Verizon's Nationwide 5G Can Be Slower Than Its LTE Network, Tests Show (theverge.com) 27
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Verizon's new nationwide 5G network is reportedly slower than its LTE network, to the point that users are apparently better off just disabling 5G entirely unless they're near a mmWave network. The results come from testing done by PC Magazine's Sascha Sagan, who points to Dynamic Spectrum Sharing, or DSS, as the culprit. The tech lets carriers run LTE and 5G networks side by side, which is useful if, like Verizon, you don't yet have enough dedicated 5G spectrum. While the carrier has largely focused on its mmWave network until recently, it also has begun rolling out a mid-band nationwide 5G network, which promises to avoid mmWave's range issues by using DSS. The only catch is that, with Verizon, it seems like this tech leads to worse performance in most cases for phones running in 5G mode.
The solution, at least for now, is to just turn 5G off if you're a Verizon customer. If that has your concerned about speeds compared to your T-Mobile customer friends, don't worry too much: in it's nationwide speed test earlier this year, PC Magazine found that T-Mobile's 5G can often still be slower than Verizon's LTE, even though it uses dedicated 5G bands. That same nationwide test also revealed that AT&T's 5G can be slower than its LTE as well -- which makes sense, given that it also uses the DSS technology for it's 5G network. The results from PC Magazine were only done in New York City, so if you have a 5G phone on Verizon, it may be worth checking to see if you're actually getting faster speeds with 5G on. If you're not, it may be worth turning it off entirely for now. This is also likely just a temporary issue -- as Verizon continues to add dedicated 5G spectrum, their speeds are going to improve.
The solution, at least for now, is to just turn 5G off if you're a Verizon customer. If that has your concerned about speeds compared to your T-Mobile customer friends, don't worry too much: in it's nationwide speed test earlier this year, PC Magazine found that T-Mobile's 5G can often still be slower than Verizon's LTE, even though it uses dedicated 5G bands. That same nationwide test also revealed that AT&T's 5G can be slower than its LTE as well -- which makes sense, given that it also uses the DSS technology for it's 5G network. The results from PC Magazine were only done in New York City, so if you have a 5G phone on Verizon, it may be worth checking to see if you're actually getting faster speeds with 5G on. If you're not, it may be worth turning it off entirely for now. This is also likely just a temporary issue -- as Verizon continues to add dedicated 5G spectrum, their speeds are going to improve.
Re: Turning off 5G is recommended anyway. (Score:4, Informative)
Uum, what does any of that have to do with tracking/telemetry?
Or with downloads for that matter? Apps won't magically use less data on 4G. Both are "always online".
What it does though, is save you a lot of battery.
(Unless in situations where a quick downoad and then long sleep will use less energy than a lengthy download that keeps the system awake.)
Re: (Score:3)
Uum, what does any of that have to do with tracking/telemetry?
5G due to the use of MIMO on the network side requires a much better idea of your actual location than any of the previous protocols.
As a result, the operator now has your location to the same resolution as Google, Facebook and Co.
While you can "kill" the former, you cannot disable the location recording by the operator without disabling 5G.
Not what customers think (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
lets carriers stack far more customers on the network
From what I've been reading on the IEEE web site the rollout of 5G is mostly to handle the 20+ billion IoT devices already in existence and the next 20 billion coming in the next 5 years.
Re: (Score:3)
This lets carriers stack far more customers on the network while giving them roughly the same (or barely faster) overall bandwidth as before, thus making them more money.
Yes and no. The goal here is not "more money" because these customers already exist and are already paying. The goal here is the unifying of infrastructure where 5G is set to ultimately adopt a large number of devices currently using things such as LoRaWAN, P25, TETRA, or the many smaller telemetry networks out there.
You're right it has nothing to do with how fast you can download whatever it is that kids are downloading these days.
I turned off data months ago (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm home about 99.99% of any day. I just use WIFI for all data.
I usually don't even take my phone with me unless I'm not going to be home for more than a couple hours.
Just makes sense (Score:5, Funny)
5g has to provide cell service and spread coronavirus, LTE just has to do the cell service. Itâ(TM)s no wonder 5g is slower.
Re:Just makes sense (Score:4, Funny)
5g has to provide cell service and spread coronavirus, LTE just has to do the cell service. Itâ(TM)s no wonder 5g is slower.
