
5G: if you build it, we will fill it - Doubleguitars
https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2019/1/16/5g-if-you-build-it-we-will-fill-it
======
Animats
There's heavy political hype around "5G".[1] There are claims that it will
matter for self-driving cars (despite Waymo saying they don't need more
bandwidth), medical applications, and "smart energy". All of those are
bullshit.

The "if only we had more detailed maps, self-driving would work" is a fake
argument. Once you have enough info to know where the fixed trouble spots are,
more data will not help you. Trouble comes from unexpected moving objects.

(2004 (not 2005) DARPA Grand Challenge, where everyone did badly. CMU team
tried to do it by manual pre-planning. DARPA gave out the course as a set of
waypoints on a CD 2 hours before the start. CMU had a big trailer full of
people at workstations to plan out the exact path in those two hours, using
high resolution aerial photos. But the USMC Colonel in charge of the event
foiled their scheme. Just before the event, a few of his Marines went out in
the dark and put up some obstacles the vehicle would have to go around. And,
sure enough, the CMU vehicle plowed right into a sheet metal fence and got
stuck.[2])

What we're likely to see is bandwidth that changes drastically as you move.
You'll get great bandwidth with line of sight to a nearby base station, and
then it will drop off drastically as you get further away. That's inherent in
using 26GHz for high bandwidth.

The likely benefit is that it becomes possible to provide enough short-range
bandwidth for many people to get video-rate bandwidth in crowded areas. So
people can watch the game on their phone while in the stadium.

[1] [https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-
blog/technology/420509-wh...](https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-
blog/technology/420509-why-the-5g-race-matters)

[2]
[http://overbot.com/grandchallenge/images/race2004/cmucrash.j...](http://overbot.com/grandchallenge/images/race2004/cmucrash.jpg)

~~~
Dwolb
The bandwidth isn't just for downloading maps to cars.

It's also to enable autonomous vehicles to constantly stream data and video
feeds back to humans who can take over in real time if the car doesn't know
what to do.

~~~
nradov
That's completely unrealistic and unsafe. Even with widespread 5G deployment
the cellular network will still lack the reliability necessary to make real-
time remote driving feasible. When happens when the network drops packets
during a critical maneuver?

Furthermore you can't expect a remote operator to suddenly take over with no
context of preceding events and immediately control the vehicle in a safe
manner. It takes a little time for anyone to understand what's actually going
on.

~~~
griffinkelly
This plays into the density of towers. 5G has a very limited range unlike 4G.
It's going to take years (if not decades) to get to a place where 5G can cover
the entirety of the US.

~~~
nradov
Even if we had 100% 5G coverage it still wouldn't be adequate for a safety
critical system. What happens when the tower fails on a hot day because the
cooling system broke, or a construction crew cuts the backhaul fiber, or the
carrier has an infrastructure failure because someone spoofed their BGP
routes?

If level 4+ autonomous vehicles are ever going to work then at a minimum they
need to be able to operate safely with zero network connectivity.

~~~
vibrato
Imo they need to BE the network

~~~
nradov
Dynamic mesh networks can be a nice supplement but no one has ever
demonstrated large-scale reliable operation with mobile devices. And you can't
always count on having another vehicle in radio range. So turning vehicles
into the network won't make remote control viable.

------
vardump
> Mainly because of this new spectrum, mobile 5G speeds in good conditions
> could be well over 100 megabits/sec and potentially several hundreds
> megabits/sec (mobile speeds of over a gigabit/sec are technically possible
> but unlikely in the real world).

I already see speeds like 200 Mbit/s on 4G in good conditions, sometimes more.
Normal conditions 50-100 Mbit/s. Yeah, your mileage may vary. Those 1.2 Gbit/s
4G cellular modems _do_ deliver. I'd be disappointed if 5G didn't
significantly improve on that in real world.

> 5G is promised to have much better latency than 4G - perhaps 20-30ms in the
> real world, down from 50-60ms for LTE (4G). It’s not clear how visible this
> will be to users.

What? HSDPA "3.5G" was about 50-60 ms. 4G is mostly something like 12-20 ms,
when I've measured the latency. 5G hopefully at least halves that.

Anyways, I do acknowledge 4G performance is _very_ regional. Above just
reflects my experience, what I've been measuring.

~~~
cpach
1.2 Gbit/s 4G cellular modems? Sounds interesting. Do you perhaps ahve any
links to such a product?

