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Remember when the first iPhone was not even 3g, but edge? and then they made a huge deal with the iphone 3g!
 
I am really hoping for the carriers to find a technology that allows them to raise their data caps to something along the lines of the cable companies. To me there is less infrastructure issues since you do not need to run cables everywhere. However, I understand that there is only so much airwaves and that is the sticking point. But honestly but unless 5G does more than speed, it will mean little to me. I am a partial cable cutter because I still need Comcrap to bring me the internet through their cables. The TV and phone are gone, but I need to get rid of these monopolistic cable companies that really provide sub par service. Give me competition in the air and I will finally get a company (ATT, Verizon, Tmob, or whomever) that will fight for my dollar.
 
I never hear people complain about the speed of LTE. I do, however, hear people all the time complain about the amount of data they get. They need to work on increasing capacity. We need a gigabyte race among the top carriers. T-mobile, it's up to you to get this started! Although it might already be starting, as Verizon about a month or so ago gave me 12GB of data per month for free.
 
I'm more excited about the new AT&T data plans coming on 8/21, given that it will actually affect me now vs. years from now. Still, it's nice to see attention being paid by AT&T, Google, and others to wireless high speed.

According to http://about.att.com/story/att_introduces_mobile_share_advantage.html
"For smartphones with no annual contract (for example, on AT&T Next, AT&T Next Every Year, or other installment agreements, Bring Your Own, purchase at full price, or month to month term), customers will pay a $20 access charge per smartphone a month for Mobile Share Advantage and $15 per smartphone line a month on Mobile Share Advantage for Business. The access charge for basic/features phones will be $20 a month per phone on both plans."

Thus, in some cases, especially family shares, this means the new plans will be more expensive:

For example:
Old 15GB plan, 4 lines shared: $100 + 4 x $15 = $160/month
New 16GB plan, 4 lines shared: $90 + 4 x $20 = $170/month​
 
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I'm more excited about the new AT&T data plans coming on 8/21, given that it will actually affect me now vs. years from now. Still, it's nice to see attention being paid by AT&T, Google, and others to wireless high speed.
[doublepost=1471454490][/doublepost]I can't wait to see spotty 5G service in 5-7 years, much like LTE service is today.
Those prices are a joke. People actually pay that?

What's the point of a 5G network where data's capped at such low levels?
 
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I hesitate to post this, after your ordeal, but the timing of this article was a little too perfect. And I must admit it conspcerns me just a little bit ...

Is 5G technology dangerous? Early data shows a slight increase of tumors in male rats exposed to cellphone radiation - Los Angeles Times
https://apple.news/AQrBG-bQyQS2dX2CIgCnd6A

As much as it pains me, I don't even turn on LTE these days... Now that I've turned off LTE and turn off wifi and put the phones on airplane mode, call it placebo effect but my wife and I sleep better, and have more energy. Turning on LTE has a noticeable effect on attention...


I have a RF strength meter and here were the results:

All are iPhones 6s laying an uncached video, measured 6 inches away, meter set to peak average, not scientific but wanted some relative #s
LTE (3 dots) : 550,000 uW/m^2
3g (3 dots) : 33,000 uW/m^2
WiFi (10m from base station, 2.4Ghz 11n): 500 uW/m^2

950w microwave from 5 ft away: 1300uW/m^2

Baseline in house: 5-50uW/m^2 depending on location, the wall closest to 7 (!) smartmeters is about 100uW/m^2 spiking to 1,300.

I can't find the source, but the recommendation for a sleeping space is < 10wU/m^w so we're already screwed.
 
Remember A&T recently bought DirecTV. I wonder if this is more about a home entertainment than cell phones. Would this system be designed to provide better streaming/on-demand options as the world moves away from the network/scheduled programming model.
Yes, they will be able to deliver all the services they deliver today over UVerse. Gigapower will be hard to compete with speed wise but if your area is not scheduled for the service 5G will give you much more than most other options.
 
You too can burn through your whole 40GB data plan in 7.3 minutes!!!

Can you tell I'm not sure what I'm going to use these speeds for in normal everyday use?
40Gb?????? There are still plans with 500Mb of data/month (Tesco mobile with their largest plan only 2Gb)
5G will use that in seconds. Time the networks got their fingers out and upped the data plans (and not ripped us off when doing so)
 
More speed means less congestion. If your web page loads three times as fast, you are spending 1/3 the time pulling data from the tower. Of course that metric goes out the door when streaming.

