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Verizon: No 4G-Level Data Caps For 5G Home Service (pcmag.com)

Verizon recently announced that its upcoming 5G home internet service will not have the kinds of data limits you expect from current wireless services. It will reportedly be able to handle the average data load of a FiOS customer, and it won't be throttled down to 4G gigabyte caps. PC Magazine reports: Verizon has been trying out its new 5G home internet service for months. In a tour of its New Jersey lab, we got a closer look at the 5G antenna setup we saw at Mobile World Congress in February. It's a silver device the size of a paperback book, which connects to a Wi-Fi router with a display. You're supposed to put in a window facing Verizon's 5G service tower. In the test lab, engineer David Binczewski (below) showed us how the company is still working through the challenges of high-frequency, short-distance, millimeter-wave 5G -- most notably, how to penetrate various materials. In a chamber designed to test new 5G devices, he held up a piece of wood between a 5G emitter and a receiver, and we watched the signal fuzz out a bit on a nearby equipment screen. During a roundtable, VP of network support Mike Haberman, some other Verizon folks, and the assembled journalists agreed that an average data cap in the vicinity of 180GB/month would satisfy the average consumer. That's far more than Verizon's current 4G traffic management limit, where folks who use more than 22GB get sent to the back of the line if a tower is congested.

56 comments

  1. How many Targeted subs per node and back haul from by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    How many Targeted subs per node and back haul from each node?

  2. Um.... by Puls4r · · Score: 1

    So verizon advertises unlimited broadband, but slows you down if you go over a set amount. They then admit that the average user should be good with a NEW limit that is almost 10x what their current limit is.

    So what does that say about them, their advertising, and their current limit?

    1. Re: Um.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It says they need tax cuts and less regulation to create jobs and higher speed networks. If not for taxes the benevolent executive class would not just gives themselves bigger yachts, but would cut costs and improve service for no demonstrable reason, in contrast to every other tax cut in the last fifty years.

      Also, people don't need healthcare, the benefits from private jet tax cuts will inspire them to work harder and be healthier instead of staying as temporarily distressed billionaires.

  3. Who Believes Verizon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Sure, today unlimited. Tomorrow, screw off loser you are using too much traffic. No more unlimited for you!!

    1. Re:Who Believes Verizon by leonbev · · Score: 1

      Oh, I'm sure that they'll have an Unlimited 5G data plan... for $200 a month. It will probably start throttling you after you download around 500 GB of data as well.

      The plans that most people can actually afford will have much lower data caps, I'm sure.

    2. Re:Who Believes Verizon by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      Oh, I'm sure that they'll have an Unlimited 5G data plan... for $200 a month. It will probably start throttling you after you download around 500 GB of data as well.

      The plans that most people can actually afford will have much lower data caps, I'm sure.

      Thank heavens we are getting rid of Net Neutrality. I see this story as a smoke screen for what is going to be happening soon.

      Considering that there is no such thing as unlimited in the first place.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  4. RADIATION by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How much radiation are we going to have to put up with?! CHRIST!

    1. Re:RADIATION by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What is the permittivity of free space.

    2. Re: RADIATION by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wrap yourself up like a Mummy. Except instead of bandages use tin foil.

    3. Re:RADIATION by BlytheBowman · · Score: 1

      High powered transmitters have been on the air continuously for nearly a century now, and you are worried about the little toy radio in your cellphone? WROC "Bringing you all of the latest death metal hits!" has been blasting your body full of high powered RF waves all of your life, and you are not 'glowing green' are you? Good Grief.

    4. Re:RADIATION by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A maximum of 10,000,000 microwatts per meter squared. The government limit. Works out to 1% of what it takes to cook a body. Seriously

  5. A cap is a cap is cap by hhawk · · Score: 1

    180 GB is nice.. as caps go -- but it's still cap, that can be lowered, or additional fees can be added.

    --
    http://www.hawknest.com/
    1. Re: A cap is a cap is cap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But... Verizon and their invited journalists agreed 180 GB is enough. What possible credentials do you have to nay-say this pronouncement.

    2. Re: A cap is a cap is cap by leonbev · · Score: 1

      You could blow through 180 GB of data by downloading just 2 or 3 games from Steam on your PC. If this is really for home service and not just for mobiles, you'll need a data cap closer to 500 GB to make it practical.

    3. Re: A cap is a cap is cap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Whatâ(TM)s the range of these towers? I am under the impression that it is very limited. If they have to run fiber to within a few hundred meters of a group of houses, why not run it to the houses and get rid of wireless bandwidth as the excuse for caps?

  6. My 4G got downgraded to 3G by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Because we are in a rural area and they don't wan't to upgrade their infrastructure.

    Instead the are dumping the 4G under the bus in favour of something new. Unfortunately my phone is more and 1 month old and doesn't work with this new scheme.