~~~
ksec
The latest Qualcomm X24 can do 2Gbps, of course that is assuming your carriers
and everything else aligned perfectly. In reality I am not aware of any
Carriers in the world which has these kind of spectrum ready for 2GBps speed.

~~~
cpach
Cool!

------
nicktelford
This post, and most of the comments here, seem to miss the main selling point
of 5G (at least for consumers): consistency and reliability.

With wireless data connections, you're sharing the medium (and therefore the
bandwidth) with all other users of the same frequencies. This is the reason
that you can have absolutely terrible performance in a densely populated city,
despite having a maximum strength 4G signal. Having the 20+Ghz channels
enables operators to install a large number of micro-cells in these areas.
Even if they don't penetrate walls, moving everyone outdoors on to these cells
free's up the lower-frequency cells for indoor users, substantially reducing
contention.

Another improvement over 4G that hasn't been mentioned by anyone is,
supposedly, that it will significantly reduce latency and interruptions from
moving between cells. This is especially apparent when travelling at speed
(e.g. on a train).

The effect to consumers of both of these is that we'd get much more consistent
performance.

~~~
acdha
At least in the U.S., the real problem is the billing model. Those kind of
incremental improvements will be nice but that doesn’t seem like enough to
justify more than a gradual upgrade since most people won’t see much benefit
other than a few edge cases — how many people are going to buy a new phone so
they can get online slightly faster when their subway car approaches a new
tower?

Every other application, especially the cool ones like AR/VR which do seem
plausible for people dropping a lot of cash, will be constrained by the
enormous markup on data well before it hits the limits of LTE. Fewer
milliseconds on handoff could be nice but it’s hard to think of an application
which can’t buffer but is going to fit within a few GB per month.

~~~
monkeynotes
Yeah, I don't get this either. I live in Canada and mobile data is $$$s. I
don't see the point in more-better-data when we can barely afford to utilize
the current infrastructure. Providers are likely to recover this new
infrastructure cost through price hikes.

I don't give a crap about faster mobile data, I've got a 5GB plan and faster
data just means I could chew through it faster. All of the data heavy
applications I can think of I use almost exclusively on wifi where it's
available.

I think the real sell for 5G is it's capacity to carry thousands of concurrent
connections, allowing for everything to be connected. A true IOT solution
where anything you can think of can connect without congesting towers.

~~~
acdha
Yeah, I get that there are benefits to the providers but it just seems like
it's going to be a tough sell for get a premium from users to pay for it.

------
samcheng
5G seems like a pretty marginal improvement over LTE to me. The improved
latency is nice, but I'm not sure it's worth the many billions of dollars in
hardware alone. The high-frequency stuff would be useful in some situations,
but really overlaps with WiFi in most use cases.

It certainly seems like much less of an improvement than 2G->3G or 3G->4G.

~~~
vardump
Counterintuitively, bandwidth improvements do little to help the vast majority
of people. Except on rare occasions, like when installing apps. Even though
this has been the selling point for ages.

However, latency is a different story. Many (most?) can "feel" improved
latency as better responsiveness, like web page load speed. There's still a
lot of "ping-pong" traffic going on, where latency improvements do make a
difference.

~~~
samcheng
I agree! The latency improvement is the interesting one, but honestly LTE
latency is already pretty good.

I wish there were more efforts behind IOT support, by way of lower-frequency
bandwidth and low-energy radios, maybe even restricted to a simple messaging
protocol. That would open up so many new applications!

~~~
vardump
Ever tried residential fiber optic internet? <1 ms latency. Web pages just pop
on the screen — at least when the server is geographically near. It's
addictive.

Compare it to cable modems with still lowish 5-10 ms latency. Pages load
visibly slower. But you don't mind it _or even notice_ , if you haven't
previously gotten used with the faster option.

So I think I'll always take all of the latency improvements available. The
difference can be substantial even when the starting point is already "pretty
good".

~~~
mehrdadn
How do you even find sites that load fast enough for this difference to
matter? I only know of maybe 1-2 websites that load instantly like that [1].
Everything else seems bottlenecked on the server side (and sometimes the
client).

[https://www.changedetection.com/dirsearch.html](https://www.changedetection.com/dirsearch.html)

------
bigFatPipe
I can’t wait to see what kinds of ads and bloatware 5G enables.

