The race to 5G is over — now it’s time to pay the bill

The race to 5G is over — now it’s time to pay the bill

Networks spent years telling us that 5G would change everything. But the flashiest use cases are nowhere to be found — and the race to deploy the tech was costly in more ways than one.

 

5G will improve as time marches on as it tends to, particularly when the networks have fully deployed standalone 5G. But we can probably stop holding our breath for that killer app and make peace with the fact that technological progress is often slow and boring — moving forward cell tower by cell tower, not by leaps and bounds. In the short term, its greatest effect might be a more consolidated, more expensive wireless broadband market. If it’s any consolation, you can take some comfort in the fact that we probably won’t be seeing commercials for 6G anytime soon

Maybe 5G isn’t entirely smoke and mirrors. But by rolling it out with a breakneck “race,” networks backed themselves into a corner. They took on piles of debt; on that recent earnings call, a Verizon exec talked about the company’s desire to return to pre-spectrum-auction levels of debt. In the meantime, there are few returns to show for those investments — not helped by the fact that interest levels are high and smartphone sales are down. The networks thought they had a golden goose with 5G, but so far, it’s just laying regular old eggs — expensively, at that. And while they’re waiting for their efforts to bear fruit, they’re looking for other ways to boost their bottom line.

The simplest way to make more money is what Verizon calls “pricing actions.” That’s a nice way of saying “charging customers more.” The company boasted about implementing “over one billion dollars of annualized pricing actions in 2023” and pats itself on the back for keeping churn — that would be customers ditching Verizon — low in spite of it. 

Just to compare against the hype of machine "learning"...

Where I live, 5G coverage is poor to non-existent. Meanwhile, the latest mobile phones boast of 5G at the expense of a low-quality screen and cut-down audio features. Not much gain there.

Not sure of the machine learning comparison, I think it's a different type of market, among other differences.

Just to compare against the hype of machine "learning"...

Here in the Copenhagen area 5G makes a massive difference. I have measured up to 200mbs download speed with https://www.speedtest.net/da

I honestly don’t understand why people would want to pay for fiber connectivity anymore unless they already got the installation.

Just did a quick test and I’m at the edge of the metropolitian area right now:

Where I live, 5G coverage is poor to non-existent. Meanwhile, the latest mobile phones boast of 5G at the expense of a low-quality screen and cut-down audio features. Not much gain there.

Not sure of the machine learning comparison, I think it's a different type of market, among other differences.

I just mean that all these promises of around-the-corner leaps in the technology should be met with skepticism given the people making the promises are trying to sell you something. See the recent edited videos from Google regarding their AI.

I do wish there was some kind of serious group that helped society by spreading scientific/logical literacy so people would properly apply skepticism...but what we got are fanatical groups dedicated to evangelizing materialist-centered atheism...

The race to 5G is over — now it’s time to pay the bill

Funny you bring that up today... my company has 4 ADSL broadband copper pair connections, which we are forced to pay through the nose for, which give us a measly 36 megabit/s download speed in total (approx 9 mbits/s per line). It's disgusting - there is brand new fiber installed in the conduit right outside the building 2 years ago, which they won't connect us to unless we pay £££ for a leased line. Instead we're forced to pay way over £2.2k a year for a maximum of 36 mbit/s crap. We've looked at Starlink as a possibility, but we think the satellite panel would get nicked. All the residential homes around the industrial estate have 1 gbit/s fiber for £20 per month.

I've been working away on the problem, and finally decided to test a 5G mobile broadband router from a mobile telecom's company. We're supposed to be way outside of their 5G area, the router falls back to 4G if 5G is not available, but even getting 4G might be problematic from their coverage map... but I was willing to try it, if we could just get 36 mbit/s out of it for £16 month it would be worth it, we could dump all these ADSL copper lines lines, for a direct replacement at less than a tenth of the cost of the copper lines.

The 5G router arrived last thing Friday, and I had just enough time to plug it in, and test the speed with a laptop, without even looking for the best location. Over the moon to find I get over 200 mbits/s - which suggests we're getting 5G - and as we're finally out of contract, I can cancel all those copper lines on Monday.

So how exactly do you get 5G internet connection? Do you just puy a new kind of modem that absorbs 5G signals directly, and if so who supplies this service?

David

So how exactly do you get 5G internet connection? Do you just puy a new kind of modem that absorbs 5G signals directly, and if so who supplies this service?

David

In the UK

https://5g.co.uk/coverage/

not that I would trust whether coverage is/is not available, as this site incorrectly said coverage was not available. But it gives you the main operators, and resellers who use their service, where you can check more up to date coverage, and check 4G and 5G broadband offers.

In the UK

https://5g.co.uk/coverage/

not that I would trust whether coverage is/is not available, as this site incorrectly said coverage was not available. But it gives you the main operators, and resellers who use their service, where you can check more up to date coverage, and check 4G and 5G broadband offers.

Thanks - it would seem we live so far in the back of beyond it hasn't arrived yet!

I just curious to understand how it would be delivered to a PC - I mean presumably I would not need a conventional internet connection, I'd just plug a gadget into a USB port to pick up the signal.

David

Thanks - it would seem we live so far in the back of beyond it hasn't arrived yet!

I just curious to understand how it would be delivered to a PC - I mean presumably I would not need a conventional internet connection, I'd just plug a gadget into a USB port to pick up the signal.

David

I guess you'd just plug a gadget into the mains power supply. It would receive a signal just like a mobile phone. Then you could connect the output to other devices by wifi or an ethernet cable.