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AT&T's Silence on 5G Speeds Screams 'Stay Away For Now' (venturebeat.com)
An anonymous reader shares a column: AT&T may be meeting its self-imposed deadline to launch "5G" service in 12 cities this week, but based on what the company has said -- and not said -- I can only conclude that its 5G network isn't actually ready for prime time. Yet. The problem is straightforward: As of today, 5G's only benefit over 4G is speed, and AT&T has gone silent on the speed of its 5G network. Verizon promised 300Mbps to 1Gbps speeds before launching its 5G home broadband network in October, then exceeded its minimum guarantees.
By contrast, AT&T made no commitment to network speeds (or latency) in its 5G launch press release, nor does it offer performance estimates in its consumer 5G web pages. Seeking to quantify the network's performance, I reached out to the normally responsive AT&T to ask about a report that its 5G+ network would have real-world speeds of 140Mbps, despite theoretical peak speeds that have alternately been pegged at 979Mbps or 1.2Gbps, depending on source. There was no response.
By contrast, AT&T made no commitment to network speeds (or latency) in its 5G launch press release, nor does it offer performance estimates in its consumer 5G web pages. Seeking to quantify the network's performance, I reached out to the normally responsive AT&T to ask about a report that its 5G+ network would have real-world speeds of 140Mbps, despite theoretical peak speeds that have alternately been pegged at 979Mbps or 1.2Gbps, depending on source. There was no response.
I don't see the point of this article. If you have a 5G handset and you get better speed at 4G, then by all means disable 5G.
The major pull for me for 5G isn't the higher speed, it's the lower latency. Browsing is generally fairly bad at achieving anything close to line speed because there are so many round trips and connections to different domains. Cutting latency helps a lot more than extra bandwidth. If 5G can give me reliable low-latency 50Mbps, I will be a very happy customer.
$70 for 15GB on the other hand is extortion. That needs to come down at least an order of magnitude.
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AT&T: Stay Away
I still remember when they broke up AT&T into the baby bells. It may be time to revisit those actions.
It was only 36 years ago.
The thing that always stops me from relying on my G4 Cell for my primary internet isn't speed, but cost.
Each device with a separate plan or at least extra cost per device. Paying for metered amount, or paying a lot more for unlimited.
If I could have my devices networked with G4 for less then I am paying for Cable Internet with a Wireless Router. It may make it worth it. But G5 extra speed isn't the issue holding me back. It is coverage and price.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
With most plans in US having rather low data caps, and with few grandfathered unlimited caps getting throttled above certain low threshold, how is AT&Ts roll out of 5G in any way relevant?
I think what needs to be focused on more than what the speed is, what is the monthly limit and how long will it take to exceed it.
In other words: "Some of the equipment we bought for new and replacement cell towers is 5G, because hey, we'd have to do it eventually and this gives us some headlines. But we're going to take our own sweet time upgrading the backhaul links, so if you've got a 5G phone you'd better get ready for some throttling."
The opinions stated herein do not necessarily represent those of anybody at all. Deal with it.
4G if the cell size isnt overly huge or overly crowded can deliver pretty good speeds 6Mbit or as deployed by the carriers.
Right now even the unlimited plans cap you around 20Gigs and despite what VZW's marketing materials say trying to actually get an unlimited plan on a their home broad band solutions are nearly impossible; the best you can really get is like 15GB and than throttle; and that by the way is only even when its a laughably characterized as companion device to handset on an unlimited plan. Its damn near a bait an switch to get you in the store as near as I can tell.
So 5G will be fast okay; what good is that if you get throttled down after 20Gigs, I can't imagine very many application / situations where burning thru your monthly cap in 10min is useful service. Maybe some remote monitoring station needs to do a bulk data upload once month some place but that is about it. For basically every other customer use case more speed means higher caps have to come with it or its not practical.
Oh and of course 5G cells are tiny by comparison so it more or less means 5G service will only be available in densely populated places where there is probably ground based network and wifi available any way. So I am still wondering who is this for?
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with an 15GB cap even 25MEG down will push you over fast.
With today's data plans, that's like getting a Ferrari and fuel for half a mile.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
A lot of new "small cell" sites have been popping up around here. They all seem to be operated by CrownCastle and basically look like utility poles with a cylindrical antenna module on the top. There's also some on street lights and the like.
So they're definitely in-filling their coverage, most likely to get 5G going. It's a long process, though, so I don't expect solid coverage for a while yet.
Idiot reporters. Can't be bothered to try to understand a new technology, so they report on it using the only metric they already understand - speed. It's not about max speeds. That's kinda pointless as at 1.2 Gbps you'd blow through a 5 GB data cap in 30 seconds. Even at 140 Mbps you'd blow through 5 GB in less than 5 minutes.
5G isn't about improving your speed in the best case (though that can happen). It's about improving your speed in the worst case - when lots of people are trying to pull data from a tower simultaneously. The higher speed means each person's data download gets completed faster, meaning the tower is handling fewer simultaneous requests, meaning each individual request gets more bandwidth.
In addition, 5G adds MIMO. Rather than using one antenna to transmit and receive omnidirectionally, it uses multiple antennas and software to "aim" the antenna array like a phased array radar. Adding directionality means you can transmit to multiple devices over the same frequencies without the signals interfering because direction of the signal now matters, not just the presence of a signal. It's like communicating with point-to-point lasers instead of a sensor which just detects the total amount of light coming from all directions. Light signals being sent to other devices interfere with the latter, but not with the former.
What that boils down to is that 5G will minimize the impact of other people's use of the tower on the speeds you get. The max speed you experience may not be a substantial improvement over 4G. But the minimum speed you experience when the tower cell is crowded should be substantially better. You remember the iPhone demo which failed because there were too many WiFi users in the room? That's the kind of situation 5G solves.