I’m not so sure that most consumers will think “5g is a necessary function.” Without millimeter wave 5g is only slightly faster than 4g, and millimeter wave coverage will be worse than WiFi pretty much everywhere but the most densely populated regions.
> Without millimeter wave 5g is only slightly faster than 4g, and millimeter wave coverage will be worse than WiFi pretty much everywhere but the most densely populated regions.
> AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon’s networks, which rely on high-band millimeter-wave spectrum.
With flagship phone sales plummeting, the industry hopes 5g will save them. I really don’t know anyone that has told me they want or need 5g. With current draconian data plans of just a few gb what use would 5g be to the average consumer?
> With current draconian data plans of just a few gb what use would 5g be to the average consumer?
I have no idea where this argument comes from. Was 4G useless because carriers stuck with the same data caps we had from the 3G era? Today, the average U.S. smartphone subscriber uses 6GB/month of cellular data, well below the 20GB+ soft-cap of every provider's unlimited plan: https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/10/28/heres-how-much-sma....
No, you are totally misrepresenting the link you posted. Only those who have paid for an unlimited plan hit 6GB. The average person has no need for this sort of service. It’s a way to wring more money out of cellphone users, already an area long overdue for better consumer protection. Companies want 5g, consumers do not.
You couldn’t do what you needed to on 3g since it wouldn’t support video streaming etc. What killer app does 5g have that 4g doesn’t already do? When I’m on my phone and have good LTE strength I never find myself saying “I wish this was downloading faster.” If it was for a home pc sure, but there’s only so much I need to do on a phone. Maybe I’m being really short-sighted and people will VR interact soon on 5g.
My guess is that everyone is itching to deploy 5G in order to expand the surveillance (advertising) industry. It seems pretty clear that they want every object in the world to constantly be observing and reporting images, sound, temperature, atmospheric pressure, humidity, etc. 5G helps to do this silently, without your permission. I can choose whether or not my computer can connect to my IP network. Good luck disconnecting your car or your washing machine when they each have modem chips soldered into their motherboards.
I'm on gigabit fiber and can't saturate it most of the time since now servers become the bottleneck (speed limited since they can't serve everyone at a nice 300Mbps+), I get 40Mbps on 4G, which I never saturate either.
It's good for the evergrowing number of users though, average speed for everyone should improve once most people use 5G. Plus, far future with AR/VR and whatnot.
>Without millimeter wave 5g is only slightly faster than 4g
Yes and no, while technically 5G is only slightly faster on paper in Sub 6Ghz, In Reality 5G brings much improved capacity to the network, which translate to much better utilization and faster speed. And since most people don't upgrade their phone as quickly as they used to, there will be those who would rather have an 5G phone now rather than wait 3 - 4 years til their next upgrade.
5G is clearly not necessary yet, but it's also nowhere near close to being widely deployed (that will happen over the next 3-5 years). AR, and pervasive computing in general, will eventually make 5G more than a novelty however.
in any case, i personally doubt apple will add 5G in 2020, as they tend to be conservative on wireless tech (including wifi, bluetooth, etc.), waiting 1-2 years after the first rollouts by early adopters (like samsung), to make sure the kinks are worked out all around (equipment makers and carriers too). 2021 is probably more likely for the first 5G iphone, and 2022 will likely be the year you'll want to buy it.
Just sharing the obligatory cancer scare articles. It's obvious to me that radiation of all kinds has an effect on us, whether that is non-ionizing or not. I think a lot more independent research needs to be done in this area, lest we look back on this time in a similar way to doctors endorsing cigarettes.
If you want to know why America has such shitty infrastructure (especially cities like San Francisco where the density should warrant it), here is Exhibit A. Environmental studies, aesthetic objections,[1] fake health concerns, etc. In the 4.6 years Americans spend to prepare the average Environmental Impact Statement for an infrastructure project, Europeans can build city-wide subway systems or tunnel through mountains.
Other countries are not going to hold up 5G deployment over fake health concerns. If we don't want 5G to be yet another area, like transit and roads, where the US lags woefully behind Europe and Japan, we must fight such distractions.
Meritless aesthetic concerns and fake health concerns are in the same bucket. It's just ways to hold up progress. (And in this case, NIMBYs are seizing on fake health concerns to reinforce their case against deployment because they think the base stations are ugly.)
