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Ask HN: What would you do with 5G?

4 points by roymurdock ↗ HN
For the sake of argument (since the 5G standard isn't close to fully specified yet), let's assume a standard urban 5G connection is:

-1Gbit/s data rate

-1ms latency

-same energy efficiency as 4G

What would you build or do with such a powerful internet connection (besides stream more content)?

7 comments

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luckylittle
Almost-real virtual reality while walking on the streets (think of "Ready player one" movie). Drones sending 4K live video while flying miles away.
Rjevski
Nothing as long as the "limited data" bullshit is around.

LTE/4G is already more than fast enough for pretty much everything; the main blocker has always been limited data.

snazz
And then the companies that promise “unlimited” data oftetimes thottle your connection when you exceed a very small data usage (2GB or so on some apparently cheap plans). As soon as real unlimited data becomes available for a much more reasonable price, I’d consider getting rid of cable Internet and being more reliant on cellular data.
Rjevski
Carriers should be selling bandwidth allocations, not "data". Cheap plans can only use a small % of total available bandwidth on a particular tower, while more expensive plans can get a bigger slice. Finally they should offer a ridiculously expensive plan that gives you the entire tower's bandwidth in the rare cases you need it (priced at the tower's cost for the carrier, since you're essentially buying out the entire tower for yourself). I don't expect anyone to use this full-time, but there were a few times when I needed tons of mobile bandwidth and wouldn't mind paying thousands for it.
quickthrower2
I'd ditch home broadband to save money for starters.

I might consider hooking up a keyboard/monitor to smartphone to make it a dumb terminal to an Azure VM which is the real computer.

sinus17
In my country is not everywhere lte/4g internet
Artemix
I'd finally access Internet, and ditch my awful 50kBps internet speed I'm getting from cable, and unstable 4G from mobile