Something tells me the bloated ticks on this dog’s underbelly will be grow
proportionally to the fatness of this new pipe.

------
taneq
Hmm. With all this stuff about the ultra high frequency 5G data not going
through walls, how does it handle bad weather? My phone's already not great if
it's raining heavily. I would hate for my home internet connection to flake
out any time it rains.

~~~
asutekku
It will fall back to 4g so it doesn’t really matter.

~~~
llampx
I'm afraid that 4G will be deprioritized and backhaul removed to favor 5G so
that only people paying more get good performance.

~~~
devereaux
no, 3G will be removed. Too complex.

~~~
kingosticks
Some of that complexity is what allows me to make voice calls when I don't
have any data. Seems worth keeping that over 4G (if we had to choose).

~~~
yaantc
You can have LTE voice even if you've maxed your data cap, from a technical
point of view. For 2G/3G it's true that those standards support pretty
independent CS (voice) and PS (data) connection, so it's natural to decouple
voice and data. For LTE, and also NR, only the PS domain exists. It's still
possible to separate Internet access from voice though, and they are. It's
just done in a different way. 2G/3G/4G support multiple concurrent data
connections, called PDN. Each is like a different IP interface, and some are
terminated on the modem itself and not exposed to the user. In the typical LTE
deployment, you have an IMS PDN for voice signaling and data, an admin PDN for
the remote management of the telco using OMA-DM, and an Internet access PDN
for the end user --- and the only one you'll see. Traffic on those PDN are
fully segregated, and counted separately. So the IMS and Admin PDN traffic do
NOT count as part of your data cap, it's on top.

Thanks to this LTE IMS voice is separated from data, like 3G even if it's done
differently.

Of course, this doesn't apply to OTT voice: that is always in the Internet PDN
and in your data cap.

To get back to 3G, it'll slowly die. Anything you can do on 3G you can do
better on 4G. So operators tend to use their 3G infra to the max, but they
won't upgrade it. It'll be replaced by 4G over time, until they eventually
pull the 3G plug.

~~~
kingosticks
Thanks for the technical reply but I meant for the situations where the
network coverage is poor and you don't have a good enough 4G signal to place
the call. I would fully expect the provider to not include LTE voice in my
data allowance, in the same way they often exclude some streaming/social
network services.

~~~
yaantc
Ok, thanks for the clarification. Even with this new understanding 3G will
eventually go. Coverage depends on several things: 1) deployed infrastructure,
2) frequency used and 3) waveform / standard efficiency.

3G can have a temporary advantage for (1). But as the 3G infra ages, it will
always tend to be replaced by cheaper / more efficient LTE infra as the
existing 3G bands can always be refarmed for LTE. And LTE will make a better
use of the available bandwidth. There are large differences between operators
on the speed of this process, but the trend is universal.

(2) is why 3G was impaired vs 2G: 2G was deployed in low bands (900 MHz for 2G
is very common), while 3G was very often only available in mid-bands (1700+
MHz). The higher the frequency, the more challenging the coverage. So 3G
coverage lagged 2G for a long time, and is still lagging in places (Europe for
example). The situation is different with LTE, due to the digital TV dividend.
This opened low bands for LTE everywhere (700 to 800 MHz, depending on
region). Those bands are even better then the 2G bands. They're not yet fully
deployed everywhere (Europe is lagging), but they eventually will. And when
it's done you can kill 2G and 3G.

For (3) or course, new tech has improvements so 4G is better than 3G and 2G.

When you combine all of this LTE will replace all previous technologies
everywhere, in time. How long it will take will however vary _a lot_ depending
on regions. Europe invested a lot in 3G, and telco there will milk this infra
as long as possible. And because 3G coverage in Europe is not as good as 2G
(see above, bands) 2G will also tend to stay with 3G. Cheap second hand 2G/3G
infra will remain for a long time in developing countries. But in the end 2G
and 3G will go away, it's just a question of time.

On the other hand, 5G will take a lot longer to replace 4G. The big change is
mmWave, but it's for small hotspots. You can have 5G in low bands too, but
then the gain vs 4G is small so I expect operators to take their time to
replace their 4G infra. We'll have 4G for coverage + 5G for dense areas only
for a long time IMHO.

------
sopooneo
I'm already seeing confusion around the name "5G". The issue is that new dual
band wifi routers broadcast at both 2.4GHz (the old way) and 5.x-5.3GHz (the
new option). And they're calling that new option "5G wifi". Adding to the
confusion are some people bringing up the idea that "5g Cellular data" with
obviate the need for home wifi at all.

Further still, the new "5g Cellular" standard can include use of the 5GHz
frequency band.

Actually, in writing this, I'm realizing I myself may have some understanding
incorrect. So please correct me if you know better.

------
blhack
This all seems completely irrelevant when wireless ISPs have somehow trained
users that they should be paying per gigabyte.

In fact: I don't want faster speeds. Give me much, much slower speeds so that
instagram doesn't autoplay video and vampire all of my mobile data plan.

------
kristiandupont
>much higher radio frequencies (over 20 GHz, AKA millimeter wave or ‘mmWave’)

Can anyone comment on whether this might have any effect on us? It makes me a
bit anxious to see the huge list of wifi networks available where I am -- are
we absolutely certain that all those signals don't have some sort of health
impact?

