Don't Look Now, but 5G May Be Right Around the Corner

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
Joined
May 9, 2000
Messages
75,399
Wait, what? Where did 4G go? I never got a chance to use it. The International Telecommunications Union approved LTE-Advanced and WiMax-Advanced the designation of IMT-Advanced. Although not officially designated 5G, just as 4G is still technically 3G. Confused? Join the crowd. Now all we have to do is wait for the infrastructure to catch up with the designations.

"IMT-Advanced marks a huge leap forward in state-of-the-art technologies, which will make the present day smart phone feel like an old dial up Internet connection"
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I love how there is no enforcement over calling your device a 4G, etc. I'm going to sell a rock labeled as 6G tomorrow. $50 + ship.
 
It's getting overrated, I don't see any purpose having broadband connection in phone.
But, it will take a while...
The last major update to the standard was in 2000, when the ITU adopted the umbrella standards for 3G.
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So if the last was in 2000, and they starting to work on it in 2012 I don't see it debuting before 2015 at least.
 
So with 5G the major carriers will sell backpacks with small scale nuclear reactors inside them to power the phones.

Bandwidth goes up, and the cap goes down.
 
Most of todays phones have connection speeds that are slower than dial up if you have AT&T.
 
Before they introduce this we need the government to say caps are bullshit and the phone companies need to upgrade their networks if they can't handle it.

Sadly that will never happen so we need to just stay at 4G for the next 500 years...or until extinction.
 
To be honest I'm fine with 3G. Sometimes my phone goes into 2G or E, and it really sucks. Having 4G or H has very little difference with 3G in most situations. This is mostly because of signal and network traffic.
 
I know I'd be much happier with less power hungry, more widely available "4g" than a new faster standard. I can't get "4g" where I live, but have to pay for it to get any of the newer smart phones and when I'm in an area that has it my battery only lasts a few hours. pretty freaking annoying.
 
So I just leave it off at all times now; because the penalties to battery life aren't worth it.
 
I live right outside of DC and with my Droid Charge and Verizon 4G, I get 15 Down, 11 Up. My home connection is 20/4...

Does 5G even seem necessary at this point when 4G is in such a limited area. :confused:
 
Wow, you really got slow 4g speeds. Over here (Sweden) we get speeds around 40-50mb
 
Its kind of like the old engineer's response, "assume an object is falling in a vacuum". All these standards are theoretical until someone makes them reality and builds a working, useable network with phones that work correctly with the system.
 
Great, now we can use our 2 GB monthly data limit in 200 seconds instead of 2000 seconds like we did before. On a more serious note they should work on making it more efficient to transmit data so more people can have access to it. In my opinion decreasing price and increasing the installed base/market share is better than locking people out of cool new tech.

Wolfkin said:
Wow, you really got slow 4g speeds. Over here (Sweden) we get speeds around 40-50mb
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Yeah but... but... but... You live in one of those "socialist" countries where they invest in their people and their infrastructure, and don't just extract from it.
 
Wolfkin said:
Wow, you really got slow 4g speeds. Over here (Sweden) we get speeds around 40-50mb
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I think it's a dual issue of them be greedy as FUCK here, and there really is a very, very large amount of area to cover in comparison to an individual European country, being 21 times larger than even Sweden. When I lived more out west, some areas had zero cell phone coverage and only dial-up.

It's just as bad with home connections as well, the only option to high speed I've ever had is Comcast. Comcast would rather save a buck than save your life, they're customer service is THAT bad.

Jason > Andrew, I would like to inform you that when you experience this slow connectivity when it's peak time because it uses a cable modem. This is normal. The lesser users the faster the speed is.
Andrew_ > But I pay for a certain connection speed...
Jason > However, there are ways that you can have a better speed though.
Jason > I do understand that Andrew. I really do apologize for the inconvenience that this has caused you.

I had the highest connection speed you could buy and the problem was that at night, internet would not even work, I usually would get about a 5k ping and about dial up download speed. He just went back and forth with me and never gave me a straight answer. They sent out a guy during the day when there was no issue so they refused to do anything. The guy that came out said that the upgrade was in place and they were waiting for corporate, and corporate said that they were ready but waiting for local crews to finish.

I paid 65 bucks a month for this for 2 years, aren't monopolies and tele-com companies in America great??
 
Visiting relatives in PA, I pulled 22mb on verizon 4G.

Wish it come to my part of OH.
 
XacTactX said:
Great, now we can use our 2 GB monthly data limit in 200 seconds instead of 2000 seconds like we did before. On a more serious note they should work on making it more efficient to transmit data so more people can have access to it. In my opinion decreasing price and increasing the installed base/market share is better than locking people out of cool new tech.



Yeah but... but... but... You live in one of those "socialist" countries where they invest in their people and their infrastructure, and don't just extract from it.
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True, they do invest a lot in infrastructure but we do get to pay for it, how does ~55% tax sound (income tax ~30% + sales tax 25%, and we do have income tax on everything you buy) and then I haven't counted energy or fuel tax which is even higher.

