Slashdot Mirror
The Promise of 5G
An anonymous reader writes: From instant monitoring of leaking pipelines, to real-time worldwide collaboration, the increase in machine-to-machine communications that 5G allows will change the way we live. This TechCrunch article takes a look at the promise that 5G holds and its possibilities. From the article: "By 2030, 5G will transform and create many uses that we cannot even think of yet. We will live in a world that will have 10-100 times more Internet-connected devices than there are humans. Hundreds of billions of machines will be sensing, processing and transmitting data without direct human control and intervention."
This is the contemporary version of the "flying car". It's nonsense that will never happen. Ever.
I mean, afterall, we're all so good at network security now...
Loading...
I just cannot get excited about 5G because there are still large gaps in 4G coverage. I'd like to see the telecoms finish what they started.
5G will transform and create many uses that we cannot even think of yet....
4G will transform and create many uses that we cannot even think of yet.
3G will transform and create many uses that we cannot even think of yet.
2G will transform and create many uses that we cannot even think of yet.
Still waiting...
There is not much more in this article than in Slashdot summary. You can skip it.
And speaking of 4G vs 5G... I can burn through my 5 GB/month data allowance in about 45 minutes by maxing out my 4G connection. Not in any hurry to do it in 45 seconds via 5G.
O RLY? 4G is way too slow for real-time traffic.
Hundreds of billions of machines will be sensing, processing and transmitting data without direct human control and intervention.
Your toaster is talking about you behind your back.
Have gnu, will travel.
The subject kind of says it all. Around here we have pockets of LTE, larger areas of 3G, but the bulk of our geographic area has no service or just barely enough to send and receive an SMS message. I don't see where 5G means a thing to us here.
FTFA: "The network and the data centers that contain it are the true brain of any complex operation."
Either the writer doesn't understand technology or biology, or there is such low craftsmanship as to issue statements like... well like this.
Why greenlight tripe like this??
Comcast will still be sodomizing their customers - even faster!
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Should finish off those fuckers for good!
5G is going to be meaningless if it means carriers like Verizon and AT&T are metering usage at a per gigabyte rate. RIP grandfathered verizon unlimited data plan.
"The opportunity to not just reduce, but eliminate, car accidents will translate to saving more than one million lives every year in the U.S. alone. This means saving $300 billion in economic costs due to car crashes, and reducing annual CO2 emissions by as much as 300 million tons, just in U.S."
Hmmm...I thought the number of traffic deaths in the U.S. was more like 44,000 per year. I guess that 5G slices and dices and makes Julian fries...
I am so glad for the constant breathless hype in the media these days.
Anyone else get a feeling of: The Self Aware Colony from good old Alpha Centauri? Layers and layers of automated systems that keep the cities running "smoothly."
Shh.
The Nokia executive who wrote this article is spouting misinformation here. Talking about 5G, when 4G systems don't exist yet. LTE (Long Term Evolution) service is 3G which is (in theory) moving towards meeting 4G standards of 1 gigabit/sec, but is nowhere even close to that now. It's only branding. Considering AOL owns techcrunch, this is clearly a PR/propaganda piece which no content of any actual value in the entire article. Even the slashdot summary is misinformed. The only way you'll be seeing 5G is in a false advertising lawsuit.
Anything to trade you up to a new two year contract.
Have gnu, will travel.
... then this future will not materialize any time soon, as none of these devices will work right. If what happens currently with mobile phones is any indicator, then all the stupid mistakes will be made all over again with the "Internet of Things", likely including no easy way to patch your fridge, stove, etc. Of course, this may eventually be fixed, but there is no way in this universe to make that by 2030. If we are really lucky, mobile phones will be reasonable secure by then, but that is it.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The non-linear, if not exactly exponential, growth of information-related technologies from Moore's proverbial microchips to wide area network speeds appear to have the side effect of placing important aspects of global civilization under the control of a few companies when they have the equal potential to decentralize it. Why has Google search become for most people the starting point for research or Facebook the dominant means of text-based communication?
I know the arguments for economies of scale. But why can't we have mesh or peer-to-peer versions of these technologies where we don't have to rely on the good intentions or fault tolerance of a few dozen IT behemoths? We now have the equivalent of an '80s supercomputer in our pockets. Why can't I just beam my documents or videos directly to my friend on the other side of town, instead of routing them right across the world?
