

Samsung claims 5G mobile data transmission breakthrough - dialsquare1886
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22507512

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Havoc
We might as well drop the whole ?G classification. Since the US carriers
started branding stuff 4G that wasn't anywhere close to spec its been a free
for all.

Marketing aside, the tech might have merit in its own right though. I think
the Ka band isn't available for use in my country though...

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sp332
4G actually means something, it's just not _enforceable_. The trouble is, the
trademark was not acquired in time before it became a "generic term" which
means anyone can call anything 4G.

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Havoc
>4G actually means something, it's just not enforceable.

So? Its still entirely dead. More than that...they falsely claimed 4G and made
millions off it. Yes its still means something from a technical point of view,
but the concept in its true form is dead to the world - though very
profitable.

>the trademark was not acquired in time

How do you propose trademarking a two character term that refers to a multiple
of the gravitational constant? (It doesn't but in a courtroom many things are
possible...)

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sp332
Trademarks are registered for specific classes of goods and services, and
don't apply outside of that class. That's why Apple could have a computer
called a Macintosh even though McIntosh was already a registered trademark for
a kind of apple. Also why they could use the term "Apple" without infringing
the Apple Corps record group's trademark - until they started selling iPods.

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commiebob
In other news, 5G users can now burn through their data cap in under 10
seconds!

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Retric
Data cap's are indirectly related to transmission speeds so you may always be
able to burn though the data cap in under 10 seconds, but competition will
still slowly raise the cap as technology improves.

IMO, the current 2+GB caps are not that bad, raise that to 20GB and you can
watch a fair amount of hulu for example (~50+hours) without a problem.

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dagw
_competition will still slowly raise the cap as technology improves._

Has not been my experience at all here in Sweden. Data caps have been lowered
across the board over the past year as data speeds and availability has
improved.

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freehunter
That's been my experience in the US as well. On EDGE/EVDO or even early days
of 3G, unlimited plans were extremely common and fairly cheap. When 3G became
more established and 4G/LTE started rolling out, 2GB is now the normal with
massive increases in prices as you add more ($10/GB is common).

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sp332
I thought 28 GHz signals would be stopped by relatively small obstacles (thin
walls). It's not a matter of detection; the signal is absorbed and there is
none left to detect on the other side. How could they overcome this with an
antenna array?

Edit: According to <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ka_band> this band is used
for satellite communications, but it very susceptible to attenuation in rain.
So it's very cool that a new antenna tech could improve on satellite
downlinks, but it still doesn't seem practical for a cell phone.

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hexedpackets
Absorption is directly correlated with frequency, yes. Their 2km mile is
probably a lab condition free-space number which will never even come close to
being reached in the real world, especially in urban areas.

This could be useful to a telecom if they implement an expensive design that
uses obstructions to their advantage. Essentially blast the radio waves down
streets as if they are isolated tunnels. That would reduce interference to
almost nothing, but require many more access points than they currently have.
They would also still have the problem of penetration indoors.

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whyrusleeping
Correct me if i'm wrong, but wasn't 4G supposed to be 1Gbit/s?

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NegativeK
1Gbit/s stationary, 100Mbit/s when moving.

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dhughes
That's good to know I just assumed transmission speeds always meant while
moving since it is a phone, I never even thought it meant when stationary.

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kalleboo
With HSDPA and 4G a lot of people are using it to replace their home internet
(not so much in the US, but elsewhere it's a big thing). Hence the current
capacity crunch mentioned in the article

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pieter
All these faster speeds won't do anything really for heavily populated areas.
The most important thing is total available bandwidth (bytes/sec/hz), and it's
unclear how better that will get. LTE itself doesn't improve a lot over 3G
techniques, the thing that's making LTE faster in saturated conditions right
now is that there's just more bandwidth compared to 3G.

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kalleboo
> "In my opinion 4G achieves a decent speed and what we need to do is crack
> the capacity crunch we are facing."

Translation: "The theoretical numbers we sold LTE with are a good target,
maybe this technology lets us deliver that in the real world to all the users
who want it."

From what I can tell, this technology isn't about making spectrum more
efficient, but opening up new parts of the spectrum (10+GHz) that weren't
usable before. edit: nice map of radio spectrum. Being able to use 28GHz seems
like a massive leap. [http://www.telecomcircle.com/wp-
content/uploads/2009/11/Spec...](http://www.telecomcircle.com/wp-
content/uploads/2009/11/Spectrum-Map.png)

The short-term solution is to open up more spectrum to mobile use, but things
are looking pretty congested.
<http://siliconangle.com/files/2011/03/spectrum_map1.jpg>

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soperj
But I thought Samsung didn't innovate?

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mwfunk
Well, if you read the article, it's not actually a Samsung thing. This is
university research that was partially funded by a grant from Samsung among
others.

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soperj
I did read the article. The University research partially funded by Samsung is
completely seperate from this announcement. Thanks though.

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mmahemoff
Reminds me of the 5-blade razor story, from parody to reality.

<http://boingboing.net/2005/09/14/gillettes-5blade-raz.html>

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gcb0
I honestly have a hard time wanting more than 3G at any time.

if anything, i'd like better latency and coverage.

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msh
my LTE connection got much better latency than 3g on the same carrier (maybe
around 15-25 ms less)

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jlarsson
Ericsson did an LTE-Advanced demo reaching around 950Mbps from a moving van
almost 2 years ago ...