~~~
ekblom
Apparently the sun outputs radio waves in the THz-range, sub millimeter waves,
so i dont think that this is anything to worry about. Also the strength of the
radio waves comming from our devices is really weak, not at all in the suns
level.

~~~
Viker
Yeh but you see. The sun has existed for billions of years and we as humans
have yet to adapt to it fully. There is a reason why we live in the shade and
use sunscreen.

Excuse me if I still feel skeptical about mmWaves..

------
Johnny555
I don't think I'll see any improvement with 5G - even at home, I see very
little difference between my 150mbit connection upstairs or my ~20mbit
connection downstairs (uses some old powerline networking boxes). My LTE
connection is usually around that or above.

The only time I notice a difference is when I'm downloading a big file, which
in these days of streaming everything, I rarely do now.

But for normal web browsing, my browser rendering speed seems to be more of a
bottleneck than my internet connection. And on my phone pretty much all I do
is web browsing (either through a browser or an app)

------
frou_dh
Next-level "cord-cutting": Even your fixed location home internet is cellular!

I find that sort of appealing as a unification.

~~~
cm2187
But is it desirable? If you get a choice, it doesn’t make sense to saturate a
wireless frequency when you could use a wire instead. Home internet is only
going to be more bandwidth intensive, with 4k streaming, playstation/xbox in
the cloud, etc.

~~~
ripdog
It's not appealing at all. No matter which 'g' it is, wireless will never beat
wired. It's simple physics. Wired will always be higher bandwidth, lower
latency, and more reliable - less dropouts and more consistent speed.

Wireless is already a 'good enough' wired replacement for areas where running
fibre is uneconomical, though.

~~~
sithadmin
If nothing else, 5g for fixed locations seems desirable in areas where the
local telco monopoly has failed to update local last mile infrastructure, and
only offers relatively poor quality VDSL/ADSL2+ service (looking at you, ATT).

------
beams_of_light
This blog post is negative, unimaginative, and misinformed. One major factual
error is the author's understanding of fixed 5G service, which is already
offered by Verizon using what they call 5G TF (Technical Forum). They will be
able to upgrade all related hardware for 5G NR (New Radio) once the standard
has been set in stone.

Cars being able to get new information within milliseconds about things that
happened distant from it, but on its course, will be useful.

AR outside the home could be incredibly useful, if provided with low latency
and high bandwidth over 5G.

~~~
JohnFen
I don't think 5G TF can really be considered 5G.

~~~
beams_of_light
Why?

~~~
JohnFen
Because it's a proprietary Verizon standard that is different from and not
compatible with the standard that the 5G committee is producing.

Verizon is being a bit deceptive in using the "5G" designation for this. It
reminds me of when US telecoms started calling their non-4G systems "4G" for
marketing purposes.

------
petra
Is there any data about the better economics of 5G and 4/4.5G?

And further more - with people generally not needing more data, and not
willing to pay more, why would wireless carriers bother ?

~~~
rmoriz
In Germany carriers heavily lobby to get a taxpayer funded development. Even
some media outlets like „Der Spiegel“ fell for it (the most popular German
website that does not support https by default...)

Just recently some journalist cover the biological aspects of 5+ GHz radio on
humans which assume that there are true risks compared to the sub 2 Gigahertz
bands.

~~~
jkdll
> Just recently some journalist cover the biological aspects of 5+ GHz radio
> on humans which assume that there are true risks compared to the sub 2
> Gigahertz bands.

Can you elaborate on this?