Yep, the added weight of the virus particles on the 5g signal, while objectively minuscule, slows the signal so much more than the unencumbered LTE signal. It's simple physics.
Re: Just makes sense (Score:1)
Hey, at least add some time cube in there!
On our time, the trolling was much better and conspiracies (NSA spies on ALL the things) were actually true!
The real 5G conspiracy (Score:4, Insightful)
The real conspiracy around 5G networks seems to be that industries are trying to trick consumers into subsidizing the construction of a system that will offer no improvements to consumers for a number of years, and likely won't be affordable enough to be practical to consumers for years more.
Re: The real 5G conspiracy (Score:3)
Number of years?
Basic physics says: Never!
The profile that goes as far as 4G isn't faster than 4G.
And the one that is faster, is worse at passing walls or even glass than WIFI.
With UMTS we already knew we'd hit a hard bandwith limit.
The only thing that helps here, is the ability to do shaped virtual base stations via interference. And that too will need so many base stations so close by that it ends up becoming another WIFI.
Re: The real 5G conspiracy (Score:5, Interesting)
5G is objectively better. What 5G isn't right now is mature. Chipsets have a long way to go, tower deployments have a long way to go. Ignoring mmwave that is almost useless, 5G is sharing timeslices with 4G, but since there are more 4G devices, 5G gets less time, and thusly slower. Current chipsets don't support channel bonding, which is not only important for bandwidth, but resiliency. 4G chipsets have supported bonding for a while and can support soft-handoffs with no interruptions.
I've been with USCC for a long while and my wife's Samsung S20 has excellent 600mhz 5G service. Strong signal, about the same bandwidth as 4G but more stable, and maintains stronger signal in more areas. 5G can actually use multi-pathing to enhance signal strength, while 4G sees all non-primary paths as noise.
5G was primarily a focus of increasing efficiency of allocated bandwidth. 4G uses an entire time-slice to transfer a small number of ACK packets. 5G carves up the spectrum into a bunch of much smaller channels and can dynamically allocated these virtual sub-channels to devices and multiplex multiple streams of data to difference devices in the same time-slice. 5G also has power saving features, that are currently moot from the horrible chipsets, but allows the tower to instruct the device when the earliest to power back on. 4G devices pretty much have to stay powered on most of the time just in case the tower sends something. The tower is now smart enough to buffer-and-delay sending data until the next scheduled announced wake-up. This will also help reduce high density contention when most of the devices are idle.
Re: (Score:2)
No the real conspiracy is a bunch of ignorant consumers thinking that 5G has anything to do with them. I'll say it again like I've said it 100 times before. IT'S NOT ABOUT YOU. It's about the many millions of other devices currently using a wide and wild variety of different networks at spectrums littered all over the joint. It's about Schindler being able to tell if their lifts are functioning, it's about utility smart metering, it's about replacing microwave backhaul links, it's about the police and the f
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not sure how much I'm subsidizing anything, but I did buy a new phone that came with 5g capabilities. Not for the 5g, but because I wanted the phone itself.
5g certainly is nice and speedy...when you're standing underneath the tower. Anywhere else it's not more impressive than LTE. Perhaps that'll change as they get more equipment strung up, but it honestly seems irrelevant; LTE was more than fast enough for most folks. As long as you can stream your videos with decent resolution ( 4k is entirely ov
"Can be" (Score:2)
Everything "can be".
Overhead (Score:2)
There's lots of extra processing involved in all that spying.
Nothing new or not known here. (Score:1)
80 Mbps is the "slow" one.... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Correct. 640k RAM ought to be enough for anybody.
Huawei can fix this... (Score:1)
Faster (Score:1)
But it's faster at collecting money from subscribers, which is all that counts.
Combination of factors (Score:2)
The single biggest reason 5G is seen as slower than 4G is because of the frequency allocations.
T-Mobile 5G (for example) is mainly in the 600mhz band 71, great for range but still only a narrow slice of spectrum compared to that in use for LTE.
It's only when you get to MM wave or wide bands like C-band recently auctioned is where you get into massive / multipath MIMO, carrier aggregation and other green field deployments is where you get the gigabit or better speeds some people see now.
As with everything, i
Very selfish angle. (Score:2)
"Just disable it, you're better off without." Until everyone does that, and there's more contention for the LTE bands. At some point, just having an uncrowded channel dominates over being in the absolute fastest possible medium.
One Step Behind (Score:2)