
The rational exuberance of 5G - davidiach
https://www.bell-labs.com/var/articles/rational-exuberance-5G/
======
nfriedly
4G is fast enough for me right now. My problem is the ridiculous pricing of
wireless data. In ideal circumstances, I can hit nearly 75mb/s over LTE... but
that just means that I could burn up my entire 3GB allotment in under 6
minutes. At $15 for the next 3 gigs, my marginal cost is nearly $1/minute for
full-speed 4G data.

~~~
pkaye
I doubt wireless data will get really cheap give than wireless bandwidth has a
physical limit. There is only so much capacity and the infrastructure is not
cheap so providers need enough customer to subscribe to pay for it. That means
oversubscribing customers or throttling in some manner. Ask yourself if you
would prefer 75mb/s for burst use vs 75kb/s sustained use?

~~~
norea-armozel
The reality is the scarcity of bandwidth is minimal because the infrastructure
itself gets cheaper the more customers you have. So adding a new tower or just
adding more hardware to existing towers is a fixed cost which it's effects go
down with the number of paying customers. This is classic economies of scale
working in the favor of the Telcos they just don't want to admit it.

~~~
rayiner
"Economies of scale" means that your per-customer costs go down as you get
more customers.[1]

Cellular deployment has almost no economies of scale. Deploying a new cell
tower costs the same whether you already have 10 towers or 100. Meanwhile,
just a handful of users can saturate a tower and/or its backhaul, so more
customers requires smaller cells and more towers.

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

~~~
Retric
Most towers peak below 50% utilization as bandwidth decreases with range. So,
your average cost drops.

Put another way, to have good coverage and 1 customer would be ridiculously
expensive. There are always going to be areas with few customers. You add
towers in areas with lot's of customers.

~~~
rayiner
Your average cost only drops over a relatively narrow range: from where N
towers is enough to support your users to where N+1 towers are necessary.
After N is big enough to cover your area, cost still goes up basically
linearly with the number of users (just in a saw-tooth fashion rather than a
straight line).

It's totally unlike the costs of any service with real economics of scale,
such as software.

~~~
Retric
Your thinking in terms of a small coverage area. Networks needs to be
nationwide and users are not limited to a single tower.

As density increases infrastructure can more closely map to usage.

Net effect if 50 million people take X towers then 100 million people take
less than 2x towers.

------
petra
I don't buy this hype about so much demand and applications. Why ?

1\. It won't really reduce costs. Why? Because 3-5ghz 5G offer similar
spectrum efficiency to current methods while on the other hand mmWave(20+ghz),
which do offer tons of spectrum, don't penetrate building, and attenuate
rapidly in air, so you'll need more base stations.

2\. Users have shown they aren't willing to pay more wireless. And for most
things consumers do like VR and 360 video etc, wifi is fine and cheaper.

3.There are other good methods for the internet of things, and 5G is too late
for that anyway.

So that leaves the realistic use cases as cars(but isn't it too early? ). and
maybe VR(although we're very far from appealing VR services which users will
pay $60+/month for, and we probably need for wifi confined AR to be a thing
first ).

And on top of that the question remains - could we improve 4G enough, without
needing to deploy all new hardware?

~~~
zanny
On top of all of that 4G is still so data-restricted you cannot do anything
with it that the speed was meant for. The cost of streaming a blu-ray quality
film over 4G on many carriers can cost you tens of dollars alone.

I agree, and would rather see ubiquitous and cheap 4G before anyone talks
about 5G. I think 4G already has the potential to eliminate the vast majority
of wired to the home cable Internet service given its rates, the only downside
is the extreme spectrum crunch and the lack of viable open bands to use to
provide Internet to everyone.

~~~
Ntrails
> _The cost of streaming a blu-ray quality film over 4G on many carriers can
> cost you tens of dollars alone._

In the UK this is simply not the case. I have unlimited 4g connection, and I
had unlimited 3g before that. In fact, the 3g was my _only_ internet for a
long time via tethering. It was good enough to play TF2, and could easily
download 20gig games overnight via steam etc.

I assume somewhere there is a fair use policy - but if i've never hit it I
reckon it's doing a pretty good job of only hitting abusive use.

