
From dial-up to 5G: logging on to the internet - c89X
https://qz.com/1705375/a-complete-guide-to-the-evolution-of-the-internet/
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gandalfian
In the UK unlimited data Sims (1000GB fup) for £20 a month are starting to be
used for home broadband. 30-100mbs speeds are typical on 4g. The landline
network is just starting to hollow out. It's unsettling.

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gorgoiler
What do you mean when you say you find it unsettling?

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gandalfian
Change I guess. If enough people give up their landlines the economics of it
will alter and the rest of us will be forced to follow whether our choice or
not. Perhaps 5g won't have enough bandwidth for everyone at once. Still
perhaps it will be better, certainly different.

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ubittibu
I have already read about it in other 5g presentations, and I still don’t get
why should 5g bring more “virtual presence”. Wouldn’t a fiber optic connection
be always faster since it has one less medium to pass? Also, reliability, if
I’d need a surgical operation, or to make an important business conference, I
would prefer it to be made on a fixed line connection, than over the air. Why
do they always insist on this thing about 5g?

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tempestn
> According to a recent consumer report (pdf) commissioned by networking
> hardware company Ericsson, the average smartphone owner in the US currently
> uses around 8GB of data each month.

Whaaaat? I figured that must include Wifi so I looked at the PDF, and
no—apparently that's the actual mobile data usage. It's a self-reported
survey, but still. Up here in Canada I have a 10GB plan which is more than
anyone else I know, and is way, way more than I generally use. The only time
I've ever come close is when I've been on vacation and done a bunch of
tethering.

I'm not surprised that some people use 8GB per month, but I find it very hard
to believe that's anywhere close to a national average, unless usage in the US
is dramatically different than in Canada. (I know our cell plans are more
expensive so it's probably _somewhat_ different, but that much?)

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adventured
Everybody I know in the US - mostly non tech people - uses a lot of mobile
data now, largely consisting of stray video streaming. 8gb of monthly usage
seems very low compared to what I'm seeing normal people use now.

At a Thanksgiving thing on Sunday a family member was streaming an NFL game on
his phone. He has an unlimited data plan with AT&T, but regardless you can
imagine the data usage for that HD stream over an hour. That's typical usage
now in my observation.

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tempestn
Huh, interesting. I'd never even heard of an "unlimited" mobile data plan.
Just did some research and it appears a few of our carriers just released
nominally unlimited plans for the first time this year. However, they still
have a data cap (10-50GB usually, depending on the plan), after which it's
capped at 512kbps. So not really unlimited. These plans also _start_ at
$75/month (or like 55 USD).

I don't envy your politics, but I envy your mobile data plans.

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adventured
Yeah naturally it's not unlimited, there's no such thing, it's always a
marketing gimmick with fine print when a service provider uses that. You're
going to hit a limit one way or another.

T-Mobile as an example, has a four line plan at $35 per line avg, with
"unlimited" data, with this note:

"During congestion, the small fraction of customers using >50GB/mo. may notice
reduced speeds."

I've never used T-Mobile, so I don't know what kind of wall you realistically
hit with them at that point.

What I've seen in the US over the last few years is that people seem to have
shifted heavily away from the old expensive cable & DirecTV plans and moved
some of that expenditure over to streaming services (cheaper) and more
expensive higher limit mobile data plans. Which makes sense given what
consumers are most often using these days.

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tempestn
Of course nothing is truly unlimited. Still, I took a look at some of the US
plans (AT&T etc.) and they're definitely better than what we get. The lowest
ones start to throttle at 50GB, vs 10 for ours, and even the ones that don't
throttle until 100 are cheaper than the 10GB ones here. To me it's a lot more
reasonable to call something that may be throttled over 50 or 100GB
"unlimited" vs something that will always be throttled (and to 512kbps!) at
10GB.

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milankragujevic
Is LTE in US really just 25Mbps?

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repsak
Although the theoretical limit is higher I think 25 mbps ± a few is what you
can expect in most of the world.

Here are some speed tests by country
[https://www.opensignal.com/reports/2018/02/state-of-
lte](https://www.opensignal.com/reports/2018/02/state-of-lte)

~~~
milankragujevic
Erm,

the average results are off for Serbia. Our regulatory body for electronic
communications does mandatory speed and quality testing for 4G networks of all
3 cell providers, and the results:

[http://benchmark.ratel.rs/public/lp2018/src/measurement-
scop...](http://benchmark.ratel.rs/public/lp2018/src/measurement-
scope/fig-18-fdtt-http-dl-throughputs.png)

Show that the maximum speed is 90 Mb/s and minimum speed is ~40-50 Mb/s. This
is a chart for big cities, however, here are real-life some results:

[https://imgur.com/a/LUyJlME](https://imgur.com/a/LUyJlME)

