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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Verizon yesterday announced that its 5G service is available in 13 NFL stadiums but said the network is only able to cover "parts" of the seating areas. Verizon 5G signals will also be sparse or non-existent when fans walk through concourses and other areas in and around each stadium.
The rollout of 5G is more complicated than the rollout of 4G was because 5G relies heavily on millimeter-wave signals that don't travel far and are easily blocked by walls and other obstacles. While Verizon is trying to build excitement around 5G, its announcement for availability in NFL stadiums carried several caveats.
"Verizon 5G Ultra Wideband service will be available in areas of the [13] stadiums," Verizon said. "Service will be concentrated in parts of the seating areas but could be available in other locations in and around the stadium as well."
Notice the phrase "could be available" in that last sentence. Verizon isn't promising any 5G coverage outside the seating areas, and the seating-area coverage will only be available in some sections.
[...] 5G can work on any frequency used by mobile networks, including the lower-band frequencies Verizon uses for its nationwide 4G network. But Verizon has said that customers will only notice small speed increases on 5G when it's delivered over low-band frequencies. The big speed increases will come on millimeter-wave deployments, which will be concentrated in densely populated areas.
The 13 stadiums where Verizon 5G is partially available include those used by the Carolina Panthers, Denver Broncos, Seattle Seahawks, Detroit Lions, New England Patriots, Miami Dolphins, Indianapolis Colts, New York Giants and New York Jets (they share a stadium in New Jersey), Baltimore Ravens, Houston Texans, Chicago Bears, and Minnesota Vikings. That's only 12 stadiums, so there's a 13th that Verizon hasn't revealed. There are another 18 other NFL stadiums without Verizon 5G service.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 09 2019, @12:47PM (7 children)
With 5G you can burn through your data cap in 50 seconds.
Who watches NFL games on small screens anyway.
Deploy Wi-Fi instead because I'm old and I prefer 1997 technology.
(Score: 3, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday September 09 2019, @12:55PM (2 children)
More importantly, who watches NFL games on screens while they're at the bloody game?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ledow on Monday September 09 2019, @01:06PM (1 child)
And in the tunnels.
And on a phone.
And where they can't just watch it on 4G if they have a 4G signal but absolutely must watch it on 5G?
People really expect far too much of the hype, where 5G is just like 4G was... in the right place you get a better signal. And when you're not, you'll get the same signal you always used to deem adequate anyway. And eventually everywhere will get 5G, but by then 6G will come along... in select areas... etc. etc. etc.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday September 09 2019, @10:16PM
The ISP's where I live are advertising 5G as being some sort of magical realm, which will "enable new technologies like driverless cars", as if all it takes is extra bandwidth.
My suspicion is that they are trying to get people enthusiastic about 5G, then will tell the government it is too expensive, and taxpayers will need to put their hands in their pockets again.
Fortunately the last time they did that the answer was that if taxpayers are going to pay for a new network, then that new network was going to be nationalized.
They backed off pretty quick.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday September 09 2019, @01:04PM (1 child)
802.11ax is 2016 technology.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 09 2019, @01:25PM
802.11ax is too fast for my data cap. You need to deploy 802.11-1997 instead.
(Score: 3, Funny) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday September 09 2019, @02:02PM
If they're going to do that, can't they just pipe an RJ-11 landline phone service? I still have a TRS-80 Model 100 lying around somewhere and I think 300 baud is all I'll need. What's the number of the nearest Compuserve node to the stadium?
This sig for rent.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by hwertz on Monday September 09 2019, @05:08PM
"Deploy Wi-Fi instead because I'm old and I prefer 1997 technology."
Don't know if you're joking or not; but wifi is actually awful in crowded situations. Rather than having the APs be able to coordinate access to the medium in any meaningful way, it is essentially random access. If you look up Aloha, you'll find that means roughly 50% maximum capacity, and speeds cratering as more users try to use the channel. 802.11ax is supposed to address this, but just came out this year so it's not really deployed yet.
As for 5G... yep it's largely hype. The advertisers want to imply 5G will allow huge speeds all over the place. The reality.. do I expect 5G all over the place? Yeah, but it'll be low and mid-band that brings a 20% speed increase. Especially since vendors have figured out how to run 5G in existing 4G spectrum, this makes running 5G almost a no-brainer. (Some clever engineers realized both 4G and 5G use timeslots, and figured out how to have a site be able to run 4G one timeslot and 5G the next, so instead of shutting down some 4G service to run 5G, the site can simply run more and more 5G timeslots as more and more 5G phones are on the service.) Do I expect widespread mmwave 5G, which brings huge speeds by running like 100-500mhz blocks? Nope. I expect it to be strategically deployed to areas where the existing spectrum is all slowed down by heavy usage (i.e. congestion.)