5g isn't going to solve the problem of US pricing being shit.

~~~
topbanana
These deals don't exist any more. Trust me, I've looked!

~~~
saulr
They definitely do - I signed up to one the other week.

Three do "all-you-can-eat" 4G data + 200 minutes = £23/month (50% off first 6
months)

------
JBiserkov
Off topic, but I thought AT&T still owned Bell Labs. It seems I missed the
last 20 years in that regard:

In 1996, AT&T spun off Bell Laboratories, along with most of its equipment
manufacturing business, into a new company named Lucent Technologies.

In April 2006, Bell Laboratories' parent company, Lucent Technologies, signed
a merger agreement with Alcatel.

On April 15, 2015, Nokia agreed to acquire Alcatel-Lucent, the Bell Labs'
parent company, in a share exchange worth $16.6 billion.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_Bell_Labs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_Bell_Labs)

~~~
pbarnes_1
Yeah this was the most interesting part of the blog post -- knowing that Nokia
owns Bell Labs! :D

------
prth
I have one question regarding the statement:

 _" the cloud infrastructure cannot be more than 100km from the end device
consuming the application, due to the finite speed of light, which can only
traverse ~100km (round trip) in the 1 ms that is available for the networking
portion ..."_

Since light would traverse ~299km in 1ms, would the max distance of the cloud
architecture be ~149.9km - assuming we do not take into account any additional
processing and response times?

Edit: The author was using the speed of light in current-day fibre-optics as
an estimation (~213km in 1ms, a reduction of about 30% from vacuum). Relevant
-
[http://www.nature.com/nphoton/journal/v7/n4/full/nphoton.201...](http://www.nature.com/nphoton/journal/v7/n4/full/nphoton.2013.45.html)

~~~
overlordalex
Typically the speed of light in copper/fibre is about 2/3rds of lights speed
in a vacuum. Hence the discrepancy.

~~~
samdoidge
_Typically the speed of light in copper /fibre is about 2/3rds of lights speed
in a vacuum_

Does light travel through copper?

~~~
dest
Both light (air, fiber) and electricity (copper) lead to a propagating
electromagnetic field.

------
Hunnert
"In conclusion, our analysis of past, current and future trends in technology
and network evolution, suggests that the increased momentum we are seeing
around 5G network deployments relative to prior eras is the result of a
coincidence of prevailing winds of both technological and business (human)
value, and is therefore a case of ‘rational exuberance’ about the future."

I can't agree more! Awesome analysis.

------
Aelinsaar
Great, now there will be an even faster standard to not use because of the
price. A price set by thieving, skiving, miserable, lying monopolists.

------
qq66
I have a 22.5 GB data plan and I burn through the whole thing every month on
LTE, without really watching movies or anything over wireless data (I don't
turn on WiFi at any time, because my LTE latency and bandwidth is better than
my home and work WiFi). The speed of the network isn't my constraint.

------
tmaly
I would like to see more 4G build out first. As others have mentioned, some
carriers still have data caps at the 4G level.

So we are not really seeing the full potential of 4G at this point.

------
TorKlingberg
Still missing: any kind of technical protocol spec for 5G. It is still just a
mad scramble to claim the name.

~~~
iheartmemcache
3GPP (not to be confused with the old tech 3G, this is a consortium sort of
like the W3C for the web or the ISO for ...tons of stuff) are the defacto
group who meets up and agrees on what gets done. They meet up and agree upon
standards every so often as described here[1] (release 8 and 9 delineating
LTE, LTE-A, and the transitional 3G -> LTE stuff, along with tons of other
stuff).

Releases 13 and 14 standardized 5G[2] earlier this year. Here's the set of
documents that I'm pretty sure shouldn't be public (you typically have to be a
member to get access). Bad sysadmins, disable DirectoryIndexes ! The R13 and
R14 zips have quite a bit of descriptive content. Here's the marketing
mumbojumbo stuff, for completeness[3].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTE_(telecommunication)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTE_\(telecommunication\))

[2]
[http://www.3gpp.org/ftp/Information/WORK_PLAN/Description_Re...](http://www.3gpp.org/ftp/Information/WORK_PLAN/Description_Releases/)

[3]
[http://www.4gamericas.org/files/3714/4224/8256/Executive_Sum...](http://www.4gamericas.org/files/3714/4224/8256/Executive_Summary_3GPP_Release_13_final.pdf)

------
ProxCoques
At least in terms of its effects on network speed, latency and reliability to
mobile devices, I don't expect 5G to deliver anything like the hype it's
getting.

Having witnessed the roll-out of 2G, 3G and 4G over the last 15 years in the
UK, with each one being as disappointing, over-promised and patchy as the one
before it, I'm hoping to be surprised. But I'm not holding my breath.

I have a phone that has been downgraded to 3G only because my provider's 4G is
actually slower.

