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Verizon Will Launch 5G Home Internet Access In 2018 (engadget.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the answered-prayers dept.

wyattstorch516 writes: Real competition may finally be on the way for the residential broadband market. Verizon will be the first company to introduce 5G wireless broadband in a select number of cities. This will give residential customers an alternative to cable/fiber offerings. 5G wireless can offer speeds in the range of hundreds of megabits per second. Full technical specifications as well as pricing plans have yet to be determined. The launch is scheduled for the second half of 2018.

25 of 115 comments (clear)

  1. Latency and Monthly Bandwidth by corychristison · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This will depend on monthly bandwidth allotments, and, to a lesser extent, latency.

    If you can't pull down 500GB a month at a reasonable cost, there will be no competition. End of story.

    1. Re:Latency and Monthly Bandwidth by Darinbob · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It will be like cable. Lots of bandwidth at the start, user is very happy. Later everyone uses it, more and more of the fixed bandwidth gets used by the neighbors, original user is pissed that performance has gone down.

    2. Re: Latency and Monthly Bandwidth by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Wtf? In other words, if you can't provide a service, you won't profit.

      So apparently you are missing out on the new Trump administration thing where they pay you to fix the power lines but you don't actually have to do anything.

    3. Re:Latency and Monthly Bandwidth by leonbev · · Score: 3, Interesting

      He's right, you know... Verizon's 4G LTE network was pretty awesome early on, until Apple released an iPhone with an LTE radio and the network slowed down for awhile due to all of the extra traffic. I think that was around the same time they started killing off the grandfathered $30 a month unlimited data plans as well.

      I'd imagine that the first handful of 5G home subscribers will have a similar experience until 5G smartphones become popular. Then they will probably start cutting data plans for people "abusing" the system by downloading 300+ GB of a data a month from 4K Netflix streaming and a few game downloads.

    4. Re:Latency and Monthly Bandwidth by mysidia · · Score: 4, Insightful

      first handful of 5G home subscribers will have a similar experience until 5G smartphones become popular.

      So in exchange for being fixed endpoints and not allowed to move; give the 5G home users priority on the network and apply all the restrictions and throttling to the actual smartphones. Because of the additional capacity 5G provides it should be fine providing they build out their networks adequately.

    5. Re: Latency and Monthly Bandwidth by JackieBrown · · Score: 2

      Because people are not going to leave Spectrum/Grande/Comcast/whoever for a sub-adequate network.

      They are trying to break into the home markets - they are not the current monopoly.

      Due to local government regulations that even Google cannot overcome, we are not going to be getting more local wired internet companies - unless we lose those existing government regulations. What Verizion is doing is the market trying to correct against monopolies that the government enforces

      I don't understand why people think that government will enforce net-neutrality in a way that actually benefits users. Any law that goes further than 2 sentences on this is just a new power grab. While ISPs might not want it, the way the government ends up creating these laws will make the regulation so complex, that you can be guaranteed that only the larger ISPs will be able to afford to implement them - further eliminating whatever little competition there is.

  2. Great. by ScentCone · · Score: 4, Interesting

    But it's not cities where this is needed. It's the places outside the cities where there's no high speed access of any kind, and never will be if it involves pulling cable/fiber down winding roads in less densely populated areas.

    --
    Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
    1. Re:Great. by HornWumpus · · Score: 2

      4G is better for BFE. 5G has more bandwidth, but shittier range and weather tolerance. Just based on carrier frequency. 3G is better still, it's a tradeoff between range and bandwidth. The best for you will be the highest bandwidth you can actually make work with reasonable height tower(s) (at 100 feet total height the FAA gets involved, basically requires lights.)

      But by the time you need towers, you're almost certainly, out of 5G range. Especially if you don't want uncle Charlie hunting you...kilowatt linears do exist, but do nothing for the return path. ;-)

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    2. Re:Great. by 110010001000 · · Score: 2

      It won't work in rural areas. It just eliminates the need to fiber to the home. You still need fiber in the road. These connections are short range.

