Thinking about buying a new high-speed 5G phone? Do yourself a favor: don't do it.
Who doesn't want fast internet and big bandwidth? Everybody wants. Ideally, everyone wants gigabit fiber optic cable to reach their home or office. Maybe someday it will. What's not going to happen is gigabit per second from 5G. Not now, not tomorrow, not ever.
At the moment, telecommunication companies are saying many things in one advertisement after another that are not true. But even by their standards, 5G is fake.
Let's start with the name itself. There is no single "5G". In fact, there are three varieties with very different characteristics.
First, it's low-bandwidth 5G that offers wide coverage. One tower can cover hundreds of square miles. It's not a speed demon, but even 20+ Mbps is a hell of a lot better than the 3 Mbps that rural DSL sticks to. And in ideal situations, this can give you 100+ Mbps speeds.
Then there is mid-range 5G, operating from 1 GHz to 6 GHz, and has about half the coverage of 4G. You can expect speeds in the 200 Mbps range. If you are in the United States, then most likely you will not encounter it. It is only deployed , which inherited mid-band 5G with a channel bandwidth of 2,5 GHz from . However, it is slow because most of its potential bandwidth is already in use.
But what most people want is 1 Gb/s speed with less than 10 millisecond latency. According to , about 40% of iPhone users and 33% of Android users are extremely or very interested in purchasing 5G gadgets. They need that kind of speed, and they want it now. And 18% of them even say they understand the difference between the types of 5G network bands.
Doubtful. Because if they really understood this, they would not be in such a hurry to buy a 5G smartphone. You see, to get that kind of speed, you have to have 5G millimeter-wavelength radios - and that comes with a lot of caveats.
Firstly, such waves have a maximum range of 150 meters. If you're driving, that means that until 5G base stations are everywhere, you're going to lose your high-speed signal a lot. In fact, in the next few years, if you're driving, you won't be able to use high-speed 5G.
And even if you are in range of a 5G base station, anything - window glass, wood, wall, etc. - can block its high-frequency signal. Thus, the 5G transceiver may be on the corner of your street, and you will not be able to receive a normal signal.
How bad is that? , a leading mobile phone service provider in Japan, is working on a new kind of window glass that allows millimetric 5G to pass through. But it's unlikely that most people will be willing to shell out a few thousand dollars to replace windows just to get their phone working.
Assume, however, that you have a 5G phone and are confident that you can access 5G - how much performance can you really expect? According to a Washington Post tech columnist , you can expect 5G to be "clunky". Sounds plausible, it can be trusted:
βTry AT&T at 32 Mbps with a 5G smartphone and 34 Mbps with a 4G smartphone. On T-Mobile I got 15 Mbps on 5G and 13 Mbps on a 4G smartphone.β He couldn't check Verizon. But his 4G smartphone was faster than his 5G smartphone.
Indeed, the reports that the average speed of 5G users in the US is 33,4 Mbps. Better than 4G, but not βWow! Itβs cool!β, which most people dream of. This is far worse than any other country using 5G except the UK.
Also, you will only get 5G 20% of the time. Unless you live or work near a millimeter wave transceiver, you simply won't see the promised speeds or anything close to them. Honestly, don't expect high-speed 5G to be widely available before 2025. And even when that day comes, it's doubtful we'll all see actual gigabit second speeds.
The original article can be found .
Source: habr.com