switch to it, it would drop down a lot just like 4g did. But at the end of the day its still an upgrade from 4g, can’t say too much on your surrounding myself but the tech itself is still impressive.

      • abhibeckert@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        arrow-down
        5
        ·
        edit-2
        11 months ago

        Usually I get about 40 Mbps on 4g and 300 on 5g

        Yeah that’s pretty crap. AFAIK the record (for an actual speed test, not just a theoretical one) is 2.6Gbps and that was set a decade ago. On 4G. With Sprint by the way.

        That was obviously ideal conditions. But a good 4G connection can easily run at 300.

        • RogueBanana@lemmy.zip
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          11 months ago

          That’s obviously the point I made, you would never even get close to the max speeds when you are not the sole person using but as the max speed improves so does the average experience. It would be pretty naive to even expect anything close to max speed for a consumer, if that was your expectations then you will always be disappointed.

        • CmdrShepard@lemmy.one
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          11 months ago

          They’re saying when you have 10000 people sharing the same tower, your speeds will be better on 5G than on 4G. I have definitely noticed an improvement here at events like concerts or conventions where an assload of people are all in one location using their phones. Previously you’d be lucky to check your email while now you can still stream a video for example.

    • M500@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      11 months ago

      I’m not in the US, but 5g is a noticeable and major upgrade to LTE for me.

      I had decent LTE speeds and never had a complaint, but things load instantly for me with 5g instead of the few second delay to load with LTE.

      But the biggest difference for me is that I can work off of my 5g hotspot but I couldn’t off of LTE. If WiFi dropped, I’d need to use my wife’s 5g phone before. But if she was not home, I’d just have to cancel meetings.

    • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      11 months ago

      I’m late to the party here, but wanted to chime in and say on t mobile, in the Midwest, I have a 5g phone and also t mobiles gateway for my house. The gateway is unlimited and I pay $30/month for it.

      The thing works fantastic, actually. As of this moment I’m 72Mb down, 52Mb up and 30ms latency. Latency is usually around 40. My download is normally faster, but I ran the test while my kid is streaming Netflix in the living room.

      There’s no real noticeable difference for the most part just using my phone on 5g compared to what 4g did. I mean I’m sure it’s faster, but outside of some big game downloads, having more than 15Mb on a phone isn’t really necessary.

  • edric@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    31
    ·
    11 months ago

    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.

  • TechNerdWizard42@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    27
    arrow-down
    5
    ·
    11 months ago

    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!

    • Asafum@feddit.nl
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      edit-2
      11 months ago

      I don’t think it’s a lack of travel, it’s a lack of consequences and an excess of monopoly control.

      Where I live I have exactly one option, and that’s in a very populated part of NY. The companies will lie and lie and lie, bribe politicians to keep their monopoly, etc. we simply don’t have options for the most part.

      America: Land of the Fee, home of the bribe.

  • jaidyn999@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    19
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    11 months ago

    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.

    • thoughts3rased@sopuli.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      17
      ·
      edit-2
      11 months ago

      The battery is the most expensive part of the phone

      Lol no it’s not? This is easy to disprove just by looking at the price of replacement parts. You can’t tell me that the battery is more expensive than the processor of the phone.

      • daed@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        11 months ago

        Raw materials-wise maybe? Check your last sentence as well, don’t think you communicated what you meant to

  • stealth_cookies@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    17
    ·
    11 months ago

    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.

    • sviper@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      16
      ·
      11 months ago

      LOL, I pay 20 $ equivalent in India for a year with 500gb + cellular data on 4G and unlimited calls and SMS .

      Internet prices are fucked up in west.

      • Anon819450514@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        9
        arrow-down
        4
        ·
        edit-2
        11 months ago

        India is 1.4 billion people. Canada has 33 millions spreaded in a much most vast area than India.

        • Sanyanov@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          11
          ·
          11 months ago

          Russia has very low population density, too, yet I pay 10$/mo for unmetered 4G Internet and calls, and that’s after dramatic price spikes that raised prices from 6$/mo a year and a half prior.

        • Powerpoint@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          10
          ·
          11 months ago

          You know that statistic is bullshit just looking at profit reports from Canada’s telcos right?

    • chitak166@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      11 months ago

      What carrier do you use? Visible doesn’t charge extra for 5G, and it’s probably cheaper than your current plan.

      • stealth_cookies@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        11 months ago

        You missed that I’m in Canada. The Canadian cellphone space is bullshit owned by 3 main companies and one other that has inconsistent coverage. I’m with Virgin Mobile at the moment which is a cheaper flanker brand of Bell. The only ones that have offered a $34/mo plan with 5G is a company called Public Mobile (owned by Telus) that doesn’t support any international roaming (which is a nonstarter given how many websites insist on horrible SMS 2FA), and Freedom Mobile which has limited coverage even in major cities.

  • Mango@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    7
    ·
    11 months ago

    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.

    • frunch@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      14
      ·
      11 months ago

      I pray for Mint unlimited

      So how does this work, exactly? 1 Like = 1 Prayer? Or do you get on a kneeler, and that powers the Internet? I mean, i kinda understand the low bandwidth–prayer is completely wireless

    • Newby@startrek.website
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      11 months ago

      I have mint unlimited as well and can stream YouTube just fine at full resolution. I didn’t even know there was a supposed resolution limitation.

    • chitak166@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      11 months ago

      Switch to Visible, I did and never looked back.

      It’s $25/month, but you get truly unlimited data and it will only throttle if there is congestion (which I have yet to experience.)

      Mint is a scam propped up by ryan reynolds, nothing more.

  • dorron@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    7
    ·
    edit-2
    11 months ago

    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

  • SuperSpruce@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    11 months ago

    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.

    • ASeriesOfPoorChoices@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      11 months ago

      Hah!

      5G for me is 600mbps peak, but 300mbps is common. Budget providers offer capped versions at 100-150mbps.

      No microwave stuff, just normal 5G.

  • vsh@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    11 months ago

    Corporations are crying over 5G because 6G is coming this decade lol

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    11 months ago

    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!