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Question to you both. Why? Is there something you think Apple would do differently? I think they would improve customer service some, but other than that... You wouldn't be getting lower pricing (more likely higher) since we all know Apple doesn't do low margin crap. The telecom business is all low margin crap.
I think we would get some deals regarding data; Apple Music streaming over mobile for example, not sure if this already exists in other countries but here at least it would be very welcome. Maybe better connectivity, coverage, dunno.
 
I just hope Apple doesn't do another wireless-N thing where it put in the N hardware, but didn't advertise it as such. So if you wanted to use the N functionality, you had to pay $5 for the software to enable it.
 
It’s beginning to look like DSL, cable modems, and even fiber optics to the home are circling the drain. It will be much cheaper for service providers to build a tower and put an antenna on your home than to run copper, coax, or fiber to your house. Virtually no infrastructure maintenance and very high speed. Let’s hope the engineering hurdles get overcome quickly. The vast majority of homes will do just fine with a 1gigabit wireless connection.
Others have already responded to this effectively, so I'll just add that the market will support different solutions for different customers in different areas. Our local telco has built fiber to roughly 70% of the market with plans to hit 75% by year end. And ROI has been good enough that they're planning to push that to 90% FTTH (fiber-to-the-home). There will likely be room for solutions like 5G for that 10% for whom it is not cost-effective to build fiber.

That's not true at all.

  1. The cost of building an entire network from almost the ground up would be huge. You're talking about billions of dollars to build something like this.
  2. It takes anywhere from 2 months to 2 years to get approval for a permit to build a wireless tower. While you may be able to get approval quickly in the middle of nowhere in Texas, it's currently around 2 years for approval in areas like San Francisco or NYC. It would be a LONG time before they could create a decent network.
  3. You're ignoring data caps. Right now the average home uses 190GB per month and that number is only rising as video becomes more and more popular. Which carrier is going to be cool with streaming truly unlimited data with no speed caps?
  4. Why would an existing provider who is currently making money and has existing infrastructure want to make this huge left turn and go a completely different direction? There's no need. At home, you don't need wireless. You aren't going anywhere.
  5. Wireless isn't a great solution for homes. Many currently struggle with signal issues and other problems due to the location of their home. Traditional cable modem, fiber, and DSL solve this issue by bringing reliable service into the home.
Sorry, but it'll be a very long time before we see these technologies replaced by wireless.
+1

Cable providers already have fiber into all the neighborhoods. Just because you have 100Mbps home service doesn't mean they can't push faster. DOCSIS 3.0 supports 300Mbps. That's the standard across most cable networks today. 3.1 brings capacities of 10Gbps both up and down. That should hold most over for quite some time and outdoes 5G wireless (and realistically you're never going to see those speeds with wireless but you certainly can with wired).
Not all "cable" is equal, and in general most legacy cable plant cannot carry the bandwidth theoretically possible under DOCSIS 3.0/3.1. In my market, Spectrum's top speed is 60 Mbps. I have 1Gbps fiber from the phone company.

Speed is a moot point with data caps. It just means you'll reach your limit quicker.
Competitive markets are the solution to data caps. No provider in Cincinnati has ever had them and likely none ever will. We've had a competitive high-speed internet market since our telco introduced DSL in the late 90's. (The first month we got our fiber connection, I uploaded 8.5TB to our Crashplan cloud backup.)

We haven't even started to tap the possibilities with fiber. Copper and coax might soon be at their limits, but fiber can be pushed so much further.

255Tbps: World’s fastest network could carry all of the internet’s traffic on a single fiber.

https://www.extremetech.com/extreme...d-carry-all-the-internet-traffic-single-fiber

Let's see 5G... or 6G... or 10G keep up. Long live fiber optics.
+1 The fiber currently in the ground (or in the air in my neighborhood) can support a lot more than 1Gbps when it is needed.
 
Hope it doesn't take as long as LTE did in the iPhone 5.
To be fair LTE coverage was very spotty and was only in certain cities compared to the blanket coverage carriers had by the time the iPhone 5 got it. Plus the LTE chip sets had evolved to a point where it didn't murder the battery completely, when you connected to a LTE tower.
 
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Millimeter wave RF is used for a variety of things, including high end radar. They could be testing 5G systems, tangents of 5G systems, or working on solutions to interference with extant and upcoming millimeter wave systems.
 
While we associate GSM generations with internet speed 5G is a lot more than that. Technically HSPA+ is completely sufficient for all your data usages and while it's branded as 4G (thanks to US T-Mobile) it's actually 3G technology. It has almost the same speeds as LTE but it's hell a lot more efficient in battery power management than LTE. LTE is just utter crap, while it's fast it's even faster at gulping your battery juice. If your network supports HSPA+ than switch your phone to 3G and save your battery.

Now back to 5G. Biggest addition to 5G is ability for devices to talk to each other without a need for Bluetooth or WiFi Direct. That will be a game changer unless carriers and manufacturers ruin it for us just like they ruined Rich Communication Services protocol which could have transformed sms/mms into true IM service between all GSM users across the world no matter on what phone or network they were on. It supports group chat, IP voice and video calls, audio messaging, content sharing, location sharing, blacklist, phone contacts backup for seamless device transitions. Basically it would allow user to switch phones whenever and always keep the communication content without any additional transfer apps. Of course all of that was killed by US carriers, Apple and Google in order to push their own walled gardens of third party apps to "control user experience across the board"

Don't be surprised if 5Gs killer feature ends up being crippled so Apple devices can only talk to Apple devices to once again "control user experience" or not being implemented at all. Of course herd of consumers would not give a crap if this feature ends up missing as long as they can argue with other herd about who has prettier sheepfold that keeps them trapped.
 