~~~
kbart
UK is infamous for its overcrowded networks and sloppy telecoms, so that's not
a problem of the technology itself. I have seen better Internet/cell networks
in some 3rd world countries than UK.. In my country, there's a pretty big
difference between 3G and 4G (and currently used 4.5G), where ~350 Mbps is an
actual speed.

~~~
Symbiote
English people are infamous for grumbling...

Akamai's State of the Internet, released yesterday, puts the UK in the lead
for mobile data speeds with an average speed of 28Mb/s, followed by Belgium,
with 19Mb/s.

[http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/29/12056760/uk-fastest-
mobile...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/29/12056760/uk-fastest-mobile-
internet-us-lags-behind-akamai-report)

[https://www.akamai.com/us/en/our-thinking/state-of-the-
inter...](https://www.akamai.com/us/en/our-thinking/state-of-the-internet-
report/) (Downloading requires an email, but it wasn't verified.)

~~~
kbart
Somewhat strange methodology is used there:

 _" speeds can be altered by mobile networks' use of proxies, meaning that the
speeds recorded will be between those proxies and Akamai's servers, rather
than between the servers and the actual mobile devices themselves."_

For users end mile usually matters the most and this table doesn't count for
that, so it doesn't reflect the actual user experience. Sounds more like PR
stuff than an actual test.

------
JumpCrisscross
Could Musk et al's satellite Internet plans [1] ever compete with terrestrial
Internet?

[1] [http://motherboard.vice.com/read/elon-musk-admits-
satellite-...](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/elon-musk-admits-satellite-
internet-plan-could-over-extend-spacex)

~~~
kozak
Latency will always be inferior in satellite links.

~~~
jewel
You're thinking of traditional large satellites in geosynchronous orbit, which
is 35 km above the surface (ping time of about 250 ms). SpaceX's plan is to
put 4,000 small satellites in low-earth orbit, 625 km up. That gives a ping
time of about 4 ms to the satellite.

SpaceX can do this far cheaper than others because they can launch the
satellites for "free" as part of launches that are happening anyway.

~~~
vardump
> which is 35 km above the surface (ping time of about 250 ms)

Surely you mean 35000 km?

~~~
larrypress
Actually, they are planning on a low-Earth orbit at around 1100 km, which will
require a constellation of satellites to maintain ubiquitous coverage. That
will cut latency -- particularly on long routes since it will cut the number
hops between hosts, see: [http://cis471.blogspot.com/2014/11/elon-musk-and-
greg-wylers...](http://cis471.blogspot.com/2014/11/elon-musk-and-greg-wylers-
plan-for.html)

------
cwe
As someone still only dreaming of gigabit speeds, I'm having a hard time
conceptualizing what that kind of speed can enable. Higher resolution
video/VR, sure, but is there more? Is there a game changing use case that
opens up when that kind of speed is available everywhere?

~~~
vardump
When you have connectivity at home you can keep all of your data at your
fingertips at all time. Even if it's more than you can feasibly store in
consumer cloud services.

You can VPN home and use remote desktop at near local performance.

You don't need to plan your data usage. Worry whether you have the files with
you.

At least that's what it means for me.