    3. Re:Great. by Verdatum · · Score: 2

      The reason why telecom hates installing fiber in rural areas is that last mile. They don't mind running fiber to the occassional tower NEARLY as much. Further, the towers don't all require fiber. Multiple towers can bounce signals to a centralized location via microwave.

  3. It's not competition.. by Z80a · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If it's verizon offering it.
    Wake me up when another company like google is allowed to even try.

    1. Re:It's not competition.. by SlaveToTheGrind · · Score: 2

      Wake me up when another company like google is allowed to even try.

      Try? Google is already providing 1GB down/up fixed wireless service in seven major metro areas.

      Wake up.

    2. Re:It's not competition.. by Desler · · Score: 2

      Wow seven whole cities?

    3. Re:It's not competition.. by Z80a · · Score: 2

      In theory you can.
      In practice Verizon/AT&T/Comcast will just pay the local government and block your efforts with a freaking law.

  4. Re:not in my basement. by bigwheel · · Score: 2

    Perhaps, your cats will allow you to hang a booster upstairs.

  5. Wat by XSportSeeker · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "Verizon Will Launch" "Real competition"
    Does not compute

  6. I'm not sure about the Verizon flavor but by nehumanuscrede · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I believe the AT&T flavor of this is going to run somewhere in the 30ghz band ?

    I -think- DirecTv works in the 18ghz band and anyone who has ever tried to watch the damn thing
    during a rainstorm can see where my next question is going . . . . .

    I am curious how well this technology is going to work when the weather decides not to play nice.
    ( Rain, fog, snow, etc )

    Can one of you radio types enlighten me ?

    1. Re:I'm not sure about the Verizon flavor but by FrankHaynes · · Score: 4, Informative

      The closer it gets to light, the more it acts like light.

      --
      slashdot: A failed experiment.
  7. Re:No thank you to the "network nutrality" by Hal_Porter · · Score: 2

    True. House Democrat has Google and Facebook as bannermen. House Republican has Comcast and Verizon. Neither care for smallfolk, whose only option is to be whores or sellswords in war between great feudal houses for control. Eventually winter will bring ice zombies from the frozen north and doom all of humanity.

    Does it feel a bit chilly in here, or is it just me?

    --
    echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
  8. Re:not in my basement. by swillden · · Score: 4, Funny

    My phone doesn't work in my basement, and I live in my basement. No, not my mom's basement, my wonderful, fully furnished basement. The cats live upstairs...

    So, you live in your cats' basement? Is that supposed to be better?

    --
    Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
  9. Re:Fiber availability by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 2

    Yep, the city and state attorney generals' offices are pretty bad ass in NY as far as consumer advocacy.

  10. Safety schmafety by TrickiDicki · · Score: 2

    So they haven't even established procedures for evaluating human exposure of 5G radiation (6 GHz-100 GHz) but hey don't let a little microwave radiation get in the way of 'progress'

  11. Scuttle The Launch!!! by ohnocitizen · · Score: 2

    Verizon keeps fighting to kill Net Neutrality despite people consistently fighting it off. Time to punish them. Make this fail. They are surely investing lots of money into it. The only way large corporations stop abusing their power is by being regulated, broken up, or losing a significant amount of money. Since Trump's Ajit Pai lead FCC is in a state of regulatory capture thanks to Verizon - we need to fight back.

  12. Re:No thank you to the "network nutrality" by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 4, Funny

    Eventually winter will bring ice zombies from the frozen north and doom all of humanity.

    Canadians aren't THAT bad.

    --
    "That's the way to do it" - Punch
  13. It's cell service not broadband by oh_my_080980980 · · Score: 2

    It's fucking cell service so stop with the bullshit. Broadband is guaranteed up/down speeds and no data caps. Cell service is nothing like that. Speeds are not guaranteed and there are data caps. So no your fucking cell phone does not provide you with broadband. Your cell phone provides you with an VERY EXPENSIVE alternative to connecting to the internet.