
No “Material Difference Between 5G and LTE” - casca
http://wirelessone.news/10-r/1025-no-material-difference-between-5g-lte
======
jupp0r
> 5G's main application around the world will be more capacity, a good thing
> for telcos

This _is_ important for consumers. When did you last get 100Mbit+ speeds with
4G? In real world scenarios, the number of people in a cell (due to limited
spectrum bandwidth) limits 4G speeds, not protocol maximums. My understanding
of 5G is that bandwidth can be used much more efficiently (both by being able
to allocate less in idle situations and by spatial multiplexing), benefitting
telcos and customers both.

~~~
staplers

      When did you last get 100Mbit+ speeds with 4G?
    

In a real world scenario, I would max out my data cap in 5 minutes.. Telcos
will never give up their guaranteed profits by throttling speeds even with
unlimited speed/capacity.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _I would max out my data cap in 5 minutes_

Counterargument: there are fundamental reasons for data caps. To provide
service at a high speed to lots of people at a reasonable price, edge-case
data users must be throttled. Increasing capacity reduces the number of users
who must be throttled.

~~~
wlesieutre
Then they should apply caps or throttling during hours when capacity is a
concern and let me download 100 GB of games from Steam between 4 and 7 AM when
the Netflix watchers have gone to bed.

~~~
Stratoscope
That's a bit like how T-Mobile does it. You get 50GB/month that is always at
full speed, and then after that you get deprioritized if you're on a busy
tower.

So it doesn't depend on time of day, but how many other customers are sharing
your tower.

[https://www.t-mobile.com/customer/mydatausage.html](https://www.t-mobile.com/customer/mydatausage.html)

> Data prioritization will only be noticeable when you access a congested
> tower and have used over 50GB of data in a particular billing cycle. You
> will continue to get unlimited high speed data on your smartphone when you
> aren’t accessing a congested tower. In that way it’s different from data
> throttling, which slows you down for the remainder of your bill cycle
> regardless of network conditions, all the time.

~~~
Dylan16807
That's tantalizingly close, but the goal is a plan that lets you use low-
priority downloads to _avoid_ using up your full-speed data allowance.

~~~
wlesieutre
Yeah, there are two aspects that keep me from ditching Comcast at my
apartment. Burning through the data limit on bulk downloads that I'm happy to
run overnight when it's not congested, and ping, which is the harder one to
fix. But it's not _that_ bad on T-mobile, so if it weren't for the data
allowance problem I might be willing to suck it up.

------
fredliu
When "4G" was initially commercialized, one could have claimed it has No
"Material Difference Between 3G and 4G". HSPA(+) was just faster 3G, already
reaching lower end of 4G bandwidth requirement, minimally qualifiable as 4G.
But has 4G/LTE eventually turned out to be "one generation" better than 3G?
Hell yeah. Same thing here for 4G-5G transition. The real deal is when
milimeter wave got massively deployed and commercialized.

~~~
tracker1
Is the coverage/range and rate of speed at range much better for 5G vs.
4G/LTE? I don't think most people need (much) more speed over wireless so much
as better/more coverage and better speed at lower signal.

Also, it's about relative cost... what about data caps? If they intend to
compete with wired in home connections for things like set top (online
streaming), they'll need a compelling story, and not running out of your
allotment or being throttled after watching a couple 4K movies in the evening
less than a week into your billing cycle.

~~~
fredliu
The coverage/range of 5G depends on the scale of deployment, and the
environment of the deployment (e.g. urban with lots of tall buildings, vs
rural), assuming we are talking about mmw type of 5G not LTE+ type of 5G.

Due to higher frequency, 5G might actually have a disadvantage in range for a
single tower, in dense urban environment due to weaker penetration. But it
could be compensated by deploying more towers, at more strategic locations.
The value proposition is that the gain in speed and delay would be well worth
it.

Weak penetration is still a problem for long range open field 5G
communication, but due to different factors like fog, weather conditions, etc.

Regarding data caps, I view it as more of a business model question, less
related to the technical capabilities of 4G vs 5G.

------
joezydeco
_5G 's main application around the world will be more capacity, a good thing
for telcos_

Or companies that want to break the residential broadband monopoly in a local
area. Personally, I'm counting on TMO to kick Comcast's ass in my town. 5G
would be a complete success if that happens.

