AT&T's Silence on 5G Speeds Screams 'Stay Away For Now' (venturebeat.com) 73
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.
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I wholeheartedly agree.
It's just not possible mathematically speaking. Sure 5G could give you a Gig connection to the tower, but even with a 10 Gigabit Internet connection to the tower you're going to swamp the connection after the first 10 phones. That's not counting the 'phones' that come embedded in some newer cars.
I highly doubt every cell tower has a 10 Gigabit connection to the Internet. At this point all you're doing is wasting power.
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FWIW, I only use pre-paid plans.
Stay away? Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
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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Yes, that it takes 2 minutes instead of 15 seconds to max out your traffic limit really makes a difference.
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I don't see the point of this article.
The point of this article is for a random Internet author to complain that AT&T is ignoring him.
Re: Stay away? Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
If your in a car 5g may not work,. If it is raining out 5g may not give you speed.
The frequencies for 5g are so varied that consistent speed is impossible. 4g with expanded coverage would be better.
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Again, so what? If 5G doesn't work, the device will switch to 4G or lower. Eventually the 4G frequencies will be reused for 5G, which will dramatically increase the utility.
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Of course, disabling 5G now might still be good because hardware is still not polished enough. In particular, 4G fallback is still n
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Browsing is generally fairly bad at achieving anything close to line speed because there are so many round trips and connections to different domains.
I think you've misidentified the cause of the problem you're seeing, not to mention the benefit you'll get from 5G.
As things stand now, your mobile browser will establish concurrent connections to each domain as soon as it becomes aware that it needs a resource from them. Those connections operate in parallel with each other, so instead of waiting on a series of "many round trips" to different domains (as was the case up until the late-90s), these days you're simply waiting on the single, slowest round trip
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I have uBlock Origin everywhere. I would still like faster page loads. Yes, everything tries to run in parallel, but resources depend on other resources that depend on other resources. If websites would start with a list of everything they recursively required, page loads would be a lot faster. But they don't.
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$70 for 15GB on the other hand is extortion. That needs to come down at least an order of magnitude.
So you want it for $7 a month or less? Good luck with that.
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Well more like I'd expect at least 150GB for $70.
https://www.oister.dk/mobilabo... [oister.dk]
That's 1000GB for $20. This is admittedly extraordinarily cheap, their competitors are generally in the $40 to $60 range.
Let me fix that headline (Score:3)
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.
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Verizon and AT&T are the Adult Bells of 36 years ago baby bells. They consumed their brothers and sisters like the gods of old.
Re:Let me fix that headline (Score:5, Informative)
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It was a merger. You don't have to know what words mean, that's ok. Others do.
Unless merger means acquisition [nytimes.com], you don't actually. SBC bought ATT.
However, SBC chose to be known as ATT. As well, they're behaving like them. If they want to be known as ATT, and they act like them, who are we to argue?
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Keep going, this sounds like it has potential.
--Michael Bay
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So in other words, he's right? Today's AT&T is indeed a grown up Baby Bell.
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I've worked for AT&T since 1996 and it is very much the same company. Certainly things have been changed, but I'm very different at age 45 than I was at age 22.
Perhaps you'd argue that the 1996 me and the 2018 me are two different people. But if you're willing to accept that I'm one person who has grown older, then I assure you that AT&T is still AT&T.
I don't agree with every decision AT&T makes, but there were a whole lot of good people in the 1996 AT&T and when we merged with SBC a who
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and when we merged with SBC a whole lot of good people joined us.
You didnt merge with SBC. SBC purchased your remnants. Thats an acquisition, not a merger.
Price (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Datacaps (Score:4, Insightful)
what about caps (Score:5, Insightful)
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Clearly the total bandwidth of the 4G bands is not sufficient for current demand.
This is why I like T-Mobile's approach (Score:2)
what is the monthly limit and how long will it take to exceed it.
I have T-Mobile, and I really like that you can turn on unlimited bandwidth for video if you want, where it will limit video bandwidth to I think something like 720p (actually it varies by provider I believe). This means that caps matter less, because they aren't factored in for the more data heavy use of the network, and the video still looks quite good on a small screen - a good compromise.