Can you explain why it is fake? Non-ionizing radiation does have an effect on us. Just because it isn't melting our organs doesn't mean that we aren't effected negatively by it. The independent research shows this, doesn't it?
Lawyers strive to become as good as possible at aggressively defending the objectively wrong opinion. He's either doing this as some sort of devil's advocate exercise or he's actually getting ready to defend 5G technology in court.
Alas, I'm just a nerd who likes radios and infrastructure, and is fed up with NIMBYs and feelers.
EDIT: regarding "who stands to gain"--consumers! It's very odd to me that I'd have to defend the technology upgrade treadmill on HN of all places. In October, Apple's going to come out with the A13 chip. Is anyone going to wonder "who benefits?" Or ask "why do we need it?" No, we'll all understand that the A12 is obsolete trash now. That's how this industry works.
It's a weapon disguised as communications tech to keep the sheep calm while it's deployed. They want to be able to easily target any coordinates in 3D space from multiple towers at once with lethal microwave beams to boil the organs of any troublemakers who speak out against the chosen ones. Just don't make any more problematic posts and you'll be fine.
These 'concerns' have been around as long as cell phone service has existed for every single frequency and power level. I remember my mom worrying about it back when stuff was at 1G & 2G levels.
You have to realize that "high" power radio & other artificial EM transmissions have been going on ever since you were born pretty much everywhere. AM Radio, FM Radio, "wireless" TV, and todays cellphones and wifi base stations. Not to mention all the other radio traffic that is more specialized, like airplanes, HAM radio, police & emergency services, the military, the light you see from your lightbulbs, the EM radiation that emits from your electric wires running through your house, street or nearby electric transformer stations on and on.
None of it has resulted in secret harm and 5G will be no different. The stuff that is harmful will have a lot of warnings around it and won't be secret. Such as UV exposure from the sun.
> If we don't want 5G to be yet another area, like transit and roads, where the US lags woefully behind Europe and Japan
I don’t necessarily disagree with the crux of your point about infrastructure. However, in the case of 5G, why do we need to “beat” other countries? What’s the rush?
That's all I was saying. 5G is not like other infrastructure such as roads or tunnels or fiber lines. It's a "nice to have". So why can't we do more research and prove ME wrong?
For one thing, 5G is going to be necessary to fully realize things like augmented reality, self-driving cars, and other industries that will make significant economic contributions. Getting started earlier on those is better.
For the other--it's embarrassing. I'm embarrassed that Copenhagen is building a massive new subway system extension for the same money it's costing my state (Maryland) to build a single suburban light rail line. It indicates moral shortcomings of the citizenry--inability to set priorities, inability to cooperate, selfishness, complacency, etc. Same thing with 5G, but add gullibility and hypochondria to the mix.
> 5G is the absolute last thing standing in the way of self-driving cars.
... more as "everything else is working, we are just waiting for 5g then we have self driving"
Instead I read it as "there is so much else not working yet, that 5g is _not even_ on the list of important things", which seems to be more what you were implying?
What does 5G enable that 2G, 3G, 4G, and even WiFi wouldn't have already enabled? There's huge hype for 5G enabled industrial IoT, but how is this any different from connecting the devices to WiFi or a 2G/3G/4G network? Latency is thrown around a lot, but considering the latency between my laptop (which is 8 years old, mind you) and my WiFi router is less than a millisecond, I don't see the point.
Haven't personally looked into it, but I've heard and seen that a big point is allowing much more devices on a network without straining the network as much. 4g at a crowded venue is generally unusable, 5g might change that.
5G will also enable smart devices to connect over cellular instead of wifi, increasing how much control the device maker has over the device and probably overall increasing connection reliability.
^Although, WiFi 6 is also aiming to solve this problem so I guess these are competing protocols at this point.
> For one thing, 5G is going to be necessary to fully realize things like augmented reality, self-driving cars, and other industries that will make significant economic contributions.
How, precisely?
5G won't be anywhere near low-latency enough to actually offload processing for these types of devices. (Not to mention, I'd really worry about what happens when a car loses connection.)
> For the other--it's embarrassing.
I appreciate your feelings, but we need to collectively get over ourselves. "Embarrassment" shouldn't be driving billion dollar decisions.