~~~
a_imho
_I 'm counting on TMO to kick Comcast's ass in my town_

Is Comcast really that bad? In my admittedly European experience all the
service providers are (dis)functional and greedy pretty much to the same
degree, none of them are good guys.

~~~
mikeash
I was a Comcast customer for years. The service was unreliable. The phone
support was useless and would, for example, ask me to reboot my computer when
my modem was clearly failing to communicate with their equipment. Their techs
would routinely arrive an hour or two late when they already had a four-hour
window to hit, and not even call to tell me they would be late. One of them
replaced something in an outside box and then just left, leaving two equipment
boxes hanging open and scraps of cable lying on the ground.

I now have Verizon and the difference is vast. The service has gone down twice
in five years. When I called it in, I was immediately connected to someone who
knew what DHCP meant. They’re not perfect but they’re a lot better.

~~~
ddoolin
Ha, I had the same problem with Time Warner re: leaving boxes open and cables
laying around. In that case, they never told me they had come and I waited
nearly a week (they said they had to come put more cable down to the end of my
street [I lived on the end] or something) before calling to see when they were
going to come. Come to find, they had come days prior and never finished the
job, leaving the box open and the work unfinished. I had to finish it myself.

All of these traditional telcos are garbage and their ratings in multiple
arenas showcase that very clearly.

------
dgllghr
I've heard that 5G will be especially beneficial to rural areas, where it will
have the bandwidth, speed, and coverage capability to replace broadband, DSL,
and satellite. Can someone with industry knowledge confirm whether this is
true?

~~~
LyalinDotCom
I am ashamed of my country (America) that we as a nation, federally speaking,
don't provide the funding needed to empower everyone in rural areas with high
speed internet as a right. The Internet powers so many important things today
and if we're talking about "thousands of dollars per household" it is totally
doable.

~~~
dbatten
Why should those of us who don't choose to live in the country have to
subsidize the lifestyle choices of those that _do_ choose to live in the
country?

And, before you go thinking I'm just the radical conservative, recognize that
this cuts both ways. I'm also of the opinion that we shouldn't be subsidizing
people's high-carbon lifestyles by making roads free, for example.

~~~
jotm
Well, you're subsidizing wars in some faraway lands, so why not Internet at
home.

~~~
topranks
That's a facetious argument.

"Who cares if the govt wastes more money because they already waste money?"

------
daveburstein
Author Here to clarify The article is comparing today's LTE and 5G, deploying
in 2018-2019. Is there really a big difference to the consumer between 100-400
meg real speeds (LTE) and 5G at 200 -600 meg mostly? In what application?
Latency in today's equipment from Ericsson and Huawei for either is 5-15
milliseconds.

Only 10-20% of the "5G" will be the 1 gig millimeter wave until after 2020.
Even then, what's the practical difference for most people between 150
megabits and 900 megabits?

Some details: Most LTE going in today is 100-400 meg real with a decent
connection, 600-900 meg peak. (3 or 4 CA, 4x4 MIMO.) 2) 80-90% of the "5G" in
the world through 2020 will be midband 3.5 GHz 200-600 meg. Only a small
fraction will be the true 1 gig millimeter wave. 3) Latency on either most
likely 5-15 milliseconds. (The difference in Ericsson equipment is 1-2 ms.)

email me, daveb@dslprime.com for references to primary sources. Don't believe
the hype. 5G millimeter wave is planned for 1-4 ms URLLC, but not until
2022-2025. It can go 10-20 gigabits in the lab today, but I don't know any
carrier designing for more than 1 gig to a user in the next 5 years.

------
Nokinside
It's excepted for South Korea, Japan and China take the lead in adoption and
applications. US customers might not be not priority, because US consumers
have have very low bandwidth caps, lets wait and see.