Critics scoffed at the ease with which a human "hacker" brought down the alien invasion force in Independence Day. I'm thinking the movie's a metaphor for where the Internet and all our information technologies are heading.
Yes, because you really need 5G over 3G for a pipeline monitor to send "There's a leak"
You are an idiot
And what about security, will this prevent Russian gangs from looting my bank account.
With 5G do you get free credit monitoring or virus scanning?
Will my driverless car be able to be controlled by hackers using my sound system?
The 5G forecast is cloudy.... film at 11 ... in other news you will be able to send email from your spreadsheet.,,,,
Reach your data cap up to 40X faster!
That is all.
If not, I won't see any difference, unless WIFI has a matching speed increase.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The article shows a lot of numbers about the prospects of 5G that the author pulls out of his
ass. He is wrong by a factor of 28 for yearly US car fatalities so we should not bother to
think any other number is serious. Also I am not sure how the number relates to 5G.
> The opportunity to not just reduce, but eliminate, car accidents will translate to saving more than one million lives every year in the U.S. alone.
the real number is ~36k which is pretty big compared to other developed countries. That gives a
yearly rate of ~13/100,000
Pulled from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate
Help me out folks - I don't have a smartphone. WTF does 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G mean? This is all I know about the N-G: I Want an I-Phone 4!
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
"Statistics show that 20 percent of our water supply is lost every single day because of leaks in the pipes that make up the national infrastructure...
Monitoring every pipe in real time would require the ability to gather and analyze huge volumes of data at speeds that are just not possible today. "
I'm not sure how 5G is going to help our 100 year old supply pipes that we can't even afford to repair. Perhaps we can plug the cracks with 5G Nokia phones.
This appears to be a promo aimed at ignorant investors. It's hard to believe that the Nokia CTO would write such nonsense to the tech savvy.
...omphaloskepsis often...
Bandwidth caps are so low and prices for bandwidth are so high that even 4G isn't really practical. what are you doing with it?
Most people have bandwidth caps around 2 GBs to 10 GBs.
I'm over wireless anywhere internet provided by the cellphone companies. Its bullshit.
I'm looking forward to google's new project where they only bill you for bandwidth used and they'll bill your bandwidth in a flat way. So the first megabyte costs as much as the last megabyte. The concept will be to run most traffic through wifi bypassing the cell towers entirely.
I heard it described as text messages will be free, wifi calling will be free. And that means... if you were so inclined you could pay NOTHING for your cellphone service. Just answer and make calls in wifi hotspots and exchange text messages otherwise.
I've got my cellphone bill down to about 18 dollars. It would be pretty sweet if I could bring it down to 0... or maybe a couple bucks to account for the few calls I make/receive outside of hotspots... which is basically never. I spend most of my time in one hotspot or another.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Require that they must cover all the current places that they claim to cover with no 4g coverage with the 5g towers before they can update any of the other areas.
Then you see them rush to finish that so they can get the profit areas before the other guys do.
Sucks watching areas with virtually at best 2g coverage at all while 2 miles over it is 4g and sitting like that for years.
How are all these 5G devices going to fit into the same rf spectrum?
...in just 5 days it'll be all gone!
First, an inventor invented invented a pipe, and installed it, and it was found to leak. Then a plumber improved the pipe and re-installed it, and would never leak again.
Then a new-age company said they could build a cheaper pipe to save costs. It was installed, and it leaked only sometimes. Then a plumber figured out precisely how often it would leak, and designed a maintenance plan to prevent it from leaking, so the leaking would never be a problem again.
Then an accountant saw the money being spent on maintenance of a pipe that didn't leak, and reduced the maintenance until it started to leak.
Now, a new-age company is offering to invent and build and install billions of sensors on the pipe, to see when it's leaking, so we'll know when to perform the maintenance.
It'll work great. Not only will we know exactly when to send out the maintenance crew -- i.e. pretty close to the same rate as when the plumber designed the maintenance plan the first time, because he wasn't stupid -- but we'll spend more money on the sensors than we will on the pipe.
As my mother's always said. You can pay me now, or you can pay me later. So the pipe will be cheap, and the maintenance will be occasional, and the sensors will be amazing.
And then we'll save money on the sensors.
And then we'll have a maintenance plan for the sensors.
And then we'll start monitoring the sensors.
It's turtles all the way down.
Anyone remember how much the high quality pipe that didn't leak in the first place cost? I didn't think so.
