How the Rollout of 5G Will Change Everything 216
mrspoonsi writes The global race is on to develop 5G, the fifth generation of mobile network. While 5G will follow in the footsteps of 4G and 3G, this time scientists are more excited. They say 5G will be different — very different. "5G will be a dramatic overhaul and harmonization of the radio spectrum," says Prof Rahim Tafazolli who is the lead at the UK's multimillion-pound government-funded 5G Innovation Centre at the University of Surrey. To pave the way for 5G the ITU is comprehensively restructuring the parts of the radio network used to transmit data, while allowing pre-existing communications, including 4G and 3G, to continue functioning. 5G will also run faster, a lot faster. Prof Tafazolli now believes it is possible to run a wireless data connection at an astounding 800Gbps — that's 100 times faster than current 5G testing. A speed of 800Gbps would equate to downloading 33 HD films — in a single second. Samsung hopes to launch a temporary trial 5G network in time for 2018's Winter Olympic Games.
Just like the onion predicted the 5 bladed razor (Score:5, Funny)
The summary reminded me of this prophetic gem: http://www.theonion.com/articl... [theonion.com]
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It's from the very first episode of SNL.
http://snltranscripts.jt.org/7... [jt.org]
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Seems like more marketing nonsense (Score:3)
Considering we here in the states barely have nationwide 4G coverage and most of us are working with 2-10GB per month maybe it's a little early to get excited on being able to use that up in a matter of seconds rather than minutes.
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Re: Seems like more marketing nonsense (Score:2)
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More value was returned to the shareholders. After all, what are they there for, to provide a solution where the free market acts to optimize the situation for both provider and customer, or to use a de-facto monopoly to maximize shareholder value?
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Throttle and share the maximum bandwidth amongst everyone all the time.
If customers don't like their provider being overloaded like this, they can change.
A lot of subscribers in the U.S. market already have changed from a provider suffering from congestion due to an offer of unmetered use (Sprint at times) to a provider that caps users so that you can get through other customers that use excessively (Verizon Wireless, AT&T). In a sense, the market wants caps (or perhaps something that happens to be correlated with caps).
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No, the market wants improved backhaul. But the telco's don't like actually building telecommunications networks, so they institute caps instead.
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Who cares (Score:2)
Who cares when your artificially and ridiculously low data cap is exceeded in 5 minutes?
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Completely agree. However, if the bandwidth is so dramatically improved, can't the caps be also dramatically increased? Kind of like how when 4G first came out, that was unlimited, while 3G was capped or something like that? I might have that situation reversed but still, you get the idea.
Re:Who cares (Score:5, Insightful)
That sound you hear is the executives at Verizon and AT&T laughing their asses off. You'll get the same caps you have today, because that's what is most profitable.
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Lots of complaining about Verizon and ATT, but prices on mobile phone contracts are way down. T-Mobile has an unlimited data, unlimited text, 100 minutes talk time plan for $30/month, for example. Others have dropped their prices for phone-subsidy plans to compete with T-Mobile.
Despite the usual internet whining, things have improved a lot in the last 2 years.
Even better - Virgin "pick your plan" (Score:2)
I just moved my family to the Virgin "pick your plan" - 3 phones sharing a plan for about $30 total per month (with 250 minutes, limited text and data, but since everyone mostly uses wireless anyway...).
Re:Who cares (Score:5, Insightful)
you think they put in the caps because they dont have enough bandwidth coming from their towers? you, sir, are sadly mistaken. they do it for one reason. PROFIT. if they cap your data at 5gb and you need to use 5.1 gb, you will totally spend double the amount to get up to 10gb.
Data Despot Overlords (Score:2)
I for one, welcome our Data Despot Overlords.
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Completely agree. However, if the bandwidth is so dramatically improved, can't the caps be also dramatically increased? Kind of like how when 4G first came out, that was unlimited, while 3G was capped or something like that? I might have that situation reversed but still, you get the idea.
In the US the opposite was true, many 3G plans were unlimited because it was hard for a small number of users to saturate the inter-tower connectivity. Now with 4G, the intertower bandwidth is not where it needs to be and the top-tier providers are running scared from truly unlimited data offerings since they know their network will get crushed. All we can hope for is that competition will push the cost per GB down (in the last 6 months this has started to come true, with ATT and Verizon offering 2 year d
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Re:Who cares (Score:5, Informative)
Who cares when your artificially and ridiculously low data cap is exceeded in 5 minutes?