~~~
sliverstorm
We've already got plenty of bandwidth for remote desktop, latency is usually
the remaining problem.

~~~
vardump
Yeah, latency is the issue.

I have fiber at home. About 50/50 Mbps goodput and 15 ms latency to home VPN
using 4G. Remote desktop is pretty fluid. While I can notice the extra
latency, it's not a problem in any way. For example Bluetooth mouse latency is
worse.

Even full screen WebGL/CSS3/whatever web apps and full screen web video work
well.

Some tips: Don't use _any_ TCP based tunneling or VPN solution, like ssh or
OpenVPN over TCP. They're bad for interactive use.

Measure, mobile devices have different 4G performance profiles, and that
includes latency. You can have up to about 5 ms latency difference between a
new flagship model and some low end 4G phone.

Desktop applications other than the browser tend to be less demanding.

Although games are not my thing, playing PS4 games remotely works also very
nicely on a Macbook over 4G. Just need to have a PS4 controller and a USB
cable. It just works. Very near to local performance. There's some kind of NAT
traversal, so you don't necessarily even need to use VPN.

------
davesque
I'd say that, in the US, exuberance for 5G _is_ irrational since the pricing
for cellular internet is ridiculous. In the mean time, we have T-Mobile's CEO
calling his customers "data thieves" for rebelling against unfair rates.

------
Qantourisc
Yep speeds on Cellphones can be crazy fast, I was testing a WIFI connection
speed with a cellphone. Data was quite consistent ... until I noticed I was on
4G. Only to get lower results when I turned 4G off (the WIFI there is slower).

~~~
ksec
Same experience as well, 4G has consistently been better then my WiFi
connection. And even if i had perfect WiFi Connection i was still limited by
Internet connection speed. Which most WiFi Connection spot, even at home, are
slower then 4G.

~~~
dingo_bat
I must say I have had the opposite experience. My home wifi provides a
consistent ~100Mbps unless I go to the other end of my apartment. 4G, where
the signal is good, goes up to ~20Mbps.

------
randiantech
Offtopic, but the header of the page makes doc hard to read.

------
mschuster91
What many people who criticize the high data fees that carriers charge often
forget, esp. in Germany: in contrast to highly rural US (where you need LOTS
of towers to serve few people) it's not about the infrastructure costs in
Germany, and it's also not about the profits of shareholders, at least not
much.

Problem was when former finance minister Hans Eichel decided to reduce the
German state debts in 2000... he did so by auctioning off the UMTS
frequencies, for in total 50.000.000.000 €. That's 625€ per German citizen
that first have to be paid off before the network provider makes a profit on
that user. Also, the provider has to pay interest on the debts (ECB interbank
rate at the time was 4.5%), and the infrastructure had to be built, maintained
and upgraded (electricity costs, networking termination fees, personnel,
construction workers, materials, ...); this in turn moves the "profitability
point" per customer waaay behind.

In essence, Eichel screwed over us Germans by selling us "reduced state debt"
when all we got was a debt-shift from the state to private entities, and we
still suffer to this day from the highest data prices in Europe.

------
mtgx
If only 5G brought end-to-end encrypted calls and texts, too. We're going to
live through another decade of poorly encrypted wireless communications.

~~~
selectodude
Seeing as 5G (and 4G before it) are both packet switched networks, you can
encrypt the things you do however you want.

~~~
doctorshady
Seeing as we've been encrypting calls with circuit switched technologies for
years, it wouldn't really matter one way or the other.

------
SCdF
I'm going to do that lazy contribution thing you do on HN, where you ignore
the thrust of the piece and instead complain about the web experience.

[https://imgur.com/kfbbZo2](https://imgur.com/kfbbZo2)

Bell labs are you for real?

~~~
Olap84
Firefox reader mode. It fixes the web, and it makes me slightly sad.

~~~
franciscop
I am seriously thinking of making a small web that parses HN and shows the
links in a decent way and when clicking something it opens it with automatic
styles like Firefox reader mode. The % of decent (as in readable) articles /
articles in HN is too low, and Firefox reader mode fixes them all (so far 100%
correct for me after years).

~~~
CoolGuySteve
Someone already beat you to it: [https://hn.premii.com](https://hn.premii.com)

~~~
franciscop
That is... awesome! thank you so much

~~~
ihsw
The content loads from his API rather than the website itself, and also there
is an Android app made by him.

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.premii.hn](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.premii.hn)

I have noticed that some websites are actively obfuscating the content on
their page to prevent it being loaded by content-viewers (like the website or
the app).

I've had to email him to fix an issue in the app and he pushed a change to the
Play store fairly quickly.

