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EU The Internet Upgrades Wireless Networking

EU, South Korea Collaborate On Superfast 5G Standards 78

Posted by samzenpus from the greased-lightning dept.
jfruh writes The European Commission and the South Korean government announced that they will be harmonizing their radio spectrum policy in an attempt to help bring 5G wireless tech to market by 2020. While the technology is still in an embryonic state, but one South Korean researcher predicts it could be over a thousand times faster than current 4G networks.
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EU, South Korea Collaborate On Superfast 5G Standards More

EU, South Korea Collaborate On Superfast 5G Standards

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  • How much more can we squeeze? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by i kan reed ( 749298 ) on Monday June 16, 2014 @11:10AM (#47246089) Homepage Journal

    There's only so much theoretical bandwidth on the broadcast range e/m spectrum. How much gets reserved for non-consumer purposes? How many towers/area can we afford? There's gotta be a theoretical fundamental limit, somewhere, right? Like there is with Moore's law?

    • Re:How much more can we squeeze? (Score:5, Informative)

      by AndroSyn ( 89960 ) on Monday June 16, 2014 @11:13AM (#47246127) Homepage

      The limit you are looking for, the Shannon limit is explained here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Shakrai ( 717556 )

      The Shannon–Hartley theorem [wikipedia.org] (aka Shannon capacity) is the term you're looking for. Modern wireless networks use MIMO [alcatel-lucent.com] (multiple input multiple output) concepts to boost this capacity and squeeze more bits into the same slice of spectrum.

      • Though the biggest problem on modern wireless networks is not "noise" in the traditional sense but interference between cells. The combination of such interference (which looks and acts similar to noise given modern modulation techniques) with the fading inherent in mobile microwave devices makes it very hard to achive more than a few bits/sec/hz on average across the celll.

        Conventional MIMO helps a little but the close spacing of the antennas means the channels have low independence limiting the gains.

        So t

    • As said by others the fundamental limit is given by Shannon. This defines a maximum throughput given a spectrum bandwidth and S/N ratio. In current technologies we're pretty close to this. This also indicates how to increase the total throughput, which can comes from:
      • - Adding channels. This is what MIMO spatial multiplexing (SM) is about;
      • - Increasing the used spectrum bandwidth. There is a lot of spectrum at high frequencies, with new challenges, and one option for 5G is to use this;
      • - Increase the signal

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Shatrat ( 855151 )

      Moore's law is a terrible example as it's not based on any theory or math. It's more like "Moore's Observation that has held fairly true for a few decades".

  • Now you can blow through your 2GB of data at $30 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hsmith ( 818216 ) on Monday June 16, 2014 @11:20AM (#47246185)
    In 30 seconds!

  • It's gonna be funny when our cellphone Internet... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by iampiti ( 1059688 ) on Monday June 16, 2014 @11:27AM (#47246275)
    ...is consistently faster than our wired home connections.
    It all sounds a little weird to me: Isn't a dedicated cable always much more reliable and capable than a wireless connection? That's what I thought at least.
    I guess it's cheaper to deploy antennas every few hundred meters than to wire every home

    • I somehow doubt that wireless will be faster, but for the cost of scale infrastructure, antennas and base stations aren't cheap, but the will probably serve many more customers (each with a monthly subscription) than a DSLAM or Coax (or fiber) deployment, so the costs probably will have a better ROI.

    • Somehow, I doubt it actually will be faster.

      The cell companies will throttle, and continue to massively over-subscribe.

      Pretty much every advancement they've touted as bringing faster, better, cheaper has translated into "not much faster", "slightly better (for them)", and in no way at all cheaper.

      I have very little faith that most wireless companies will do anything but squeeze us for money money and more profits, while giving us the same service (or worse) than we already have.

      • Absolutely, in the U.S. where "laws" prevent competition. The results elsewhere will likely be better. Remember basic economics: in a market with enough buyers and sellers that none can exert inordinate influence on prices, those prices will tend toward the marginal cost of production. That doesn't happen here in the U.S. mainly because of regulatory capture - telecom regs are written by the telecom companies and are designed to hinder competition to the greatest extent possible.