At 800 Gbps you would blow through AT&T's most expensive ($375/mo) [att.com] shared data plan of 100GB of data in one second.
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Who cares when your artificially and ridiculously low data cap is exceeded in 5 minutes?
At 800 Gbps you would blow through AT&T's most expensive ($375/mo) [att.com] shared data plan of 100GB of data in one second.
Well, to be fair, it would probably take longer than that due to other constraints. On a mobile phone, it's not uncommon for my LTE signal to be faster than the write speed of my MicroSD card. No hard disk or SSD could write data that fast; even RAM would be a bit of a challenge to get to write all 800gbits in one second because the bus speeds on the motherboards don't usually shuffle data around that fast.
Yes, we're dealing with theoreticals here, but let's at least give credit to the fact that if it were
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33 movies in a second? (Score:4, Informative)
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5G2? (Score:2)
Aren't carrieres already calling LTE and 4G+, etc 5G? Since it seems like 5G is such a dramatic improvement, should it have an entirely new name? A la Intel's move away from the x86 lines of processors?
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no, because they arent a big enough step up from the previous generation. it is essentially like having HD. anything between 480p and 4k resolution are technically HD. but only 4k resolution gets the 'ultra hd' tag.
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anything between 480p and 4k resolution are technically HD.
By what definition? I've read that 480p is not high definition but enhanced definition (EDTV). Then 720p is HD, 1080p is full HD, and 2160p is ultra HD or 4K.
Cue the lawyers (Score:4, Funny)
A speed of 800Gbps would equate to downloading 33 HD films â" in a single second
In other new, Sony, Universal, and the rest of the MAFIAA have sued Tafazolli, the University of Surrey, Samsung and the ITU for "contributory copyright infringment".
And in other news... (Score:3, Insightful)
Today TelecomX has announced that 5G Spcl has been rolled out to their customers, to compete PhoneY's Real 5G service.
A company spokemans said "While customers will need to upgrade their phones to take advantage of this, and it will still be slower than actual 5G in other countries, it will be modestly faster current 4G LTE and True4G services. And much like those services, once we've convinced everyone that it is 5G, eventually we'll sell an even better offering that's even closer to the actual 5G standard, but not yet there."
Coverage (Score:2, Interesting)
All those nice coverage maps show voice and doesnt include data. Rural areas have no native Internet providers, so often if they do have Internet its hauled in by microwave. I know this, the town my mother retired in shares brings in data so Verizon can vpn over it and provide data to the school and public libarary. It was great, verizon put in a tower and we had 4g and voice. But with people moving more into rual areas to retire, the bandwidth hasnt kept up with the usage, so now its down to voice onl
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But with people moving more into rual areas to retire, the bandwidth hasnt kept up with the usage, so now its down to voice only.
Sucks to be them if that matters to them. If they'd wanted good internet, they'd have not gone out in the boonies, but would have picked some nice small town that has just enough population to support good networking without the trouble of larger places. Instead, they trade that for lots more space; it's a valid option, even if not one that I'd ever pick.
5gb speed cap (Score:3)
yea, you can totally download a single hd movie in that second before they cap your speed at 3g.
I wonder... (Score:2, Insightful)
So how long until Comcast starts sending out the lawyers to prevent this harmful technology?
I will lose out! Sadly! (Score:2)
A speed of 800Gbps would equate to downloading 33 HD films â" in a single second. Samsung hopes to launch a temporary trial 5G network in time for 2018's Winter Olympic Games
I will be retired at that time, sadly! That means my activities will be of no consequence at all. That's not good. Can't they do it sooner?
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Don't worry, 2018 leaves plenty of time for crashes to wipe out your retirement plans.
Do we have 4G now? (Score:5, Insightful)
I kind of got the impression most things being called 4G weren't even properly that.
So now we'll have a rollout of something called 5G which isn't?
Know what I expect? We won't see faster, we won't suddenly see a lot of additional bandwidth. For promotional purposes it's fast and awesome ... and for practical purposes the carriers will scale it back because they're incapable of selling you what they will claim it to be.
I simply don't believe the carriers will be able to deploy what this thing could be theoretically. All they'll do it repackage the same shitty service and charge extra for it, while crying poor about how they can't keep up with the bandwidth demands.
