Millimeter-wave fizzles and regulatory hurdles plague progress:
By now, the cellular industry's rollout of 5G networks is three or four years old. And while the industry is still hunting for that killer use case that will cement 5G's place in the highest echelons of cellular technology, the generation is doing, at its core, what it was supposed to do—sort of.
5G networks are continuing to deliver better and faster service than 4G in general. Compared to 5G service from a year ago, however, the networks' upload and download times have generally declined around the world, according to speed test data from network diagnostics company Ookla. Even the most robust 5G networks are currently barely cracking 1 gigabit per second, well short of the International Telecommunication Union's stated ideal download speed of 20 Gbps.
Part of the problem is the same problem had by every cellular generation. There are the normal growing pains as more customers buy new phones and other devices that can tap into these networks. [...]
[...] Outside of cities, different problems are taking root. A big selling-point for 5G is the ability to tap into new bands of spectrum, most notably the millimeter wave band (24 gigahertz to 40 GHz), which can support lower latencies and greater data rates. [...]
Millimeter wave has also seen barely any uptake outside of a handful of countries, including the United States, and even there it's been limited. Companies like Verizon—initially bullish on millimeter wave—have instead pivoted to other newly-available bands, most notably the C-band (4 to 8 GHz).
[...] It's too early to say whether or how 6G development will be impacted by 5G's early stumbles, but there are a handful of possible impacts. It's conceivable, for example, given the lackluster debut of millimeter wave, that the industry devotes less time in terahertz wave research and instead considers how cellular and Wi-Fi technologies could be merged in areas requiring dense coverage.
"I think it's revealing the disconnect between the vision for these Gs and what's actually on the ground," Giles says. "I think that's what this degradation is really highlighting."
(Score: 4, Funny) by krishnoid on Tuesday May 09, @03:59AM
The mesh performance is slowly degrading because people have no timeline for the next COVID-19 vaccine booster, and the microchip repeaters in them decompose every six months or so. I myself am waiting for the CDC's guidance on this before replacing my 4G stuff.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Snotnose on Tuesday May 09, @04:36AM (3 children)
You mean the reality isn't measuring up to the marketing hype?
I just passed a drug test. My dealer has some explaining to do.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by RS3 on Tuesday May 09, @05:26AM (2 children)
Or is it more that they got their govt. subsidies and now suddenly they (cough cough) changed their minds?
In case someone didn't understand my sarcasm, major carriers are getting US govt. grants and subsidies for 5G, ostensibly to build out better cell coverage in more rural areas. Rather than do what they've already been paid to do, they're holding back on buildout and bandwidth so they can whine and complain that it isn't working as planned, and now they'll need more money for 6G.
An example of the far too clever word games they play: I buy cell network access through a 3rd-party MVNO [wikipedia.org]. With the one I'm on I can choose from any of the major carriers in the US. I've been using AT&T. Sometimes my data speeds are pretty slow, choppy, and freeze so much that a dialup modem would be faster. AT&T won't admit they're throttling because that's a bad thing. But they say "MVNO" traffic might be "deprioritized". Is that what life has come to? Using clever language to get out of being punished for doing the thing you're not allowed to do? "Honest officer, I did a quantum stop at that stop sign. You need a quantum camera and attending quantum computer to see my stop, but it's there." Or is it maybe okay to say "I deprioritized the stop sign"?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09, @06:36AM (1 child)
Officer: You failed to stop at that stop back there
Driver: Oh! I'm sorry.. I'll stop twice at the next one
(Score: 3, Funny) by Freeman on Tuesday May 09, @01:33PM
More like: I promise not to get caught as I speed through the next one. And if, I do, I'll let them know that I've already been told, so should be good. But, I'm very very sorry.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09, @06:23PM
My area is rural and mobile speeds are particularly bad. A friend involved with fiber backhaul in the area told me the reason is simple: the telcos are cheap as hell and even though there is 1 GB or 10GB fiber run to the towers the telcos pay for at MOST 200MB connections, so it can be a a terabyte 5g connection to the tower, but you aren't going to get more than 200MB from that tower at 4am on a Wednesday because it just isn't available. They could literally send an email and the speeds would go up 5x or 50x. For reference during peak hours my 4G LTE or 5G speeds with the best carrier are 15Mb down and 2Mb up. Off peak is generally 80Mb down and 10Mb up. One carrier has slightly better upload speeds of 10Mb up during peak and 25Mb up off peak, but that is because they have tuned their network to be closer to symmetric so their download is worse.