      • Don't forget that the link speed between your phone and the tower doesn't make one single shit of difference if they don't upgrade the backhaul from the tower to the switching office.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by GNious ( 953874 )

      ...is consistently faster than our wired home connections.

      My VDSL connection (Belgacom) is slower than my 4G-LTE connection (Belgacom).

      Nope, nut funny, really.

    • My upload speed already is faster for LTE than for my cable modem (Oregon, USA). Download is about 1/2.

    • You clearly live in a city. I can't see my neighbors where I live. No, it's not cheaper to deploy antennae every few hundred meters.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by phorm ( 591458 )

      My wireless at home offers speeds in excess of a standard 10/100 connection.
      *however*

      In most places you will have multiple cabled 10/100 connections, with a backplane that's capable of an aggregate >100MBps. The wifi, on the other handle, gets slower as more people pile on.

      I'd imagine that the same applies to cellular wifi VS gigabit etc. I've also noticed that while cellular often has fast download speeds, the connection setup is often much slower than on ethernet etc

    • My 4G internet on my phone is already faster than my home broadband connection, due to the fact that they haven't connected my street to the rest of the Fiber network in Dublin. Thanks to unlimited download, I regularly use it to downloads my Steam games and TV episodes. I'm tempted to get rid of the landline altogether.

  • 5G (Score:5, Funny)

    by rossdee ( 243626 ) on Monday June 16, 2014 @11:44AM (#47246425)

    5G is about 49 meters per second per second

  • I have 4G now, and it is still as slow as 3G, which is as slow as 2G, which is as slow as 1Xrtt when everyone is using their phones and the pipe to the tower is full. I often see 10 - 30 Kbps during peak times.

    During the middle of the night, 1 bar will get me 1.3 - 1.9Mbps on 3G, and 3 - 5 Mbps on 4G, but during the day, I struggle to get 100Kbps on 3G or 4G, even with 5 bars.

    I can watch my download speed increase as everyone goes to bed. It's funny (sad) to graph my download speed and see it jump up on t

    • I've downloaded 200MB of stuff in about 5-10 secs on 4G here, but I imagine that there's a pretty serious infrastructure hereabouts.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dave420 ( 699308 )
      I regularly get over 2MB/s (megabytes/s) using bittorrent on my LTE phone, in the middle of the day.

  • That's not what we need in the US (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jtownatpunk.net ( 245670 ) on Monday June 16, 2014 @11:53AM (#47246507)

    In the US, we need cheaper wireless, not faster. I've been passing thru some of Verizon's XLTE areas lately where my speeds have topped out at 69/19Mbps. That's pretty darn fast but completely useless for the vast majority of their customers with their piddly 1-10 gig caps.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Shatrat ( 855151 )

      Look at T-Mobile, Sprint, various MVNOs. If you want one of the Big Two you pay Big Prices.

      • Look at their fine print. They all reduce your speed (or cut data completely) after x.x gigs of data. And they throttle certain types of traffic regardless of your usage.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Shatrat ( 855151 )

          If you want uncapped prices, you pay an uncapped bill.

          • Show me one current uncapped option that doesn't have fine print limiting the amount of data you can use or how you use it. Meaning a contract that allows me to tether to my laptop and move hundreds of gigs of data. I have that now but those data plans are no longer available and have been unavailable for 4+ years.

            You've just told me to pay for an option that no longer exists.

  • Wake me up when we have unlimited cell phone data instead.

  • Why do they hate our freedom? We don't need nothing like that in the USA.

  • That means we can consume our ridiculously small bandwidth quotas within 30 seconds, rather than than the 2 hours it takes now.

  • 5G? (Score:2)

    by meglon ( 1001833 )

    but one South Korean researcher predicts it could be over a thousand times faster than current 4G networks.

    Maybe in every other country in the world, but here in the US the companies will buy enough politicians that they can have 5G legally defined as somewhere between 3G and where 4G is supposed to be.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by wytcld ( 179112 )

      If we but allow the several remaining cell phone companies to merge, the efficiency of scale will enable them to bring us infinite, affordable bandwidth. It is only our law against monopolies that prevents OUCH (One Ultra Cell Honcho) from delivering everthing we deserve.

  • Cool, so I can blow through my 2GB in a matter of seconds!

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