    Thanks for backwards Verizon.

    1. Re: My 4G got downgraded to 3G by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You live in a rural shithole^H township represented by someone who doesn't want to regulate the telco, am i right?. Put two and two together and get 4...G.

    2. Re:My 4G got downgraded to 3G by Wootery · · Score: 1

      I have a similar opinion: 4G still isn't properly rolled-out yet (even here in London it's hit-and-miss), so why would I care about 5G?

  7. Fiber to the Home by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I'll take a physical connection to a problematic wireless connection, any day. All that talk about losing direct broadcast television when it rains is really true; and, what about all those trees?

  8. Is that so great? by sunking2 · · Score: 1

    Isn't xfinity 1TB? I was assuming the market they were going for was the areas where they have a land line presence but cable ruled. They seem way low for their 'average' for people who want to dump cable and go with streaming.

    1. Re:Is that so great? by nasch · · Score: 1

      Yes, I have a family of four on an Xfinity plan capped at 1 TB per month, and we often hit 80% of that and have gone over it twice. I don't know how a 180 GB cap is supposed to work for a home internet plan, unless it's targeted at people who don't stream video.

    2. Re:Is that so great? by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      Yes, I have a family of four on an Xfinity plan capped at 1 TB per month, and we often hit 80% of that and have gone over it twice. I don't know how a 180 GB cap is supposed to work for a home internet plan, unless it's targeted at people who don't stream video.

      It is what you can use. If your cap was 50 Tbyte a month, you'd be edging up against it. It's the garage/junk drawer concept of you'll use everything available.

      When my son was living at home, every increase in speed and amount of data was sucked up by his internet activity. When he moved out, it plummeted to maybe 10 percent, as well as sped up - a lot.

      Then there is the elephant in the room. Wanna know why the cap pressure in the first place? Ads. Ads, served up to us in all their malware providing glory. You don't run all those ads and tracking scripts without a lot of data downloading on your devices, then phoning home. The more data we can pay for, the more they can stuff down our gullets, like those geese in France they forcefeed through funnels to make foi gras.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    3. Re: Is that so great? by nasch · · Score: 1

      According to Comcast we were not generally over the cap before they instituted it. I think that's just how much data we use.

    4. Re:Is that so great? by pnutjam · · Score: 1

      My guess is you have a couple console's. Those suck data like you wouldn't believe. Video is bad, but not as bad as an xbox.

  9. Because.. by Templer421 · · Score: 1

    Comcast\Verizon\Xfinity has NEVER lied, EVER!

    Really trust us!

  10. Umm...Physics.... by modmans2ndcoming · · Score: 1

    So...Verison is planning to overcome physics? Wavelengths attenuate....

    1. Re:Umm...Physics.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Massive beam forming. You basically need a death-ray pointed directly at the receiver.

  11. 180 is about right. I hope they offer a lower cap by raymorris · · Score: 1

    180GB is six hours a day of watching SD video, or plenty for just about anything other than video. So it seems about right - high enough to satisfy what most people want, but low enough to discourage the wasteful practice of leaving the TV on, in HD, all day and night when nobody is watching. That's the killer for bandwidth - streaming video that nobody is even watching.

    I hope they offer a lower cap, lower price service as well. I use maybe 10GB / month. I work from home, but I don't watch video over wireless internet all day.

  12. Re:180 is about right. I hope they offer a lower c by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    180GB is six hours a day of watching SD video

    Or roughly two and a half hours a day of HD video. That's not including anything else like browsing Facespace or Tumblrchan, Steaming, streaming, streaming while Steaming, software/OS updates, etc. It's a garbage cap for anyone that actually uses the internet. And families. Especially families. Because they'll have that one kid that gets a new 50-100GB game every month, or binge-watches whatever the cool things are on the Nethulus.

  13. Re: 180 is about right. I hope they offer a lower by dwater · · Score: 1

    Yes, and no. Some caps are per second, rather than per month, which just feels like it is slower, but you never get disconnected. Of course, you pay less if you opt for the slower connection. This is how it is/was in Finland when I lived there, and I much prefer it since I can rely on always being connected.l, irrespective of how much data is used.
    It sounds like it is the same in the USA as it is in the UK, unfortunately. Here, there is no option to have a slower connection for less money, and the only thing you can do is to pay for a lower monthly cap and risk whatever penalty they impose when you exceed it.

    --
    Max.
  14. Rural areas? by ScentCone · · Score: 1

    The question is, will they be standing up some of these towers in areas where neither they nor anyone else will ever run fiber?

    --
    Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
  15. Hard to set a number. My kid reads. 10 cents / GB? by raymorris · · Score: 2

    Yeah it's hard to come up with a single number that works well - that gives people what they want, but discourages reckless waste. As I mentioned, I probably use about 10GB and I work from home, over the internet. Intensive video uses bandwidth in a hurry, though.

