https://www.politico.com/news/2019/12/29/big-barrier-trump-5g-america-089883
An interesting article on the road to 5G that they need to about double the size of the workforce to roll it out. I expect that this affects some of you directly.
But one of its premises seems a little shaky to me: has the US ever led the pack rolling out new network technology? I always thought it was Japan and South Korea that were years ahead of us. In silicon valley and SF it's still very rare to see FTTH. I'm not sure why we would expect to get to 5G any faster than we normally do.
Mike
Personally, I'm skeptical about major 5G investment at scale.
This is one of those "time will tell" situations.
I mean, we aren't struggling for 4G/LTE performance, and in my mind, 5G
was developed when fibre was probably less perverse, from a global
standpoint. Times have changed a tad since then.
Mark.
Huh, you mean since you have to deploy a tower/unit every ~100 meters
to get 5g to actually work at reasonable speeds (with nothing in the
line of sight) you're going to need a bunch more people to put up
these new things-ma-bobs?
shocking news.
In my neighborhood, I've been noticing scanty investment in expanding 4G
VoWiFi.
Even though I live in a reasonably well-to-do suburb, anytime I am off
the wi-fi at home, but in the hood, 4G performance is not that great,
and I sometimes get downgraded to 3G or even EDGE, depending on which
side of the house I am. Performance is significantly better if I am
around commercial buildings/neighborhoods, though.
My theory is that due to the growth of FTTH in the last 2 - 3 years in
major South African cities, mobile carriers (well, mine, anyway) are
relying on VoWiFi to deliver their (voice and SMS) services to you in
their home, where they are using your FTTH service for the workload,
getting you to push data off their network, and spending more of their
cash elsewhere (or not at all).
You should see what happens when the neighborhood has a power outage.
You still get 75% - 100% radio quality with 4G, but 80% packet loss when
you try to connect to the Internet.
At least in residential areas, I think my mobile provider is offloading
their costs to home owners' FTTH services, while still milking us of
decent wedge.
This does not give me any hope of them spending real time and effort on
5G. To be fair, I wouldn't blame them either.
Mark.
We saw this with Femtocells. Why build the network when the end user will build it with their broadband connection?
With 5G - if I need fiber to the pole already and the pole has to be within. Few hundred feet of the end user, why not just deploy fiber to the home?
Do I really need a gigabit per second on my mobile device?
Ultimately this will come down to market demand.
Having led two efforts in IEEE to develop a next speed of Ethernet - I have
heard the argument about needing the next speed of Ethernet. Ultimately,
market demand showed that it was necessary and we had done the right thing
developing the next speed.
So given the cost of deployment - will the business case to deploy 5G
happen? Had lots of conversations with people on this. Would like to
better understand this as we start to look beyond 400GbE - as bandwidth
related to 5G is frequently brought up.
Verizon has already proven in 5 cities that you can run fiber to the node and provide 1G fixed wireless service to both single and multi family homes. This reduces the fiber cost and the headache of dealing with landlords in MDU’s.
Also, keep in mind that 10 years ago, you didn’t know you would want or need 25mbits to your phone, but I’d bet that now you’d have a hard time living without it.
In other words, this will be up to the marketing teams.
$MAJOR_CELL_CARRIER will start advertising that they are the only all-5G all-digital nation-wide network, built from the ground up…whereas $COMPETITOR uses some obviously inferior tin-can-and-string type setup that can’t even pass bits in most places–and they’ll have handy maps to prove it. They’ll gain some market share and $COMPETITOR will start scrambling to upgrade their network so their own maps look better and launch campaigns and lawsuits to combat the false information put out by $MAJOR_CELL_CARRIER. In the end, consumers will only care that there’s one particular spot in there house where they can’t get a signal and it’s really annoying because that’s where they like to be when they talk on the phone.
-A
We saw this with Femtocells. Why build the network when the end user will build it with their broadband connection?
My point exactly.
It's sneaky and, well, genius, at the same time.
