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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.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
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.
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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Both of you are wrong. AT&T is no more. The company named AT&T today is actually Southwestern Bell, which purchased the remnants of AT&T and then re-branded themselves in 2005.
"His name was James Damore."
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.