        180GB would cost $18 at 10 cents per GB. That would be cheap enough, perhaps, but still enough that people would turn off the TV (video stream) when they go to sleep or leave the house.

  16. Insufficient. by dicobalt · · Score: 1

    If there is more than 1 person that is a cord cutter that's not enough. It's a complete joke for an entire family.

  17. 5G - Full of promise, but still years away by ffejie · · Score: 2

    There's a lot of promises being made about 5G. Most of them are not just hype, but many will not be possible once the standard is in place, and some of the real world deployment scenarios are figured out.

    I think the telcos are going to figure out how to get fixed mobile broadband working. There's too much to lose if they don't. They've fallen way behind on broadband access (except for areas where Verizon invested in FiOS) and the cable companies have taken a huge lead. T-Mobile specifically has so much to gain, because they don't have a current broadband presence.

    It's likely that especially for rural areas, this will be a game changing moment. There will likely be three or four truly high speed options for internet in places that might not even have one today.

    Internet demands are going to continue to grow. 30 Mbps in 2020 may feel like 5 Mbps today. Usable, but pokey. Unusable if you have multiple devices (or users). A typical "heavy usage" household in 2020 might have demands to stream 4K Netflix/Hulu on a TV (~15Mbps), concurrent with a 4K YouTube feed (user #2) (~15Mbps), and life streaming kind of appliances (think Amazon Echo Show on steroids). (~5 Mbps). If you're doing any kind of file syncing or web browsing concurrently (user #3), you're going to get squeezed out. By ~2022, I would not be surprised if the working definition of "high speed internet" is 100 Mbps. Is 5G going to deliver that? For everyone?

    --
    Disagreeing with me does not mean you get to mod me troll.
  18. Wood... by l0n3s0m3phr34k · · Score: 1

    I'll bet money that if this wood was wet, the signal would fuzz out even more. You know, like a tree in the rain. Even better, chop off a branch with green leaves, get them wet, and test that.

  19. Re:Hard to set a number. My kid reads. 10 cents / by Puls4r · · Score: 1

    Got a new computer - with 3 kids that isn't an unusual event. Updating to windows 10 blew right through my data cap in 1 day with the OS download from MS and then all the updates. 180 GB would be 6 GB a day. That'd be just about perfect.

  20. Re:180 is about right. I hope they offer a lower c by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "180GB is six hours a day of watching SD video"

    Or one single update of about half of my steam library, which happens almost every week.

  21. Meeting the needs of yesterday... tomorrow! by hawguy · · Score: 3, Informative

    Verizon: Meeting the needs of yesterday... tomorrow!

    While a 180GB data cap *might* be reasonable today, I regularly exceed that with regular Netflix streaming.

    A 4K stream uses around 7 - 10GB/hour, so 180GB means 18 hours of streaming/month, or around a half hour a day.

    8K TV's are already available, and they'll use at least twice the bandwidth.

    1. Re:Meeting the needs of yesterday... tomorrow! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Agreed, and you don't even need 4K: I've pulled over 60GiB in the last 3 days just in updates (OS & video games), some YouTube watching and Twitch 1080p streaming. With this data cap, I would be out after 9 days into the month, and that's without buying a new game on an online platform (often 50+GiB these days) or downloading a 4k Update for an Xbox One X game (the most extreme examples, Gears of War 4 and Quantum Break, weigh in at a whopping 100+GiB each there).

    2. Re:Meeting the needs of yesterday... tomorrow! by leonbev · · Score: 1

      Yeah, anyone who thinks that 180 GB of data a month is enough for daily use doesn't have a modern game console. The game downloads are often over 50 GB each.

      People who download PC games from Steam or stream Netflix in 4K will also blow through their data cap in a matter of days. If you're looking for a data cap to start with for home usage in 2018, it's got to be more like 500 GB to start.

    3. Re:Meeting the needs of yesterday... tomorrow! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      180GByte cap also makes it impossible to send 1TByte of data to spideroak or whatever other backup service you use. For backup application, 3MBit/s DSL is >1TByte/mo. Even the Cocmast 250GByte caps are ridiculous. This is a huge step backwards for the Interweb disguised in the jargon of a step forward.

      The core idea here should be that marking the top 1% of users as "abusers" destroys the long-tail innovation that built the Internet. ISP monopsonies do this again and again. When there is meaningful competition, ISPs fill niches, and the 1% can at least get charged fairly for what they want to do, if not get an averaged-out discount at everyone else's slight expense (which is the expectation created by advertising "unlimited," and thus clearly something customers prefer to piece-rates).

  22. Next generation speed - next generation caps by RhettLivingston · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The speed is higher, the cap is higher. Whoopie.