The main push for this is control. Not to have to roll out optical per site that will be a shared common carrier to all other local brands.
Limited bandwidth, cheap per gig plans per month or expensive plans for more data is the better lock in.
If the local usage ever really gets saturated then the limitations of huge amounts of people wanting perfect low cost networking on very limited bandwidth will start to be interesting.
Re "And what about security?" Local city, state, parish and federal gov officials can track any new 5G perfectly. Data use, voice print ready, its all in the new standards.
The per user per month bandwidth question is the fun part. How many gigs per month can each user be sold before wireless physics is in play for every attempted fast connection.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
While progress is always welcome, when will the telecommunications industry clean up the legacy issues from the POTS era? Why is it still so easy to spoof caller ID in this day and age? Why do we have to crowdsource solutions to unwanted solicitation calls? We need to stop rewarding phone network providers that willingly allow this type of misfeasance.
It won't be until 6G that the machines will rise up and overtake humanity..... Right?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Why is this a good idea? I have a house full of smart devices the last thing I want is them connecting directly out to the internet. Sure my house knows the weather forecast and adjusts heating/cooling based upon that. It knows when I'm headed home and to crank up the hut tub turn the lights on and continue my playlist from where I left off in the car. None of this would be aided by direct connectivity, it would only be giving up security and control.
I would love a fridge that could tell me my current levels and project when I'll run out or things will spoil. To make that a killer app you need pricing data from all the local stores and for rfid or some other method that does not require user intervention on a regular basis.
I would love a heating plant that can use oil, NG, Propane, or heat pump based upon the cheapest current option. That does not mean my thermostats should be connecting out the the internet.
The whole concept of a lightbulb that has to go out to the cloud to get instructions baffles me what use case does that make sense? LED bulbs 22 year life span you think that cloud server will still be there? Sure it's great for the manufactures to get rent forever.
This all makes about as much sense as the meraki gear from cisco, a router that shuts off if you don't pay the maintenance.
No sir I dont like it.
It is nice to know that the rest of the world will be able to enjoy the benefits of 5g, while here in the U.S.A. AT&T, Verizon and Sprint will be able to charge us $10/month for every device that we want to hook up (maybe more with inflation) plus taxes and "fees" and then put a pathetic data cap on the usage.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
You are right about the push being for control, but wrong with your explanation. Anyone looking can see that the internet of things is a huge useless pile of waste that will be used as leverage against the masses. The chronic push to get people watching facebook, youtube, twitter, self driving cars, visiting your doctor over a phone, etc.. is to keep them from looking at reality. The reality is that a few people are gaining immense power while the masses are becoming drones.
Don't bother reading if you expect to see any technical insight. The article summary is "oh gosh gee whiz it's so gosh darn fast" followed by a dump about all kinds of amazing things a really fast data link might enable.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Hundreds of billions of machines will be sensing, processing and transmitting data without direct human control and intervention."
Hundreds of billions of machines will be connected to botnets that will be indirectly controlled by humans for fun and profit at the expense of others.
I think fear is your main problem. Why would IoT give a damn about you peeing or doing your whatever with yourself?
I believe self importance drives most of the things you've listed.
This might appear 10 years sooner if the FCC would get the hell out of the way. Profit motive, you know.
Roy Scheider, police chief in Jaws, to Roy Scheider, NSA chief in 2010 Odyssey 2: "We're gonna need a bigger multibillion dollar spy computer center."
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I think fear is your main problem. Why would IoT give a damn about you peeing or doing your whatever with yourself?
Yeah, why would they care? Why are they collecting all this information about us? I mean, if it is not important then why are they bothering? What's that? You think the original AC was listing off concerns about stuff that would never happen? You do realize that some of his concerns are already happening, right?
I believe self importance drives most of the things you've listed.
Hint: just because you are not paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.
I've got Bieber 6G Fever!
Once everybody is on 5G, it will make it possible for ALL devices to show us advertising. Your refrigerator, your faucet, your toilet, your chair...they will ALL be conspiring to show you advertisements, all the time. As long as AdBlockPlus gets ported to all these devices, we'll be OK!
I still won't have service at my house. Less than half a mile in either direction from my house is full LTE signal. 100meg cable, sure np. Want some crappy DSL instead? Sure. Want to make a phone call, nope not happening asshole.
They're out to get you... and what are they going to do once they get you?