If we need to channel the emotion, let's do where the needs are explicit, like public transit.
In dense urban areas, 4G cell networks don't have sufficient capacity to enable large numbers of people to be using high-bandwidth services. E.g. if there is a road anomaly, such as construction, one of the solutions self-driving-car makers have invoked is a human remote driver jumping in. You can do that with a few cars on 4G, but not at scale with dozens of cars that might be simultaneously blocked by the same anomaly.
> I appreciate your feelings, but we need to collectively get over ourselves. "Embarrassment" shouldn't be driving billion dollar decisions. If you need to channel the emotion, do so with regard to things like public transit where the need is much more explicit.
Less than 5% of Americans use public transit. 96% of Americans use cell phones. Cellular is far more important than public transit.
A lot of the 5g connection to drones, self-driving and artificial intelligence is bullshit. But there is some connection in the sense that they are sort of both unknown. In theory if you had some sort of early self-driving personal rapid transit system, or some freight variety, it would make things easier if you knew you had enough bandwidth and low latency to effectively remote control them.
> it would make things easier if you knew you had enough bandwidth and low latency to effectively remote control them.
I suppose it can't hurt as an additional safety feature, but if we're considering this a requirement for the technology, that makes me very scared, given the inherent unreliability of any type of cellular connection.
I feel like I can’t be the only one that doesn’t see “national embarrassment” as a good reason to do anything. It just doesn’t feel like any kind of logical argument about anything.
Can rural iPhone users manually disable mmWave radios on their local devices, since there will be no use for the beamforming receiver outside of urban areas?
> Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, HP, Qualcomm, Intel, Broadcom, and Marvell ... are petitioning the FCC to approve a new Very Low Power (VLP) category of Wi-Fi where small, low-power devices like smartphones that transmit below a certain power threshold (14 dBm EIRP) could traverse the 6GHz spectrum ... short-range, point-to-point connections between two devices — think within a room, not across your house. The letter suggests they could deliver 2Gbps at a distance of 3 meters
Short-range 6Ghz VLP WiFi would reduce WiFi congestion in urban areas, where dozens of 2.4Ghz WiFi routers can be visible.
Setting the data rate and transmit power to the same power sure, there isn't anything particular special about 60 GHz compared to 6 GHz other than 60 isn't going to make it through drywall.
Qualcomm has actually been releasing phone chipsets with 802.11ad for a while now. Intel did it for wireless laptop docking. Qualcomm's 5G modem also comes with 802.11ay but I don't know of anybody else that has deployed it yet.
There won't be any need to disable the radio for unused bands. Powering down unused hardware is literally the first thing the engineers do to save battery life.
Edit: can't reply due to rate-limiting, but in principle, all they have to do to search for service is power up the receiver briefly, running at a very low duty cycle. This has no noticeable impact on battery life or any other aspect of the phone's operation.
Mobile networks have more management functions than WiFi, for instance.
If you're in a high density area, the mobile network will push the device to small range cells (handover), or tell the device which other cells are available in that area (list of neighbor cells).
However, the smartphone is not required to search for a base station all the time. It receives hints from the network.
From practical experience, it’s very common for people to find their phone (iPhone or other) burning through tons of battery when they go out in the sticks, and this is reliably fixed by turning off cellular data. So either it’s not as easy as you say, or they haven’t bothered solving the problem.
If there's no service at all, that may be a different matter entirely. As ndjskska says, the cell network itself keeps the phone up to date with the nearby topology, so there's no need for it to keep pinging for a service that isn't there.
A clear indicator that Apple is focusing on markets other than the US.
5g is deploying in China and India and soon in a lot of countries in SE Asia.
The consumption of mobile bandwidth is literally through the roof. Netflix having a 2.5$ monthly mobile-only plan in India is a clear signalling of that.
> A clear indicator that Apple is focusing on markets other than the US. 5g is deploying in China and India and soon in a lot of countries in SE Asia.
I don't see how you reach that conclusion. 5G is deploying across the US right now and has been throughout 2019.
Verizon and AT&T will each have 5G deployed to two dozen major US cities this year. They'll cover dozens more in 2020. The US will rapidly be blanketed with 5G over the next 12-24 months by the three major carriers.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 121 ms ] threadhttps://www.tomsguide.com/features/5g-vs-4g
> AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon’s networks, which rely on high-band millimeter-wave spectrum.
