
The first ‘real world’ 5G test was a dud - jonbaer
https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/4/18125854/verizon-att-5g-speed-test-slow-maui-qualcomm-snapdragon-summit
======
mikekchar
Another "old guy" story. I remember working for a very large
telecommunications company one time. We had a new box that was supposed to
speak a particular protocol (I can't actually remember which protocol it was
now -- long time ago). But we didn't finish it in time for the demo. So we had
our box at the demo and underneath the table, covered by a cloth, we had our
competitor's box. Our box wasn't connected to anything :-) We did the whole
demo using the competitor's equipment. We fixed the problems a few months
later and nobody was the wiser...

I don't really want to work for that kind of company any more, but it makes
for entertaining tales later on in life.

~~~
danpalmer
Sounds a bit like Theranos and their use of off the shelf machines for
analysing blood tests, instead of their magic one that didn't work yet.

~~~
Ntrails
If they'd pulled it off within a few months of the faked presentations, and
without sending false results to actual patients, it would have been a
visionary CEO story rather than a criminally negligent one

~~~
danpalmer
Potentially, although I think it could still have caused plenty of
controversy.

It's one thing to use a competitor's product to demo your _equivalent_
product, but to somehow imply that your product is a step forward (smaller,
lower power, faster, cheaper, etc) is quite different and even if you manage
it in some form could still be grounds for calling it fraud.

------
dawnerd
So what’s the upload going to look like. Everyone keeps talking about how 5g
will bring gigabit speeds, but no ones confirmed what the upload will be. I’m
guessing it won’t be good if it’s not being put out there.

------
simonh
I worked in telecoms when 4G was at about this stage. A lot of radio engineers
I knew were highly sceptical about it, but that was in relation to the vendor
and network company hype. They were right for the time, but eventually the
technology and expectations converged and it became a big leap forward.

5G next year simply isn't going to be relevant to most people. It will start
as a gimmick, and then a few years later it will start getting interesting,
and soon after that it will be everywhere and we'll all be loving it.

------
azinman2
I’m worried about the safety of millimeter wave once things roll out... isn’t
the jury still out on that one?

~~~
short_sells_poo
What is the reason for your worries? It is certainly not anywhere near the
frequency/energy range of ionizing radiation, which begins beyond the far
ultraviolet wavelength of around 100 nanometers. We are still talking about
microwaves here, not even close to the visible light spectrum. You might
observe RF heating (like with a microwave oven) if you stand near a source
putting out enough energy.

~~~
123919239
And in terms of wireless engineering, if the phone heats your brain, it wastes
a lot of energy that should go into communication instead.

~~~
Waterluvian
Maybe that's an idea for an extra, so let's backlog it. But yes, please focus
on connection quality and not melting heads.

------
foxyv
If 5G reduces the price of data I'll be happy. Otherwise it's pointless to get
more speed if they are still charging $8 per GB

~~~
PappaPatat
It will not, but this will bring the prices down:
[https://fi.google.com](https://fi.google.com)

There is something really really big happening there, since "your
communication costs" have been inflated to the max by the telco's for years.
This new concept of provider independent network usage will kill a lot of
providers that have grown by overcharging their customers with a jungle of
plans and costs.

------
Tsubasachan
4G 5G what matters for consumers is the speed and reliability of the network
regardless what it is called.

Maybe T-Mobile America will roll out 5G a few years earlier than my T-mobile
but I bet it will still be worse than what I have today. Don't be fooled by
fancy words. Less marketing more cell towers.

------
alphabetter
...or, in other words, wireless services require radio spectrum shock.

Was it bad planning to demo 5G without adequate spectrum - yes. Does it tell
you anything about how well 5G will work when deployed in a real system - no.

For sure, 5G is overhyped but if you have spectrum (big if) and if you are
willing to pay the costs to deploy 5G (another big if) it is technically
capable of excellent performance.

~~~
kevinstubbs
What's "radio spectrum shock"? Google didn't find anything referring to this
=/

~~~
lb1lf
-Not the OP, but I believe his point was that someone(tm) had failed to take into account that blisteringly fast wireless data requires significant chunks of bandwidth - and that bandwidth is a scarce resource.