    It is interesting that they discuss caps that would be OK with an average home user today. They won't be OK with an average home user by the time this comes out. Therefore, they are already planning on a network capacity designed to justify caps and gouging. The basis for the whining we'll hear 5 years from now is already in place.

    1. Re:Next generation speed - next generation caps by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It is more than enough bandwidth. I have fiber gigabit and the only time I max my connection is by splitting a download across many connections. We are limited by what server hosts throttle each connected user not our home connection. I don't see that changing for the foreseeable future.

    2. Re:Next generation speed - next generation caps by RhettLivingston · · Score: 1

      The cap being talked of here (180GB) is not a bandwidth cap, it is a total usage per month cap, and the service is a home service which is typically shared by a family and all devices in a home.

      Our home usage per month tops 500 GB on a regular basis according to measurements at my router, and I don't even have 4G screens yet. I'd guess we stream about 20 device-hours a day of HD format video media and 8 hours a day of audio media. We are only a family of three. As people dump cable, this kind of usage will not be unusual. I dumped cable over a decade ago.

      I do not consider myself a power user anymore as I'm not downloading DVD sized software distributions multiple times a day or even a month like I used to. I am generally surprised at the usage reported by the router though it has dropped hugely from the terabyte+ months when I was working large-scale software development.

  23. There is no 5G by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Like intelligent Trump supporters, 5G does not exist.

    1. Re: There is no 5G by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Trump has plenty of intelligent supporters. Mostly old enough that they will die of old age before his environmental stance impacts their gated communities.

      Oh, and racists and Russians. Don't forget them.

      You don't have to be a racist, sexist old white man or sucker to support Trump, but boy oh boy is he the candidate if you are.

  24. 180 gigabytes enough for home Internet?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Bitch, please.
    Who were these "journalists" who agreed with this nonsense?!

    LYING PRESS!!
    FAKE NEWS!!

  25. Depending on cost.... by Drakonblayde · · Score: 1

    This may be valid as a backup internet solution. In my house, 180GB per month is certainly not enough, I doubt that would last a week. Not with 5 people and 4 Roku's and my Linux ISO downloading habit.

    However, I'm in the rural SouthEast US, and I only have one internet provider (cable) available. My only backup solutions would be using an LTE modem, or resorting to HughesNet for Satellite. Which wouldn't be bad as backup solutions, but the cost for the meager amount of bandwidth they provide and the fact that it would cost more per month than my primary Internet feed, well, that's just a non-starter.

    However, I suspect that given the nearness required for their high freq deployment, my location means that their 5G deployment won't make it my way anytime soon even if the cost is reasonable.

  26. Mind the gap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So there is a fiber coming to the cell tower, which must be within visual range, with no obstructions, in the direction where my windows are facing. And even rain will mess with signal strength.

    So why exactly are we airgapping the last 50 yards of the connection? Just bring the fiber all the way inside. Cheaper, more reliable, higher speed, no unsightly cell towers every couple of hundred yards. 4G is fine for when I'm outside, don't need to download gigabytes outside.

  27. Unless I get it in writing,... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...go fuck yourself, Verizon.

  28. The first thing I thought of... by Trondheim · · Score: 1

    The first thing I thought of when I read the summary is....

    PC Magazine is still around??

  29. Re:Hard to set a number. My kid reads. 10 cents / by currently_awake · · Score: 1

    They could sell bandwidth. Like how they sell water. Have a base cost for a connection and a per usage cost for data. That would mean the heavy users would pay more, and the light users would pay less.

  30. Oh no... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Oh no, not 4g level data caps. They may go with 5g level data caps (which are 1 MB per month higher than 4g data caps) or they may roll back to 3g level data caps.

    I remember the VerizonEatsPoop.com lawsuit. Verizon is a lying pack of scumbags.

  31. Re:How many Targeted subs per node and back haul f by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    1 per the current testing, 100 in the real world

  32. 180GB cap? Good for handhelds, maybe... by lpq · · Score: 1

    180GB is probably more than enough for a handheld user, but for a home internet service where you dealing with 1080p-4K videos?

    If people give up on the idea of regular home streams of 1080p - 4K video, sure 180G might be enough -- but I've easily had a majority of months in the past few years where my *upload* traffic was 1TB or more -- these tiny caps seem to expect everyone will be watching 240-360p videos on their handhelds from the cloud.

    I guess large home theater screens along with the home PC are going the way of the dodo bird?

    Lame how these profiteers make tiny sound like the new big and how many don't question this...

  33. Re:How many Targeted subs per node and back haul f by hawk · · Score: 1

    Typically, each launcher has its own targeting system, such that a single destroyer can target more subs than any nation other than Russia or the US can realistically dispatch together.

    However, the debris tends to sink, so it is rarely hauled back . . . :)

    hawk