I think many people underestimate the ambition of 5G and assume that 5G is
just 4G with more bandwidth.

Big advantage of 5G over 4G is that it can _also_ use unlicensed spectrum.
This enables more use cases like enhanced mobile broadbands, device-to-device
mesh networks, private 5G networks, etc.

5G is designed to use wifi when available. It's more than just new cellular
radio interface and antennas (NR part). 5G connection can use 5G/LTE/WiFi
simultaneously. Gibabit LTE can be used as an anchor for 5G functionality even
when 5G network is not available. In this sense 5G NR is not a priority. 5G NR
first arrives in the most congested areas to increase the bandwidth. If you
have only LTE, you may not get as much as those with 5G phones in some
concerts and crowded events.

Among the first uses of 5G NG are base stations companies build for
themselves. Like networks in factories and other locations using unlicensed 60
GHz band. It looks like Chinese are jumping into industrial use of 5G very
rapidly. They are already ahead of the schedule. Consumer applications will
follow.

~~~
topranks
What advantages are there to using 5G on unlicensed spectrum vs WiFi.

Seems to be there is a whole lot more complexity doing 5G, would 802.1ax with
OFDMA sub-channels not be a better way to use that spectrum?

------
awill
Innovation is great. But with more carriers throttling after a few GBs,
there's no customer value yet. What's the value in getting 1Gbs when my plan
throttles after 5GB. That's 40 seconds before I'd be throttled for the rest of
the month.

~~~
bluGill
Carriers will be able to throttle at higher and higher GBs, so it is long term
value.

------
msoad
I thought the point of "Long Term Evolution (LTE)" was not to have this "next
generation" thing all over again!

~~~
topranks
It was and is.

5G is basically a marketing term for a global population used to cell networks
changing "generation" every few years.

5G improves and augments the existing LTE standards, it doesn't throw them all
out and start from scratch.

------
karlkfi
> Connected cars are already on the road, using lidar & radar, not the phone
> network. Xu points out, “even today we have the technology that can support
> autonomous driving”.

This point is silly.

Lidar and radar don't replace high bandwidth internet on a self-driving car.
The beefy super computer in the trunk is trying to replace the cloud compute
processing that is inaccessible because there's not enough low latency,
reliable bandwidth available to stream a dozen camera, lidar, radar, and IR
feeds over the internet for remote processing.

Self driving right now requires either precision 3D mapping and local
processing of a huge amount of data from multiple sources OR highway-only
limitations where there are fewer objects to track that all move in
predictable ways. Both of these would be easier and produce better results
with more bandwidth and lower latency.

5G may not be mature enough to make a difference today, but that doesn't mean
connected and self-driving cars aren't a legitimate use case for the
technology and its stated goals.

------
stagger87
I was a little disappointed after looking at the NR spec, it looks like 5G is
mostly a sample rate multiplier on the 30.72MHz clock. It's still OFDM 8x8
MIMO. I'm sure there is some other additions that take advantage/optimize that
additional bandwidth, but it doesn't have the same excitement as going from
CDMA to OFDM did.

------
godelski
This reminds me of when Verizon and Time Warner said their customers don't
want gigabit internet.

------
mhneu
If I understand correctly, the cellular companies do some hairy, hairy
manipulations of TCP in order to preserve data connections across cell towers.

Do we need a better protocol for cell data and would this improve throughput
and latency?

~~~
topranks
Not true.

Your TCP traffic is encapsulated in a GTP tunnel from the head end to the
local tower / aggregation point. The network looks after moving / switching
the endpoint of the tunnel as you move from cell to cell.

Basically all the hard stuff is done to make the tunnel endpoint roam from
cell to cell. Your TCP stream, inside the tunnel, doesn't realise anything is
happening and doesn't need to change in any way to keep working.

------
ksec
I was kind of expecting someone will trim in with proper information and
Engineering prospective. But nearly 150 Comments into it it seems there are
lots of misinformation.

Yes, 5G, which includes 4.9G, or 3GPP Rel 13, 14, 15, will provides lots more
Capacity. I see many saying this is only good for telcos, and 5G will be the
same once everyone moved over. Which is so far from truth.