Because telcos are lying, greedy bastards who put more effort into marketing than quality of their product.
They've been telling us how awesome their network speeds are for over a decade. And they've been unwilling to live up to that the entire time.
Case in point: Unlimited data plans, which are so much marketing bullshit it's not funny.
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And, except for the advertising ... did anything at all change for consumers? Or is it something they could tout as the new awesomeness, while giving you the same service as before?
Did your bill drop? Did your bandwidth allocation go up?
My perception is this technology didn't improve the service sold to consumers, and neither will 5G.
It will be a marketing coup, but beyond that, none of these super awesome enhancements will be seen by the users.
So, call it whatever the hell you like. At the end of the da
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More towers with low-rent microwave backhaul to other towers with grossly oversubscribed fiber.
Start collecting tin cans and string now.
Benefit of the doubt: 4G Lite (Score:2)
I kind of got the impression most things being called 4G weren't even properly that.
The carriers tried to be honest about Long Term Evolution by marketing it as "4G Lite", but somehow the 'i' got dropped along the way.
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I kind of got the impression most things being called 4G weren't even properly that.
You are correct. [slashdot.org] The ITU defined 4G, and none of the carriers followed the standard. Instead, they strong armed the ITU [pcmag.com] to change the definition of 4G to fit the technology they had already deployed. I suspect the same will happen with 5G as well.
Enabling US carriers to do what, exactly? (Score:3)
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But, won't someone think of the CEOs?
Quit your whining. If they didn't have 5G to tout as the next big lie, they wouldn't be able to inflate the stock prices on the claim that something awesome is coming.
Why, if we acknowledged that 5G would give you zero net benefit over the falsely named 4G, or that it's really only 3G ... then how could we increase executive compensation packages?
Just think of all those poor, starving telecom CEOs who need to be able to forecast a rosy picture to the analysts to make it
I'll just wait for 6G (Score:3)
I'll just wait for 6G. Or maybe 7G.
I really don't need to talk any faster.
Re:I'll just wait for 6G (Score:5, Funny)
Digital comms is soulless and overrated anyway. It doesn't have the warmth, vibrancy or resonance of analogue. I use a solid granite radio phone with a golden antenna so I can really capture the subtleties of my interlocutor's voice.
Regaining the vibrancy that cell phones lost (Score:2)
Digital comms is soulless and overrated anyway. It doesn't have the warmth, vibrancy or resonance of analogue.
That's because carriers have for years been using low-bitrate voice codecs for calls headed to or from the public switched telephone network. When voices are compressed too small, they start to sound robotic like the "Another visitor" guy [youtube.com] from the game Impossible Mission. If you use a wideband VoIP app like Skype, there won't be quite as much compression. This gives you back quite a bit of the vibrancy that you had with land lines and lost since GSM.
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Digital comms is soulless and overrated anyway. It doesn't have the warmth, vibrancy or resonance of analogue. I use a solid granite radio phone with a golden antenna so I can really capture the subtleties of my interlocutor's voice.
I have to ask, what kind of polish do you use on your granite?
I have a special polishing compound that's custom made from Fijian coconut shells.
It really expands the sound scape without affecting the mid-range.
That's one big bill! (Score:5, Insightful)
"A speed of 800Gbps would equate to downloading 33 HD films — in a single second."
At Verizon's cost of 15 dollars per 1 GB (when you go over your data plan), 5G could then theoretically cost you 1500 dollars per second.
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Because it is part of the computation cycle.
Before networks people who could afford computers would have one put all their data on it and run it locally.
Then we got to mainframes where low end dumb terminals connect to a remote system.
Then we went to the PC where it was affordable to process stuff on your own.
Then as network speeds improve we are finding easer and cheaper to do a lot of the heavy calculations via the cloud.
Now we will probably get some technology where are phones will be powerful enough so
Latency (Score:2)
Ericsson predict that 5G's latency will be around one millisecond - unperceivable to a human and about 50 times faster than 4G.
Love to see how that's going to work when your destination is on the other side of the planet. The speed of light is only 300,000 km/s or 300 km/millisecond.
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Cell phone network latency is measured from handset to cell. What you do with it after it leaves the cell does not concern the standard.
Don't even have 1G (Score:5, Insightful)
What exactly is 4G anyway? (Score:2)
If the term "4G" essentially means nothing now, why will "5G" be any different?