~~~
rmoriz
I can't. Here's the link to the publication in German
[https://www.tagesspiegel.de/gesellschaft/elektrosmog-
europa-...](https://www.tagesspiegel.de/gesellschaft/elektrosmog-europa-
ignoriert-moegliches-krebsrisiko-von-5g/23855700.html) and
[https://www.tagesspiegel.de/gesellschaft/mobilfunk-wie-
gesun...](https://www.tagesspiegel.de/gesellschaft/mobilfunk-wie-
gesundheitsschaedlich-ist-5g-wirklich/23852384.html)

Tagesspiegel is usually a good newspaper but this reasoning is are very light
in facts. They should stick with uncovering lobbyism.

------
serverascode
I don't think there is a killer use case for 5G yet, but I don't mind. I think
the performance improvements alone are worth it. It's hard to predict the
future, and while often there are points of diminishing returns in technology
(which maybe Apple is experiencing right now) I'm personally not sure we are
there yet in terms of speeds and availability of computing power for cellular
networks.

~~~
chrisseaton
> I don't think there is a killer use case for 5G yet

Why do you need a specific killer use case for more bandwidth and lower
latency? That helps almost all applications.

~~~
detaro
Isn't that more or less what the rest of the comment says?

------
alex_duf
I though LTE was supposed to encapsulate all future generations of mobile
network. Isn't LTE standing for Long Term Evolution?

~~~
richjdsmith
Phone makers need something new to justify as a new feature to sell those
$1000 phones.

'LTE generation 4.3' just doesn't have the same ring to it.

------
FabHK
One thing I always wonder: your typical cell plan (that I'm familiar with)
with, say, 6 GB per month would be completely used up within, what, 5 minutes
or less? And then you can either pay more or wait for next month? What's the
point?

(Yes, and presumably they'll increase the cap, but even a 100x increase would
give you 1 full day of usage per month.)

------
torgian
But isn’t 5g really short range? Isn’t there a big problem with the frequency
being blocked even by human skin?

------
niftich
I agree with this, but in a sense it's also rather underwhelming: there's no
killer use-case right now that would be instantly popular and economically
viable were it for just a bit more faster, even lower latency IP connectivity
emanating from the same four companies' installations everywhere. Every idea
is just the industry and pundits' wishful thinking, where modest and grand
visions mingle in our imaginations before likely suffering an underwhelming
end -- probably poor execution, or a nonexistent business model. Except, of
course, cloud gaming.

But that's where the economics get fuzzy too. Building out all these base
stations will be an enormous cost. Mainstream consumers may tolerate modest
price increases for connectivity, but much fewer will bear significantly
higher prices, or spring for significantly better plans. Such a market
segmentation would also dampen the consumer excitement for use-cases as well.

To get around this, corporations who want to ensure connectivity for their
application will push to become MVNOs and offer captive access to the
corresponding product, so that the end-user doesn't have to pay the cost
directly. This works best when they control the hardware too. Vertical
ecosystems will proliferate, where the experience can only be consumed using
the corresponding hardware.

It's not hard to imagine the likes -- and competitors -- of an always-
connected successor to the Nintendo Switch, streaming games from a nearby
server farm using a captive MVNO, or one of the many Amazon or Google's
decidedly non-gaming, 'smart hub' devices that ensure their own connectivity
without the need to put them on your Wifi. This has serious implications for
privacy and business models too: it will be commonplace for devices to be
connected to the home base by default in a way that's difficult to thwart, but
correspondingly license and authorization servers will always be reachable, so
DRM-enforced subscription business models can continue to thrive.

But the issue is, you can already do the entire latter part -- the always-
connected home hub, or the always-on DRM captive media player with LTE or
lower, but it's not yet done. Why? Because people willingly join them to their
Wifi for free. 5G will have to fit into the holes left by existing
alternatives, and do it at a price point or cost structure that makes sense.

I expressed my view before [1] that most of the hype surrounding 5G is the
industry's own buzz -- likely to get investors excited -- and then amplified
by tech journalism, whether intentionally or unwittingly. It greatly remains
to be seen how much its deployment lives up to its big expectations.

[1]
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=niftich%205G&type=comment](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=niftich%205G&type=comment)

