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Qualcomm's Simulated 5G Tests Shows How Fast Real-world Speeds Could Actually Be (theverge.com)
At Mobile World Congress, Qualcomm demonstrated the real-world potential of 5G by sharing findings of extensive network simulations it has conducted over the past several months. From a report: Instead of just offering guesses as to the gigabit-plus speeds that 5G technology could one day offer, Qualcomm's tests modeled real-world conditions in Frankfurt and San Fransisco, based on the location of existing cell sites and spectrum allocations in the two cities. The simulations factor in conditions like geography, different user demands on the network, a wide spectrum of devices with various levels of LTE and 5G connectivity for different speeds in order to accurately give an idea of what to expect when these networks launch. Additionally, the simulations are intended only to show the kind of 5G NR (New Radio) networks that could feasibly exist next year -- the non-standalone networks built in tandem with existing 4G LTE technology, not the truly standalone 5G networks that will come later on.
The Frankfurt simulation is the more basic network, based on 100 MHz of 3.5GHz spectrum with an underlying gigabit-LTE network on 5 LTE spectrum bands, but the results are still staggering. Browsing jumped from 56 Mbps for the median 4G user to more than 490 Mbps for the median 5G user, with roughly seven times faster response rates for browsing. Download speeds also improved dramatically, with over 90 percent of users seeing at least 100 Mbps download speeds on 5G, versus 8 Mbps on LTE.
The Frankfurt simulation is the more basic network, based on 100 MHz of 3.5GHz spectrum with an underlying gigabit-LTE network on 5 LTE spectrum bands, but the results are still staggering. Browsing jumped from 56 Mbps for the median 4G user to more than 490 Mbps for the median 5G user, with roughly seven times faster response rates for browsing. Download speeds also improved dramatically, with over 90 percent of users seeing at least 100 Mbps download speeds on 5G, versus 8 Mbps on LTE.
How useful, to be able to reach my data limit in just over 30 seconds!
At those speeds I'd be able to blow through my 20 gig data cap in about 5 and a half minutes.
Simulated means (almost) perfectly controlled environment, which in the real world is never going to happen. Show me results form real life test, (not a simulation) and I may pay some attention.
Carriers will rewrite what 5G speeds actually means to something equal to or greater than 3G like they did with 4G.
See we now offer 5G speeds without having to upgrade tower hardware for a low low upgrade price!
The problem is with the new network, the cell companies trot out their marketing stuff which says "zomg, teh fast network so good", they tell you all of the cool and shiny things you can do with it, and then they cripple it, cap it, degrade it and generally do a bait and switch.
At the end of the day, they'll make all sorts of claims which in reality will be anything but true. They'll whine they couldn't possibly offer those speeds to everybody.
So, no matter what the simulation says, you'll simply not see those speeds. And if you do, you'll blow through your monthly cap in about 5 minutes.
Never believe it when a cell company brags about their new network, because that is a work of fiction.
Great, now I can blow through my data cap in mere seconds.
TFS doesn't only mention San Francisco, but also Frankfurt, which is in Germany, which it self is here in Europe - i.e.: a continent where not all ISP put as absurd limitations on data bandwidth as you have to put up with your USAmerican Telcos.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
"roughly seven times faster response rates for browsing"
What do you suppose this means? Latency dropping from 30-60 mS to 5-10? Page starts loading seven times faster? Do slow sites magically load seven times faster?
Not unambiguous.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Some of us don't live in big cities with excellent coverage. And those that do, seldom live in a simulation dreamed up by a salesman.
Browsing jumped from 56 Mbps for the median 4G user to more than 490 Mbps for the median 5G user
So, we'll still be waiting for actual 4G speeds. Maybe "6G" or "7G" will finally meet the standards for 4G.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I don't need faster cell or wired Net service. I need more reliable. Faster without reliability is useless to me.
I don't respond to AC's.
It's important to note they opened some frequency bands below the original 24Ghz+ frequencies that were being touted early on. I suspect physics caught up to marketing guys fast, when they realized a rain storm could easily attenuate the signal to non-usable levels in a very short distance. Not sure if they'll be able to live up to the original speed estimates, but still obviously an improvement.
My understanding is that 5G relies on numerous "mini-cell towers."
Where is the high-speed wired infrastructure that will ink these mini-cells together? This will take decades to implement.
addendum:
O2 (an example of ISP I used during my stay in Germany) has currently offers of 25 or 20 GB per month.
