topic Re: 5G networks in The Lounge

5G networks

Triguy — Sun, 21 Apr 2019 10:27:20 GMT

According to this article 5G networks won't become mainstream util 2023.

https://m.gsmarena.com/counterclockwise_new_networks_take_4_years_before_mainstream_adoption-news-36661.php

Re: 5G networks

Karnbot13 — Sun, 28 Apr 2019 18:24:50 GMT

Sounds about right. Once the mid tier phones get it, it will ramp quickly from there

Re: 5G networks

will13am — Wed, 01 May 2019 19:50:33 GMT

Pretty optimistic if you ask me. This service has gone back to the future with 3G speed plans. Unless future cell plans come with unlimited usage, 5G is meaningless. How much speed do we need to consume a few GBs every 30 days?

Re: 5G networks

Triguy — Wed, 01 May 2019 23:28:48 GMT

Consumers are demanding faster speeds for using multimedia like streaming movies and music. Also faster bandwidth allows streaming 4K or higher video. With the techological advancements of 5G that will allow self driving vechicles to talk to each other and remove the human element resulting in fewer accidents.

Re: 5G networks

stonechucker — Thu, 02 May 2019 00:38:09 GMT

I’m still waiting for full speed LTE regularilly in my area. 5G means nothing to me.

Re: 5G networks

TheOldVR — Thu, 02 May 2019 02:17:16 GMT

I'm good with 5G going mainstream... get the major data users off of LTE which works perfectly fine for me 🙂

Yay 5G!

Re: 5G networks

Triguy — Thu, 02 May 2019 09:48:57 GMT

Article comparing 3G vs 4G vs 5G.

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.whistleout.com/CellPhones/Guides/5g-vs-4g-vs-3g/amp

Re: 5G networks

skifan — Thu, 02 May 2019 20:05:08 GMT

@will13am wrote:
Unless future cell plans come with unlimited usage, 5G is meaningless. How much speed do we need to consume a few GBs every 30 days?

Indeed...from first hand experience.....a speed test on LTE when you are receiving a strong signal can use 700+Mb in one go. If on even a multi-Gb data plan, it can be depleted very quickly.

Fast Forward to 5G technology and only unlimited data is going to be workable.

Re: 5G networks

ckl — Thu, 02 May 2019 23:55:53 GMT

IHMO, speed matters in wireless networks but not for the reasons everyone thinks.

The main reason speed and latency matters is that a cell tower is technically a bottleneck. It can only accept a limited number of connections and once those connections are maxed, things will start to slow down. So the key to handling more customers in a limited number of connections is to get the customer connected and disconnected as fast as possible so the next customer can get on.

In an extreme example, let's compare a 200MB file download over 3G vs LTE. For PM 3G, the max speed is 3mbps, so a 200MB file is 200MB*8=1600Mb/3=533seconds. So the customer is connected to that cell tower for 533 seconds to transfer that file. With LTE speeds, let's assume the speed is 100mbps, so a 200MB file is 1600Mb/100=16seconds.

I'm oversimplifying the way customer connect to towers as there are some wizardry going on in the background that can increase the customers connected given a limited number of connections, but the fact still remains, the customer on 3G, will be connected to that tower far longer than on LTE.

So, when 5G comes around with wireless speeds exceeding 1Gbps, a customer doing the same 200MB file would be connected to the tower for less than a second... The faster a customer can connect to the tower, get their information, and disconnect, the better it is for the tower.

EDIT: What determines the max number of connections available to a tower? In the most simplest sense, I believe it is the spectrum frequency and the how much of it you have.