That's not true at all.

  1. The cost of building an entire network from almost the ground up would be huge. You're talking about billions of dollars to build something like this.
  2. It takes anywhere from 2 months to 2 years to get approval for a permit to build a wireless tower. While you may be able to get approval quickly in the middle of nowhere in Texas, it's currently around 2 years for approval in areas like San Francisco or NYC. It would be a LONG time before they could create a decent network.
  3. You're ignoring data caps. Right now the average home uses 190GB per month and that number is only rising as video becomes more and more popular. Which carrier is going to be cool with streaming truly unlimited data with no speed caps?
  4. Why would an existing provider who is currently making money and has existing infrastructure want to make this huge left turn and go a completely different direction? There's no need. At home, you don't need wireless. You aren't going anywhere.
  5. Wireless isn't a great solution for homes. Many currently struggle with signal issues and other problems due to the location of their home. Traditional cable modem, fiber, and DSL solve this issue by bringing reliable service into the home.
Sorry, but it'll be a very long time before we see these technologies replaced by wireless.

When 5G Wireless providers give phones unlimited data and you only tier pricing at when you get throttled (e.g., 100GB, 500GB, 1TB, etc), people will just start tethering their home internet through their phones.
 
When 5G Wireless providers give phones unlimited data and you only tier pricing at when you get throttled (e.g., 100GB, 500GB, 1TB, etc), people will just start tethering their home internet through their phones.

I doubt this, unless someone uses an old phone that just sits someone plugged into a wall all the time. Assuming the customer has access to alternatives, why do this instead of just using some other type of broadband like fiber or cable?

Maybe I am not understanding what you are saying.
 
Testing 5G as an extraterrestrial method for Jony to communicate with Steve from Apple Park.

apple_campus_night.png
 
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This will be well welcomed in the North East along the major commuter rail lines. Often when I am responding to email on the train when I am going into my way in to the office and the phone (iPhone 7) seems to be having issues I run a speed test and get something around 14k, this is with my Verizon work phone. I pull out my personal phone (iPhone 6s) run the same speed test and even though AT&T blows Verizon away it is still only 24k. I am sure this is caused by nearly everyone on my train and nearby trains on there phone and tablets because speeds with be blazing fast at non peek times. The use of smart phones seems to have grown faster than AT&T and Verizon can build infrastructure. I hope that 5G will help to fix this ongoing issue.
 
I became cellular only user last February, when I moved back to Finland and to a countryside. I really don't miss the old VSDL time at all in France. The quality was bad, lots of package drops that the operator couldn't fix and there were no unlimited 4G offers available at that time. Yet, I preferred 4G for more important tasks - it worked better.

Here I pay 12,90€/month (tax incl.) for 50Mb/s LTE connection, unlimited data. I use ZTE MF286 LTE modem to share it for a tv, phones, computers, everything. We can watch Netflix HD with multiple screens without hiccups. I'm living in a village of 3500 people, and the best wired connection I could get is a 24M/2M ADSL, and it'll cost 29,90€/month with a contract. That makes LTE even more appealing. This 4G/LTE has been best thing since I got the modem, and for the past 6 months, it hasn't throttled even once. My operator is using two frequencies here (800/1800) and the latter is always giving top speeds.

I think it is really up to the operator to create a great network. If there are a lot of users in a small area, just use less powerful cell towers more densely and use more frequencies... unless it is a VERY big city. 5G should be the answer for mega-cities. They're already testing those networks here and that's what I've heard; lower latencies and faster downloads especially in the big cities.
 
That's not true at all.

  1. The cost of building an entire network from almost the ground up would be huge. You're talking about billions of dollars to build something like this.
  2. It takes anywhere from 2 months to 2 years to get approval for a permit to build a wireless tower. While you may be able to get approval quickly in the middle of nowhere in Texas, it's currently around 2 years for approval in areas like San Francisco or NYC. It would be a LONG time before they could create a decent network.
  3. You're ignoring data caps. Right now the average home uses 190GB per month and that number is only rising as video becomes more and more popular. Which carrier is going to be cool with streaming truly unlimited data with no speed caps?
  4. Why would an existing provider who is currently making money and has existing infrastructure want to make this huge left turn and go a completely different direction? There's no need. At home, you don't need wireless. You aren't going anywhere.
  5. Wireless isn't a great solution for homes. Many currently struggle with signal issues and other problems due to the location of their home. Traditional cable modem, fiber, and DSL solve this issue by bringing reliable service into the home.
Sorry, but it'll be a very long time before we see these technologies replaced by wireless.

well i don't imagine digging the earth and installing cables for thousands of miles and to each residence is cheap either ,i also imagine it needs permits.
 
well i don't imagine digging the earth and installing cables for thousands of miles and to each residence is cheap either ,i also imagine it needs permits.

They don't generally require permits. Cable companies have existing agreements with the cities in which they operate. They also have an easement, which means they can dig up things within a certain distance of their lines. For instance, the easement means they can do as much digging as they like within 6 ft of the front of homeowner's property without need for a permit or permission from the land owner (they don't even have to replace the grass afterwards if they don't want to).

Yes, installing all that cabling comes at a price, but most of those cables last 10 years and don't need to be replaced often. Generally it's the arial cables that need replacement most often (as they're more exposed to the elements) but they're far less expensive and take much less work to do a new drop.
 
Question to you both. Why? Is there something you think Apple would do differently? I think they would improve customer service some, but other than that... You wouldn't be getting lower pricing (more likely higher) since we all know Apple doesn't do low margin crap. The telecom business is all low margin crap.
like i just said, one plan that works WORLDWIDE.
i traveled to japan a while back and had a painful experience in figuring out what SIM card was best for me to use
 
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