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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...

The race to 5G is over — now it’s time to pay the bill

https://www.theverge.com/23991136/5g-network-att-verizon-tmobile-cost-competition

The flashiest use cases are still a fantasy.

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.

57 comments

grabyourmotherskeys

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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

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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.

grabyourmotherskeys

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Tech, yes. Lived experience, meh. :)

abhibeckert

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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

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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

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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

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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.

grabyourmotherskeys

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It's probably just our terrible network in the area (also not US).

ColeSloth

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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.

scytale

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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.

JustZ

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That because they just released improved 4G and called it 5G for marketing reasons. Then everyone else did it too.

Gregorech

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Read an article once called the 4G lie, talked about marketing terms that you really can just make stuff up. They equated it to the car industry putting out a V6 and just calling it a V8.

SpookyUnderwear

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I remember when 4G was rolling out, either t-mobile or AT&T were advertising 4G, when it was really 3G+.

__init__

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Might have been both. I remember ATT at the time calling HSPA+ “4G” then calling the actual thing “4G LTE”

Jakeroxs

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Tmo

JustZ

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Yeah I remember too.

CmdrShepard

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Now Comcast is trying to join the bandwagon by advertising their network as '10G'

TechNerdWizard42

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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!

jordanlund

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The difference between the US and Korea is VAST though.

Korea is just over 100,000 square kilometers, slightly bigger than Indiana, slightly smaller than Virginia.

The US is 9.834 million square kilometers. Installing infrastructure here is an order of magnitude more difficult.

TechNerdWizard42

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Yes that's the talking point Americans like to use as to why their infrastructure is shit. Ok so why does it work in Europe, as a continent? Why does it work in China? Why does it work in Canada? I can be in the Arctic circle not having seen another vehicle for hours on the highway and have full reception. This is in the mountains in the Arctic in a country larger than the US in an area more remote than anywhere that exists in the US.

The reason it doesn't work in the US is because corporate greed and a population that is ignorant to what it should be. Where's the outcry over the billions of dollars that the ISPs lined their pockets with for the FTTH rollout and never even remotely got close to delivering, gave up, and walked away...

ColeSloth

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Canada has dead zones, my man. I'm stabbing a guess, but im sure China does as well.

Really, the argument I'm seeing from you just reeks of you being incredibly naive.

Here's all the 5g coverage info of Canada that proves your full of crap, BTW.

https://www.nperf.com/en/map/CA/-/-/signal/?ll=71.52490903732816&lg=-96.6796875&zoom=2

Asafum

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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.

stealth_cookies

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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

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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

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

Sanyanov

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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

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

ada

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It's not that.

Australia has a similar population density and land size to Canada, yet our speeds are faster and our costs lower than Canada.

ahriboy

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Meanwhile, 5G is fully restricted to key cities in my country. Who needs 5G when we need more towers and improved 4G quality.

chitak166

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

stealth_cookies

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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.

jaidyn999

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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

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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

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

CmdrShepard

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They're definitely correct that the battery is not the most expensive part of the phone, but their last sentence is backward.

thoughts3rased

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Woops, haven't had my third coffee of the day.

jordanlund

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FTA:

"Then, it (Verizon) tried to sell us on low-band 5G, which actually turned out to be slower than 4G in some cases. The company is now slowly converting its existing network into standalone 5G as it lights up mid-band spectrum, but that’s a yearslong effort."

This is why I have a 5G phone and a "5G" connection, but my speeds are shit.

14.9 down, 0.13 up.

BallsInTheShredder

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It's true, I guess they only built the "5G" towers to have the name alone, figuring customers would want the latest and greatest. It's worked, most people I see are using 5G even though every 5G network I've tested has yielded about the results you describe, 15mbps while I can easily get 30+ via 4glte standing in the same spot.

jordanlund

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And why Comcast started calling their cable internet "10G", the names mean nothing.

dorron

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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

RememberTheApollo

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But they still get to charge customers for the potential service they’re not getting, right?

Mango

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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

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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

CmdrShepard

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Actually, Jesus requests 1 Like and 1 Subscribe to equal 1 Prayer.

Mango

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Ahhh shit.

Newby

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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

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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.

BallsInTheShredder

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$25 a month for truly unlimited? Unheard of and super cool

chitak166

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Yep. I use it for my phone and home internet.

Saved me at least $700 thus far in internet bills alone.

SuperSpruce

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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

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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.

autotldr

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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!

vsh

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

AnUnusualRelic

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Well, yeah. But 6g is going to change everything.

SidewaysHighways

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Just one more g bro

I just need more more g and I'll change everything

nonfuinoncuro

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ada

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I'm guessing this is an issue with the US implementation? In Australia, I notice a significant improvement when I'm in a 5g coverage area. 4g is fast, but 5g is something else