And the price is ... (Score:2)
A speed of 800Gbps would equate to downloading 33 HD films â" in a single second.
I've never seen a $10,000 phone bill.
Separately but related, how much will the existing cell providers need to invest to upgrade their systems to 5G?
Also separately but related, will this make wired internet and cable (copper or fiber) obsolete?
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Also separately but related, will this make wired internet and cable (copper or fiber) obsolete?
No, never going to happen. Wires and fiber are here to stay due to the lack of available bandwidth though the air.
LTE? (Score:2)
I'm with Rogers (Canada) and I'm usually on their LTE network (Rogers LTE [wikipedia.org]). As per the wiki, the theoretical speed is 150Mbit/s, but similar to what the article notes, when I run speed test I typically get ~14Mbit/s depending on the time of day.
I'm not that excited about any "new generation" 4G or whatever, as this is more than fast enough for my daily needs when I'm not on WiFi.
Not really useful (Score:2)
except perhaps it will push down data-plan costs a little. But right now, people are capped by their data plans so having all those gigabits is basically worthless.
-Matt
I feel like I've heard this before (Score:2)
Imagine... (Score:2)
5G WILL ROLL OUT! (Score:2)
This time the telecoms have a new tool to help them upgrade their networks...
Kickstarter!!!!!
Just a small matter of science and technology (Score:3)
From Wikipedia:
Terahertz radiation occupies a middle ground between microwaves and infrared light waves, and technology for generating and manipulating it is in its infancy, and is the subject of research. This lack of technology is called the terahertz gap. It represents the region in the electromagnetic spectrum that the frequency of electromagnetic radiation becomes too high to be measured by digitally counting cycles using electronic counters, and must be measured by the proxy properties of wavelength and energy. Similarly, in this frequency range the generation and modulation of coherent electromagnetic signals ceases to be possible by the conventional electronic devices used to generate radio waves and microwaves, and requires new devices and techniques.
Why do we need 800Gbps? (Score:3, Interesting)
Why do we need 800Gbps on a cellphone? Or even 100Gbps?
So I can download an app in 560 microseconds? I do not see the point. What possible use case is there for that much bandwidth, even if data caps went away (yeah right)..There is only so much you can do with a mobile device.
Does it matter if I download an HD movie in 30mS instead of 400mS? Or even if I download a 4k movie in a fraction of a second, its still kinda pointless.
Now I am fully aware that 640k is actually not enough memory for anybody, but come on guys, what sort of need would we really have for 800Gbps on a cellphone or tablet? There reaches a point where the returns diminish beyond human perception.
It remains to be seen (Score:2)
How fast will transfer rates be when you only have one or two bars' worth of signal? If they're using a higher modulation bandwidth to get that higher data rate that's one thing; but if they're stuffing more data into the same occupied bandwidth then the Bit Error Rate could start climbing really fast once the signal level starts to drop.
unfortunately... (Score:3)
Your phone will have battery life of 18 seconds and will have a surface temperature of 245C.
I'd be happy if we just had ubiquitous... (Score:2)
yeah (Score:2)
So we will see 800 Gbps and have quotas of 1Gb/month then....
Where I live the quotas are going down. You have to pay more to get less data now than 2 years ago. 4G means lower quota than 3G.
If this continues we will have tremendous bandwith in 5G but no possibility to use it...
8Gb/sec == $80/sec (Score:2)
At the current typical rates of about $10/gb, the telecoms will be able to rake in huge profits.... or not.
Re:Yay! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Yay! (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, many video players are auto resolution tuning, so if they detect you have the bandwidth, they'll up the resolution.
If Netflix starts streaming in 4K, and gral was used to 480p, that's a bit of a difference in data.
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Yes, I'm sure all 2 billion mobile users will do this. Or be able to do this.
Re:Yay! (Score:4, Insightful)
We'll be able to blow through our monthly data caps in 1 minute!
This.
Who cares?
I had unlimited 3G. It was useful. Now I have blazing fast 4G with a 1GB plan, with $10 per GB overage. It's useless for anything beyond reading Slashdot in the bathroom.
5G will be equally useless. As will 6G. And 7G. I don't need speed on a smartphone. I need good coverage and no transfer cap.
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The only difference will apparently be that it will be useless faster.... you will simply use your low quota faster. And I am sure they will lower it even more on 5G because its so new an special....
