T-Mobile Promises Faster 5G This Year (axios.com) 31
T-Mobile this week pledged that 200 million people in the U.S. will have access to a fast version of 5G wireless service by the end of the year, a far larger number than can be expected from AT&T or Verizon. From a report: Long the upstart challenger, T-Mobile has a strong network story when it comes to 5G, thanks to its possession of a key swath of mid-band spectrum -- which offers a good balance of faster speed and decent coverage compared to other chunks of airwaves. Each of the major carriers is making fresh 5G commitments this week, increasing the number of people they hope to reach with different flavors of the high-speed wireless technology.
Verizon detailed its 5G plans on Wednesday, including how it plans to use the $53 billion in spectrum it bought in a recent government auction as the airwaves become available. It plans to offer midband service in 46 markets this year, per CNET. AT&T holds its investor event Friday. It has been faster than Verizon at rolling out broad 5G coverage, but not as fast as T-Mobile. Also, like Verizon, it is relying on just-acquired midband spectrum to build out its network.
Verizon detailed its 5G plans on Wednesday, including how it plans to use the $53 billion in spectrum it bought in a recent government auction as the airwaves become available. It plans to offer midband service in 46 markets this year, per CNET. AT&T holds its investor event Friday. It has been faster than Verizon at rolling out broad 5G coverage, but not as fast as T-Mobile. Also, like Verizon, it is relying on just-acquired midband spectrum to build out its network.
Let them start with LTE... (Score:3)
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They need to increase the power on their reality distortion field to overcome the losses inherent in higher frequency bands.
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They need to increase the power on their reality distortion field to overcome the losses inherent in higher frequency bands.
The GP already lives in a reality distortion field (Silicon Valley), I presume the local towers are in there too ... :-)
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Seriously? I'm a T-mobile subscriber in Silicon Valley and even their LTE doesn't work properly here. If it doesn't work here, how the fuck can they make it work at all?
I'm confused. Is there something special about Silicon Valley -- radio wise --- that makes it the benchmark for working 5G/LTE everywhere else? If I construe the name correctly, you're in a valley, which implies hills -- that sounds challenging, radio-wise. I'd think somewhere flat would be a better reference area. How about, "If it doesn't work in Kansas, how the fuck can they make it work at all." Have Tars dial down your self-importance setting. /s :-)
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Silicon Valley may be surrounded by hills, but it's otherwise about as flat as Kansas. It's the south part of the SF Bay Area. I actually switched to Sprint because they had better in-building coverage than AT&T within Sunnyvale stores, but their coverage is still crap, with dropouts all over the place, even while out on the open road.
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Oh, and to answer the other question, there are two reasons why SV should be a benchmark.
First, SV is almost all at suburban levels of density, which means it isn't so dense that you have to do extra work to deal with the density (e.g. working around reflections from tall buildings, using ultra-low-power towers to reduce the noise floor from other devices, etc.), and it also isn't so sparse that a phone company would risk losing customers in the area rather than pay for more towers (unlike, for example, Ka
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Have Tars dial down your self-importance setting.
If you want to quote movies, do it properly. It's TARS.
That said, I understand where you're coming from. However, it's not about self-importance. It's about the irony of it all. I live in the "Mecca" of technology, innovation, and, let's be honest, prosperity. Yet I can't have more than 2 bars of service on my cell phone, and can't walk more than 2 steps in a major city without stepping in human feces from the homeless.
My expectations are that in the heart of technology innovation, amongst all these tec
Re: Let them start with LTE... (Score:2)
Umm, hills havent been challenging radio wise since someone invented repeaters for VHF back, oh 100 years ago or so. Plus the nature of cellular networks means base stations are frequent and with 5G even more so. So if you're going to be patronising it might help to have a clue first. HTH
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I'd think somewhere flat would be a better reference area. How about, "If it doesn't work in Kansas, how the fuck can they make it work at all."
Okay, we'll use my location, which suffers from horrible coverage. "If it doesn't work just west of I-95 on the Space Coast in Florida, which is about as flat as it gets, how the fuck can they make it work at all?"
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If it doesn't work just west of I-95 on the Space Coast in Florida, which is about as flat as it gets how the fuck can they make it work at all?
I've visited there and lived in Tampa for my first year of college (USF) waaaay back, it's pretty flat -- like most of FL -- so, ya.
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No sane person gives a shit about Silicon Valley. It works perfectly fine here in Kansas City.
Starlink (Score:2)
Shut up and get me Starlink. Fund it with taxes. I am not kidding. Do you realize that Starlink means internet everywhere? Internet on airplanes suck. You canâ(TM)t do VPN, you canâ(TM)t stream video. Starlink will make internet anywhere possible. Internet while camping, internet on your boat, internet while visiting exotic destinations. We fucking need it. Why are is anyone doing anything else?
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Internet on airplanes suck.
Not sure Starlink will change that... Doesn't Internet access on planes funnel through one of the plane's radios, and then (presumably) a satellite connection? You're not going to be allowed take your phone/laptop out of "Airplane Mode" and have direct access to a Starlink satellite. Perhaps if the plane uses Starlink, things might be better as those satellites are lower and more numerous, but it's not a sure thing and also the planes would have to modified and, I'm guessing, (re)certified in some way to u
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I think realistically, starlink is going to max out at about one link per square mile, probably more like one every 2-5 acres. Starlink phones, or hot spots might exist some day, but will only be usable on rural highways, distant oil fields, or at sea etc, very low density areas.
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Shut up and get me Starlink. Fund it with taxes. I am not kidding.
We've already funded broadband in this country to the tune of well over $400 billion tax dollars, and we can see how much of a failure that has been.
I can’t wait. (Score:2)
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This will be a huge boon to customers, instead of taking over 26 minutes to exhaust a 20GB monthly data plan, it will drop to just over 8 seconds.
This. It's already fast enough. What I want is to be able to use it as my primary internet connection without insane overage charges. Then I don't have to choose where I live based on Comcast availability. And I have no need to stream 4K or anything like that. Just needs to be fast enough to work from home.
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Faster? Faster? (Score:2)
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The marketing departments are demanding faster 5G service
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Nobody, but like in past arrangements the next iteration has to come before the commitments of the previous can be realized. When you look at the monthly caps you can get a better idea what's actually possible accounting for subscriber numbers, and 20-30GB/mo is still a very slow connection used across a whole month. Ofc, given that most "5G fixed wireless" plans are limited to around 150GB/mo there's maybe a 5x improvement.
5G "fast version" doesn't exist in practicality (Score:2)
When I'm home, which is prety much full time (Score:2)
I just shut off phone data services and use my (currently) capless cable modem connection.
There is no such thing as a "faster 5G" right now (Score:4, Informative)
A 5G channel of a given width (say, 5Mhz) will have the same speed, no matter if is in the 750Mhz, 1.8Ghz, 3.6Ghz or the 24Thz bands.
A 10Mhz 5G channel will be faster than a 5Mhz 5G channel, and a 20Mhz one will be faster still, and a 50Mhz channel even faster, and a 100Mhz channel will be the fastest of all (while the standard alows for more width, current deployments top out at 100Mhz per channel).
What T-Mobile is doing is deploying wider channels in their current spectrum (Low and mid band), at the expense of 2G, 3G and even a slice of 4G.
We are not yet in the point of 5G's lifecycle when we need/have something akin to LTE-Advanced. 5G is still 5.0G , no decimals, pluses or weird leters added .
orly? (Score:1)
My opinion (Score:1)