I have no idea where this argument comes from. Was 4G useless because carriers stuck with the same data caps we had from the 3G era? Today, the average U.S. smartphone subscriber uses 6GB/month of cellular data, well below the 20GB+ soft-cap of every provider's unlimited plan: https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/10/28/heres-how-much-sma....
With 5G, those caps will go up further. Verizon isn't even applying the 22GB 4G throttling limit to 5G yet: https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/13/18263593/verizon-5g-servi....
It's good for the evergrowing number of users though, average speed for everyone should improve once most people use 5G. Plus, far future with AR/VR and whatnot.
So while not as big a jump as 3g->4g still some improvements there.
Yes and no, while technically 5G is only slightly faster on paper in Sub 6Ghz, In Reality 5G brings much improved capacity to the network, which translate to much better utilization and faster speed. And since most people don't upgrade their phone as quickly as they used to, there will be those who would rather have an 5G phone now rather than wait 3 - 4 years til their next upgrade.
in any case, i personally doubt apple will add 5G in 2020, as they tend to be conservative on wireless tech (including wifi, bluetooth, etc.), waiting 1-2 years after the first rollouts by early adopters (like samsung), to make sure the kinks are worked out all around (equipment makers and carriers too). 2021 is probably more likely for the first 5G iphone, and 2022 will likely be the year you'll want to buy it.
Except it will be prohibitively expensive for most Americans thanks to only three major carriers competing in the US.
"Bay Area city blocks 5G deployments over cancer concerns" https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/10/bay-area-city-blocks-5g-de...
"Don’t keep cell phones next to your body, California Health Department warns" https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/15/dont-keep-cell-phones-next...
Other countries are not going to hold up 5G deployment over fake health concerns. If we don't want 5G to be yet another area, like transit and roads, where the US lags woefully behind Europe and Japan, we must fight such distractions.
[1] Remember when San Francisco held up AT&T fiber deployment in the city for years with a lawsuit about ugly fiber boxes? https://stopthecap.com/2011/06/29/san-francisco-still-in-sta...
If you can't see that these are totally unrelated, then I don't know what to say.
Fiber lines are completely different than "hey these rats that are constantly exposed to 5G radiation that's 20 yards away are acting all messed up".
Can you explain why it is fake? Non-ionizing radiation does have an effect on us. Just because it isn't melting our organs doesn't mean that we aren't effected negatively by it. The independent research shows this, doesn't it?
EDIT: regarding "who stands to gain"--consumers! It's very odd to me that I'd have to defend the technology upgrade treadmill on HN of all places. In October, Apple's going to come out with the A13 chip. Is anyone going to wonder "who benefits?" Or ask "why do we need it?" No, we'll all understand that the A12 is obsolete trash now. That's how this industry works.
I can't see 5G benefiting consumers at all. If you're on a 4G network, you already see no issues with streaming video.
Who is 5G even for? It's a solution seeking a problem.
You have to realize that "high" power radio & other artificial EM transmissions have been going on ever since you were born pretty much everywhere. AM Radio, FM Radio, "wireless" TV, and todays cellphones and wifi base stations. Not to mention all the other radio traffic that is more specialized, like airplanes, HAM radio, police & emergency services, the military, the light you see from your lightbulbs, the EM radiation that emits from your electric wires running through your house, street or nearby electric transformer stations on and on.
None of it has resulted in secret harm and 5G will be no different. The stuff that is harmful will have a lot of warnings around it and won't be secret. Such as UV exposure from the sun.
I don’t necessarily disagree with the crux of your point about infrastructure. However, in the case of 5G, why do we need to “beat” other countries? What’s the rush?
Great article from The Verge titled “Wait, why the hell is the ‘race to 5G even a race?” https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/23/18637213/5g-race-us-leade...
I would love to be proven wrong.
I'm much more concerned about how 5G will impact our ability to predict hurricanes. Lives are very much at stake there.
For the other--it's embarrassing. I'm embarrassed that Copenhagen is building a massive new subway system extension for the same money it's costing my state (Maryland) to build a single suburban light rail line. It indicates moral shortcomings of the citizenry--inability to set priorities, inability to cooperate, selfishness, complacency, etc. Same thing with 5G, but add gullibility and hypochondria to the mix.