At currently simulated 490Mbps (roughly 60MB/s) it would take between 300s (5 min) to 400ms to max it out, around 10x more that the above 30s example.
Also, once the limit is hit, the device isn't cut off internet, the speed is simply degraded to 1Mbps.
There are other countries in Europe where it's not even customary to have data limits : Switzerland is an example thereof (on most non-pre-paid-plans, only speed is limited (together with minimal guaranteed speed), not total download volume)
I'm too lazy to do a systematic check but lots of European countries are likely to be in similar situation.
And that's today's number. By the time 5G finishes getting deployed to customers, the various plans will be adapted to it (probably with data limits in the 100GB range and higher speed limits / minimal guarantee).
Meanwhile, US custommers will probably have their monthly limits increased from 1GB to 2GB.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
In the sense that we need this service to be available farther past the edge of large urban areas than currently available, which is to say, where there is no Starbucks or Panda Express an easy drive away. Because once you hit the exurbs, it's not about "is 5G better then 4G" or "will the new thing be a little more reliable," but rather "is there any chance of even getting 3G coverage at my house."
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
My understanding of "browsing" says that it is a series of file parsings and downloads, in a sequence, interspearsed with various short or long pauses. That suggests that the average browsing speed should be less than the peak file transfer speed.
In the TFA, the "median 5G user" experiences a 490 Mbps "browsing speed", while the "90%" experienced a "download speed" of 100 Mbps.
How could that be? Is "downloading" capped to the nice, round number 100?
Perhaps the most honest metric is the time to first meaningful paint.
When the user navigates to an HTML document, a browser doesn't immediately display the data as it comes in. Doing that would cause the layout to jump around as style sheets, images, and fonts provided by the server replace those built into the browser and operating system. This jumping is often called the "flash of unstyled content" (FOUC). So before rendering anything, some browsers wait until the layout "above the fold" (that which can be seen without scrolling) has stabilized.
Maybe I'm extraordinarily lucky. I don't know, but I don't struggle for phone service, basically ever. Verizon 4G LTE is "good enough". I watch Youtube videos casually. Navigation works. Texting, music, installing apps wherever, etc. There are problems but they are rare enough that I can't actually remember the last time I had a service problem.
The only exception is when hiking backwoods trails and half the reason I do this is to get OFF the grid. Service in Italy was basically useless, calls only. But service in Peru was excellent!
So I'm not really willing to pay for more speed. I want cheaper and comparable service around the globe, and I want bandwidth caps dropped.
The summary implies that the test assumed current subscriber-to-tower ratios. I imagine that prioritizing bursty interactive traffic improves overall user experience for a given subscriber-to-tower ratio.
"How fast could be" is a distant cousin of "how fast is".
High frequencies attenuate quickly over distance. Things like walls and rain block high frequencies. A rigged demo under ideal conditions does not reality make. A high frequency cell network that requires cell towers every 200 meters is not going to be widely deployed.
"5G" is a marketing term with no technical definition.
The speeds are amazing when you're the only person using it. Load up that tower with hundreds of people and the backhaul's with thousands more and run those tests again.
Since wireless carriers are already placing limits on my data usage and throttling sites heavily used sites (netflix etc.) what the hell good does a bigger endpoint pipe do if they won't allow any more data in it?
Bits per unit of time is a useless measurement when faced with the constraints of data caps. A more useful measurement would be units of time required to exhaust data cap.
They were simulations, although the TFA isn't real specific about how they were set up. It's implied that they took real data using existing LTE infrastructure and extrapolated how 5G would perform in that environment. Far from perfect, but assuming they're reasonably competent they should be able to get projections that are in-the-ballpark accurate. As for "ideal conditions" well, yeah, that's what you use for a benchmark. "Rain" can mean anything from light mist to torrential downpour, you can't use it as a context for comparing systems because it's too variable.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
ALL our mobile Internet providers put absurd data caps on our connections. The ones who seem not to, still throttle to 3G limits after that small cap is used up.
You can buy bigger caps of course. For bigger money. But good luck finding anything above 10GB in actual buyable-by-you reality, or anything about 2GB for a reasonable price that doesn't have some nasty mantraps like instead of throttling, just automatically "upgrading" you to a more expensive plan once you go over the cap once, with no option to turn it off! (Something that was shown by a judge to be *illegal*, yet somehow is still done to this day.)