People are saying things like "you can hit the cap
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That website can now add more videos including ads.
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Maybe but that has not happened in practice - I mean it's really mostly used for Netflix and YouTube if anything. It's not like the number of ads changes from using 4g to 5g networks, and any ads embedded in videos would also be rate limited.
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Then you don't need the extra speed either. So you restrict video to 720p than 4g is more than fast enough to deliver it in real time. Same for web pages your mobile only has so much ram anyway you can only put so much on a single page before its basically unusable. We are talking about partial seconds here in improving loading time of your typical page; unless is really really big; and that is assuming the bottle necks are client side.
If you fast speed does not make you use more total data I really ques
Cpas will increase naturally with use I think (Score:2)
If you fast speed does not make you use more total data I really question the need for the greater speed in the first place.
More speed is always nice for occasional needs though. For instance, I have downloaded a 4GB update for Xcode when on a Alaskan cruise once because I really needed to test something. I was just lucky whatever town we were near had a great LTE signal because I was able to get that done in the limited time I had to download it...
Yes there are cases where say being able to download vide
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Just hitting a website or checking an app for data also don't actually benefit much from the higher speed of 5G. Video conferencing or watching a video will certainly benefit, but the conferencing and watching a video that isn't on the zero rating deal will indeed burn up a whole month's cap in a few minutes.
It does benefit (Score:2)
Just hitting a website or checking an app for data also don't actually benefit much from the higher speed of 5G.
It probably will not benefit much from the speed, but it does benefit from lower latency. If you are juts opening up an app for a second to check something like weather, it's a lot nicer to get that update to happen more quickly.
Video conferencing or watching a video will certainly benefit,
I don't see the extra speed benefitting either of those activities as LTE is already more than fast enough t
Not surprising (Score:3)
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."
Still waiting to hear the point of this (Score:5, Interesting)
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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When congestion is not an issue (in rural areas) you can actually get fully unlimited wireless connection for your home Internet from AT&T. My friend in rural Nowheristan of Nevada has one of such plans, they push more than 700GB a month. Though they do get throttled during the peak
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I live in a rural county (western edge of Virginia) and you most certainly can not get uncapped cell service. Maybe your friend is on some kind of grandfathered plan? VZW won't sell you unlimited on their home broadband without significant contractual engineering. Its not even a choice; they don't sell it. The best you can do and i don't even know you can do this today; is get them to class their cantenna solution as a companion device on the "old" unlimited plan for a handset (which costs more than the
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I'm not sure about what VZW is doing. I would assume that they are confused about everything as always.
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with an 15GB cap even 25MEG down will push you (Score:3)
with an 15GB cap even 25MEG down will push you over fast.
Time for a car analogy (Score:5, Interesting)
With today's data plans, that's like getting a Ferrari and fuel for half a mile.
Oxymoron (Score:2)
Someone likes oxymorons.
Been seeing lot of new cell sites (Score:3)
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.
Wisdom (Score:2)
Some folks know to " stay away " from new until it has been released, field tested and reviewed.
Games, cars, gadgets, etc. It all falls into this category.
If you jump onto the new hotness bandwagon on day one and it turns out to be less than spectacular,
the rest of us don't want to hear any whining because we told you so.
5G is mostly hype (Score:1)
The main point of 5G is that it opens up more frequencies at your boring old regular 4G speeds. Helps with congestion in busy places.
The hyped high data rates require high frequencies, which work poorly in the real world. High frequencies require direct line of sight. No walls, no your head being between your phone and the cell tower, no trees, no buildings, no rain or other weather. If something blocks your visible light frequencies between you and the cell tower, it will block the high frequency 5G si
It's not about the max speed, folks (Score:4, Interesting)
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 [ieee.org]. 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 [infoworld.com] because there were too many WiFi users in the room? That's the kind of situation 5G solves.
Speed? (Score:2)
Screw ideal condition speed that everybody is wailing about. The main benefit is less congestion.
C0cksuckers (Score:2)