With 5G - if I need fiber to the pole already and the pole has to be within. Few hundred feet of the end user, why not just deploy fiber to the home?
My point exactly.
IMHO, 5G development didn't take into account the pervasiveness of fibre
to the business, and the home.
Do I really need a gigabit per second on my mobile device?.
As Sean Connery's character said to Catherine Zeta-Jones' one in
"Entrapment":
"What can you do with seven billion that you can't do with four?"
Mark.
I think this will largely be driven by the business case as the MNO's
see it.
If there is anyone complaining about 4G/LTE, please raise your hand.
Mark.
Which you can certainly achieve over wi-fi without hassle. I posit that
in many locations where abundant bandwidth to your phone is required, a
vast majority of suitable wi-fi options exist, and you (and others) use
one or more of them.
Wi-fi will beat 5G, over the long term.
Mark.
If you are looking at speed as the only benefit to 5G, you are missing out on many of the other benefits.
And as far as WiFi goes, let me know when we have seamless national WiFi roaming and handoffs, because only at that point will it beat 5G.
Shane
What are the other benefits of 5G? My 4G/LTE works when I go behind things, miles from the tower, and delivers between 5 and 20 megabits which is more than enough for anything I'm doing on a mobile device.
Again, you are looking only at today, how much bandwidth will you need in 10 years?
Other 5G benefits: Beam forming, network slicing, reduced latency and support for UE desification, just to name a few.
You mean the kids still use their phones to actually talk?
Mark.
And the 802.11ac in my house, office, and down by the bar struggles with
this, because...?
Mark.
Unfortunately, Wi-Fi handoffs suck donkey balls compared to
cell tower handoffs when moving. It’s fine when you’re
stationary, but walking down the street, and shifting from
one wifi hotspot to the next, you’re going to be dropping
and re-establishing connections with a new endpoint IP
address every time.
If we solve the issue of endpoint identity on a connection
independent of the transport, so that your video stream
of the game doesn’t have to stop and restart every time
you shift from one access point to the next, I could
definitely see wi-Fi beating 5G.
Otherwise, I think 5G will win, in terms of better
user experience when non-stationary.
Matt
Unfortunately, Wi-Fi handoffs suck donkey balls compared to
cell tower handoffs when moving. It's fine when you're
stationary, but walking down the street, and shifting from
one wifi hotspot to the next, you're going to be dropping
and re-establishing connections with a new endpoint IP
address every time.
Well, that's doubly true for VoWiFi hand-off to GSM and back. And the
MNO's are working hard to offload their network requirements to you.
Figures :-\...
If we solve the issue of endpoint identity on a connection
independent of the transport, so that your video stream
of the game doesn't have to stop and restart every time
you shift from one access point to the next, I could
definitely see wi-Fi beating 5G.
To be honest, I don't know anyone born in the 2000's who cares about
hand-off. Do they even know what it is?
Otherwise, I think 5G will win, in terms of better
user experience when non-stationary.
Wi-fi is typically used in a stationery setting. I don't know anyone
that expects seamless wi-fi hand-off when on the move.
In other words, the kids born in the 2000's want to find a spot with
wi-fi and never leave it unless the earth was caving in. No amount of 5,
6, 7, 8, 9 or 10G would convince a kid born in the 2000's that wi-fi is
evil.
Why do the MNO's, BizDev and analyst folk care about the kids born in
the 2000's? Well...
Mark.
The 95th percentile on the connection I share among four houses and a farm has a 95th percentile under 10 megs.
shrugs
I mean it’s inevitable that 5G replaces 4G. It just comes down to the spectrum the given carrier uses that dictates speed and range. In the US, AT&T and Verizon are deploying in the millimeter bands. They’ll do a gig at a few hundred feet. T-Mobile is using 600 MHz, so it’ll probably only do 100 megabit (based on the small channels they have), but it’ll go 10+ miles through nearly anything. Sprint is in the middle. They’ll be able to do hundreds of megs at miles of range.
Lower latency is another advantage of 5G.