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Re:Rollout in 2030 (Score:5, Informative)
I'm a telecom professional, and I'm tired about all those "true 4G" statements, and on what is or not 4G. I find the ITU 4G definition ridiculous: a long time ago the world of telecom manufacturers was made of cautious engineering companies. Then very aggressive new entrants came and made outrageous claims [1], and older companies went with the charade not to be seen as lagards. That's basically why we got this very bad joke of "official 4G is 1 Gbps". I guess anyone looking around should see the slight disconnect with reality there? As a bonus joke, new categories were added later on: Cat9 peaks at 300 Mbps, go figure...
For what it's worth, in my opinion the true difference that warrants using a new generation number is the move to OFDMA. 1G was analog, 2G was digital narrow band, 3G is wideband CDMA, 4G is wideband OFDMA. This makes sense to me, as a telecom engineer. The ITU BS I'd rather forgot all about it, it's just too embarrassing.
As for 5G there are interesting things on-going, but it's very early in the game. For now it's only people wanting attention to get funding (like TFA) or cheap PR. Don't feed the PR spinners please. The high-frequency spectrum with many very small antennas and cheap RF (to compensate for the number, 64-256...) is interesting but there is a long road to practical products.
[1] There is a joke on this, and let's protect the culprit: how do you tell the difference between an Ericsson engineer and a Xxx one? The E/// engineer couldn't tell a lie if you put a gun to his head. The Xxxx engineer couldn't tell the truth. I work for neither E/// nor Xxxx BTW.
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For what it's worth, in my opinion the true difference that warrants using a new generation number is the move to OFDMA.
OFDMA = "Oh Fuck, Da Masses are Angry, better roll out a new generation with a few more bps, a new 'Extra-Unlimited' data plan, and lower their caps."
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Re:Rollout in 2030 (Score:5, Insightful)
LTE is definitely a generation ahead of 3G. The latency is massively different; 4G feels very different from 3G in the same way that ethernet-over-fibre feels different from VDSL. 4G can actually feel like an OK DSL line. 5G with 1ms latency should be able to compete favourably with low-speed fibre.
(Latency is also why it is laughable that UK providers pretend that they are selling fibre optic broadband. It is a sign of the missing consumer protection laws in the UK.)
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Re:Rollout in 2030 (Score:5, Insightful)
And we will be able to hit data caps in fractions of a second!! The carriers are going to love the overage charges.
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Are you trying to imply that a contention ratio of 2,592,000:1 is not fair?
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Why would you want to watch cats fuck?
Working on certification for professional cat breeding?
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I can understand how that might be traumatic for hamsters.
Personally I'm now trying to resist the temptation to add 'fucking cats' to my Youtube search history :(
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I'm sure there was some other actual root cause to the issue, but I got my desired result (acceptable battery life), so I didn't look into it any further.
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You can easily do more than one bit per second per Hertz. There is no need to go to 1600GHz. 256 QAM gives you 8 bits per second per Hertz, leaving you with 100GHz. Now go 10-way MIMO and you are at 10GHz. Polarize and you are at 5GHz.
Fitting 20 antennas per supported frequency band into a phone is left as an exercise for the reader.
Also, cell phone networks always calculate as if they have precisely one customer per cell. The 800Gbps is shared.
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How about the ability to make a reliable phone call first?
If you'd just stop moving that mobile phone, it would work fine.
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"5G will be a dramatic overhaul and harmonisation of the radio spectrum," - really? How?
You might be assuming dramatic will be better.
You might also be assuming harmonization will mean everyone should use the same technology.
Perhaps you are misinterpreting this statement? They might be technically correct in their statement yet the technology will be a total fail, no? ;^)
At least in the USA for 4G, there was/is a lot of dramatic overhaul of the network after WiMax's demise and harmonization of the spectrum means the commercial availability of a penta-band phone...
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Maybe that's the amount of an HD film that someone with the attention span of a typical BBC reporter can watch? Seriously, it seems like the quality of BBC news reporting has been slipping for years. I suspect their long term plan is to steal readers from the Daily Mail.
At least the BBC still makes some decent programs.
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Exactly! I still see "GPRS" in a lot of places, in an urban area. How about they fix their 3G first, and only then finish the 4G deployment? And postpone 5G for 20 years or so...