Oh, and to pour some salt in your wounds, download cap? Never heard of it. ;)
 
I get all the cell phone service I want for $10/month. I use a Tracfone with one year/1000 min for $99. I would like to have mobile internet service but my sister convinced me to skip it.

How you ask?

She brought over her new droid and showed me how great it is, and it is nice. She told me she was going to drop her DSL service because she used the phone instead. I asked her how much it cost. She didn't know but it is a business write-off anyway and she will save $30/month on DSL. I am not making this up.

Well, she got her first bill, $350+ US. She is now reconsidering her options.

Apparently, the G in 3G stands for: Gee, I wonder if I can get a home equity loan?
 
If I get two 4G phones and use them at the same time, does that mean I have 8G?

I wish people would stop fixating on the G brand and care about data download speed.

This kind of reminds me of the war between IPS and clockrate.
 
SparkedFire said:
On AT&T HSPA+ I pull 2Mb at home ("3G" area) and can get 5Mb in the city with ("4G"). I have seen LTE in the area pull 55Mb.
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The best I've gotten out of my Verizon LTE modem in NC in 40Mb down but LTE is incredible nonetheless.
 
Could be 15G speeds, with a cap of 1GB or 5GB limit, it's unfortunately pointless, who cares.

Those who have unlimited, don't lose it.
 
Yakk said:
Could be 15G speeds, with a cap of 1GB or 5GB limit, it's unfortunately pointless, who cares.

Those who have unlimited, don't lose it.
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This is indeed the far far the biggest problem with LTE, the caps are so low and the speed so tremendous that it's almost paradoxical.
 
Yay, more antennas to add to the towers. How many different transmission technologies do they need to have? Pick one, and stick to it.

Our region does not even fully support 4G yet. People buy new phones and don't realize they don't work everywhere because the towers have not been upgraded yet.
 
call me when the data pricing becomes even remotely reasonable....

10 bucks a month for what they charge 30 or so for now i'm in... but seriously, the data charges are total highway robbery
 
yeah and not to mention the ridiculous caps. What's the point of having these speeds when you can't go over 1GB? Often even lower, like 500MB. I would rather have those high speeds for my home internet connection, without a cap.
 
BoogerBomb said:
Most of todays phones have connection speeds that are slower than dial up if you have AT&T.
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There are certainly areas of poor coverage, and AT&T's service quality differs from region to region, but around Boston they are pretty solid.

Here's a 3G test I did on my iPhone a little over a year ago.

4756513306_9af0bcbcdb.jpg
 
Red Squirrel said:
Yay, more antennas to add to the towers. How many different transmission technologies do they need to have? Pick one, and stick to it.

Our region does not even fully support 4G yet. People buy new phones and don't realize they don't work everywhere because the towers have not been upgraded yet.
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This is actually a good thing. Technology advancements are moving fast. And they are being financed by the people who are willing to pay abusive fees for current service levels. In a few years we will all have high speed, highly reliable wireless service at reasonable cost.

Yes, I know I'm an optimist.
 
TheArTcher said:
This is actually a good thing. Technology advancements are moving fast. And they are being financed by the people who are willing to pay abusive fees for current service levels. In a few years we will all have high speed, highly reliable wireless service at reasonable cost.

Yes, I know I'm an optimist.
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Yeah true, but guess working for a service provider I see their side too. They just finished scrambling to upgrade all the towers to 3G and now they'll be behind again. The cost does end up going back to the consumer as well, and is probably why we'll never see these absurd caps/costs go down.
 
So...you'll hit your data cap in like 2 minutes instead of 4 with 5G?
 
BoogerBomb said:
Most of todays phones have connection speeds that are slower than dial up if you have AT&T.
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Ping time? Yes. Throughput, doubtful. You typically achieve much higher than 53.2kbps on an AT&T Edge connection. Now, there are the exception, for example where I live. AT&T is the only tower in the area and data speeds are typically 18-30kbps.
 
Manaknight said:
call me when the data pricing becomes even remotely reasonable....

10 bucks a month for what they charge 30 or so for now i'm in... but seriously, the data charges are total highway robbery
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For what they charge for data, you should be able to use it as your home internet (tethered) as well. But some also want $30 for that (if you're not rooted/etc) if they catch you. But you can't, it's limited.

With limited internet, you should only be paying $5 or $10.
 
You guys complaining about data caps and the such should really vote with your wallet and switch over to Sprint or any other carrier that doesn't have caps. Otherwise things will stay the same and the other companies will think you're happy on your leash.

As for not "needing" 4g, and sticking with 3g is a bit narrow minded. I haven't done any data testing but performance when streaming high quality music over Pandora on 4g is pretty big improvement over 3g. Buffering times really suck on 3g compared to when I have 4g on, it would take forever. Just because loading Google news on 4g isn't much different than 3g doesn't mean we can't use anything faster.

You guys are sounding old for being on a tech site :p
 
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