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Could we expect less spotty coverage with 5G?

5 points by slategruen ↗ HN
My biggest gripe with 4G is not its speed but rather how frequent I lose signal. The instances where I need speeds as fast as what 5G offers are also rather rare. To add to that, the cost of cellular data isn't noticeably getting cheaper so video streaming with 5G is surely going to be expensive. Given that, wouldn't it be more difficult to implement wider coverage with 5G compared to 4G since the former needs more sparsely distributed nodes?

3 comments

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3np
This is my probably incomplete understanding until someone who knows better fills in the picture :)

Due to shorter wavelength, 5G will have worse coverage in terms of distance from the station. So in rural areas you will not see improvements unless density of stations is increased.

However you can fit a lot more in terms of nodes and bandwidth compared to 4G, so in congested areas like cities you may perceive better "coverage" as a result.

> 5G compared to 4G since the former needs more sparsely distributed nodes

...It’s the opposite, no? But yes, my understanding is that area coverage would not improve simply by upgrading/switching out existing stations. You would need a larger number of stations/energy to cover the same area with 5G vs 4G.

1123581321
Low band 5G is doing this. Low band 5G is essentially marginally more efficient 4G. As 5G is deployed alongside 4G, it’s often going in weak 4G areas. Phones automatically switch to whichever of the two are providing better service in an area, so the combination of 4G and 5G provide better service quality.

High band 5G (the exciting, fast mm-wave stuff) certainly can improve service in a highly congested area, like a stadium, but low and mid-band offered in combination with legacy 4G will improve service most places in the world.

toast0
Low band 5G has more spectrum allocated, too (well ok, the spectrum was reallocated for phones and could be used for whatever, but it will be used for 5G, because you need new antennas/etc on the handsets to access the new spectrum and who wants to use new spectrum with old modulation).

Some of the new spectrum is lower frequency, in the US former TV channels 52-69 (700Mhz) were reallocated around 2008 and mostly used for LTE, former TV channels 38-51 (600Mhz) were reallocated around 2020 and will be mostly used for 5G. This new UHF spectrum may propigate further and help close some gaps in coverage.