Your current LTE speed is limited by Telcos capacity. So if you have less
people in your area sharing your bandwith, you are likely to get much higher
speed. So If Telcos improves its capacity, it also means you get higher speed
when you use it since it is less contention. This is of course assuming the
demand stay constant.

And some comments refer to less congested in 5G being the reason, once
everyone moves to 5G it will be the same. This is again false. 5G is more like
an 4G extension, you really dont switch to 5G, at least not in the 3G to 4G
way.

In many developed countries, Smartphone Users has already hit a plateau.
Growth is going to be slow. Massive MIMO, in 4.9G or what ever they decide to
call it, ( likely 5G ) already provides 3x capacity in FDD-LTE environment,
and up to 10x in TDD-LTE. So the network, all of a sudden is capable of
supporting 3x to 10x more users. As we have stated before there aren't that
much user growth anymore, so as a user you now get 3x speed up when Massive
MIMO is deployed in Handset and Cell tower. ( Actually this is over simplify
and it is more then that )

So you ask but that is assuming user are using the same amount of Data. Most
of the Data we use are actually Video, this is especially true on Mobile. We
have HEVC, I doubt it will cut the Data required, but you will have a much
better quality streaming.

All this is 4.9G with Massive MIMO, This is excluding additional capacity with
Small Cell, LTE- LAA. And 5G is actually designed with Massive MIMO in mind,
even more efficient, additional spectrum, even more antenna in Massive MIMO.
It is not too hard to imagine by 2025 we have at least 20x the Capacity then
we have today.

Now can you imagine you spend 20x the time then today watching Video content
in 2025?

Which is one reason why many telcos around the world are already switching to
unlimited*, or priority based access after certain amount of data. And
assuming no additional killer apps for Data usage, Telcos will likely have to
consolidate even further to may be only 3 per region.

------
MichailP
What frequency band will 5G use?

~~~
jlgaddis
> _The primary technologies include: Millimeter wave bands (26, 28, 38, and 60
> GHz) offer performance as high as 20 gigabits per second ... "Low-band 5G"
> and "Mid-band 5G" use frequencies from 600 MHz to 6 GHz, especially 3.5-4.2
> GHz._ [0]

See also "5G NR frequency bands" [1].

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5G](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5G)

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5G_NR_frequency_bands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5G_NR_frequency_bands)

------
k__
Hopefully Germany doesn't f*ck this up again...

~~~
wlesieutre
Context?

~~~
kuschku
During the 2G, 3G and 4G frequency auctions in Germany the prices went
extremely high. As result carriers charge massive prices for data, and there’s
few carriers in the market.

~~~
jeffreyrogers
Hmmm, that's an interesting problem I hadn't thought of with the auctions.
People are going to pay for data pretty much regardless of what it costs
(within reason), so it's economical to buy part of the spectrum assuming you
can pass on the high price to consumers. Typically you think of competition
benefiting consumers, but that's obviously not true in this case.

~~~
kuschku
Exactly, and that's how you end up with paying either 16€/mo for absolutely
unlimited traffic, SMS and voice (plus 50GB tethering), as in Denmark, or
180€/mo for the cheapest contract with unlimited data, as in Germany.

~~~
germanier
You can now get unlimited data for 80€ in Germany (Telekom Magenta Mobil XL)
which is still expensive. If you can live with 1 MBit/s you can use O2 Free
for about 20€.

~~~
kuschku
I could live with 1MBit/s — but not for 20€/month.

------
rajeevk
> _IoT will rarely require speeds more than 100 's of megabits. Most actually
> is kilobits._

This reminds me this famous quote by Bill Gates: "640 kB ought to be enough
for anybody"

~~~
tedsanders
Bill Gates says he never said this. There is no record he ever said this. And
even if he did say it, he almost certainly did not mean it literally.

[https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/09/08/640k-enough/](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/09/08/640k-enough/)

[https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2863/did-
bill-g...](https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2863/did-bill-gates-
say-640k-ought-to-be-enough-for-everyone/2893)