> 5G is the absolute last thing standing in the way of self-driving cars.
... more as "everything else is working, we are just waiting for 5g then we have self driving"
Instead I read it as "there is so much else not working yet, that 5g is _not even_ on the list of important things", which seems to be more what you were implying?
5G will also enable smart devices to connect over cellular instead of wifi, increasing how much control the device maker has over the device and probably overall increasing connection reliability.
^Although, WiFi 6 is also aiming to solve this problem so I guess these are competing protocols at this point.
https://www.lifewire.com/5g-wireless-4155905
How, precisely?
5G won't be anywhere near low-latency enough to actually offload processing for these types of devices. (Not to mention, I'd really worry about what happens when a car loses connection.)
> For the other--it's embarrassing.
I appreciate your feelings, but we need to collectively get over ourselves. "Embarrassment" shouldn't be driving billion dollar decisions.
If we need to channel the emotion, let's do where the needs are explicit, like public transit.
In dense urban areas, 4G cell networks don't have sufficient capacity to enable large numbers of people to be using high-bandwidth services. E.g. if there is a road anomaly, such as construction, one of the solutions self-driving-car makers have invoked is a human remote driver jumping in. You can do that with a few cars on 4G, but not at scale with dozens of cars that might be simultaneously blocked by the same anomaly.
> I appreciate your feelings, but we need to collectively get over ourselves. "Embarrassment" shouldn't be driving billion dollar decisions. If you need to channel the emotion, do so with regard to things like public transit where the need is much more explicit.
Less than 5% of Americans use public transit. 96% of Americans use cell phones. Cellular is far more important than public transit.
I suppose it can't hurt as an additional safety feature, but if we're considering this a requirement for the technology, that makes me very scared, given the inherent unreliability of any type of cellular connection.
On a related topic, 6Ghz WiFi (unlicensed and unmetered) is needed for AR glasses which won't have the battery power for cellular service, https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2019/7/23/20707456/6...
> Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, HP, Qualcomm, Intel, Broadcom, and Marvell ... are petitioning the FCC to approve a new Very Low Power (VLP) category of Wi-Fi where small, low-power devices like smartphones that transmit below a certain power threshold (14 dBm EIRP) could traverse the 6GHz spectrum ... short-range, point-to-point connections between two devices — think within a room, not across your house. The letter suggests they could deliver 2Gbps at a distance of 3 meters
Short-range 6Ghz VLP WiFi would reduce WiFi congestion in urban areas, where dozens of 2.4Ghz WiFi routers can be visible.
60 GHz (802.11ad/802.11ay) is better suites for AR/VR, is already out, and doesn't have interference issues due to physics.
6 GHz should be focusing on devices that need to work at range not ones that can already be served via in-room frequencies.
Qualcomm has actually been releasing phone chipsets with 802.11ad for a while now. Intel did it for wireless laptop docking. Qualcomm's 5G modem also comes with 802.11ay but I don't know of anybody else that has deployed it yet.
Edit: can't reply due to rate-limiting, but in principle, all they have to do to search for service is power up the receiver briefly, running at a very low duty cycle. This has no noticeable impact on battery life or any other aspect of the phone's operation.
If you're in a high density area, the mobile network will push the device to small range cells (handover), or tell the device which other cells are available in that area (list of neighbor cells).
However, the smartphone is not required to search for a base station all the time. It receives hints from the network.
5g is deploying in China and India and soon in a lot of countries in SE Asia.
The consumption of mobile bandwidth is literally through the roof. Netflix having a 2.5$ monthly mobile-only plan in India is a clear signalling of that.
Being 18 months late to the party will really hurt Apple.
Being 3/4 of a refresh cycle late still means that 75% of the users missed out on the feature.
I'm still on an iPhone X and will be until there is a compelling new iPhone.
Switching to android would require paying for a lot of apps that I use regularly all over again. Not worth it for me.
I don't see how you reach that conclusion. 5G is deploying across the US right now and has been throughout 2019.
Verizon and AT&T will each have 5G deployed to two dozen major US cities this year. They'll cover dozens more in 2020. The US will rapidly be blanketed with 5G over the next 12-24 months by the three major carriers.
https://www.cnet.com/features/we-ran-5g-speed-tests-on-veriz...