But when I click on that 30 minute video and decide I don't want to watch it after 30 seconds, I've already downloaded the whole thing and cut into my data charges....
 
I always love reading the 10-100x faster. Such a catch all figure for "it will be faster than 4G."
Same reaction and chuckled and said to myself not again. It's infuriating when obviously these numbers are just for marketing. Just like the ISP's "UP TO" speeds are just plain ridiculous. I would rather have them put more towers for more coverage than a spotty 5G for the next 5 years.
 
You too can burn through your whole 40GB data plan in 7.3 minutes!!!

Can you tell I'm not sure what I'm going to use these speeds for in normal everyday use?

So if I go to a website with some pictures and it takes 5 seconds to load the site on LTE and lets assume it's 5MB big.

Then on 5G I go to the same site that's still 5MB but it now takes 1 second to load the site.

How are you using your data faster? I'm not sure if I'm missing something here. (No sarcasm)

(Only way I could see it is like YouTube where the quality of the video depends on your connection speed, so it would default to HD more often and thus use more data).
 
More speed means less congestion. If your web page loads three times as fast, you are spending 1/3 the time pulling data from the tower. Of course that metric goes out the door when streaming.

That's NOT how data caps work. Doesn't matter if it takes you a week to download a 30G file or a minute. Once it's downloaded, you're going to be charged for overages (or throttled).
 
That's NOT how data caps work. Doesn't matter if it takes you a week to download a 30G file or a minute. Once it's downloaded, you're going to be charged for overages (or throttled).
I wasn't talking anything about data caps. I was explaining why, in networking, faster speeds are superior to slower speeds...
[doublepost=1471464577][/doublepost]
But when I click on that 30 minute video and decide I don't want to watch it after 30 seconds, I've already downloaded the whole thing and cut into my data charges....
You're absolutely right. This is why I am speaking about standard web page and smaller bits of data loading, which makes up the majority of data consumption on a mobile network. I specifically mentioned this wasn;t good news for streaming.
 
You too can burn through your whole 40GB data plan in 7.3 minutes!!!

Can you tell I'm not sure what I'm going to use these speeds for in normal everyday use?
It's not all about you ;-)

5G has massive industrial applications, it is not going to be just for phones and mobile devices.
 
You too can burn through your whole 40GB data plan in 7.3 minutes!!!

Can you tell I'm not sure what I'm going to use these speeds for in normal everyday use?

You can download a movie or game in a few seconds instead of having to wait minutes or hours. That reduces the strain on AT&T's network because it means they don't have to spend so much time servicing your download.
 
It's not all about you ;-)

5G has massive industrial applications, it is not going to be just for phones and mobile devices.

And your comment is exactly why I included a phrase like "normal use"...
[doublepost=1471467643][/doublepost]
1GB of data for $30?? Wow.

No, it's $30 for unlimited calling and unlimited texting and 1GB of data.
[doublepost=1471467726][/doublepost]
I wasn't talking anything about data caps. I was explaining why, in networking, faster speeds are superior to slower speeds...
[doublepost=1471464577][/doublepost]
You're absolutely right. This is why I am speaking about standard web page and smaller bits of data loading, which makes up the majority of data consumption on a mobile network. I specifically mentioned this wasn;t good news for streaming.

Actually you just said the metric didn't work, it wasn't clear if it was good or bad for streaming...
 
And your comment is exactly why I included a phrase like "normal use"...
[doublepost=1471467643][/doublepost]

No, it's $30 for unlimited calling and unlimited texting and 1GB of data.
[doublepost=1471467726][/doublepost]

Actually you just said the metric didn't work, it wasn't clear if it was good or bad for streaming...
When a metric "goes out the door" for streaming, that sort of implies that what I just said about data use isn't going to be good for streaming use. It's simple math. I honestly didn't think I had to get into that much detail. Apparently I was wrong.
 
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So if I go to a website with some pictures and it takes 5 seconds to load the site on LTE and lets assume it's 5MB big.

Then on 5G I go to the same site that's still 5MB but it now takes 1 second to load the site.

How are you using your data faster? I'm not sure if I'm missing something here. (No sarcasm)

(Only way I could see it is like YouTube where the quality of the video depends on your connection speed, so it would default to HD more often and thus use more data).

I go to Youtube click a 30 minute video and in 30 seconds I see it's not what I want, currently it might only download (buffer) a few more minutes, with new speeds it could download the whole video in 30 seconds so now instead of using a 50MB of data it might have gone through 500MB of data. Do this a few times and your data goes quick...
 
I go to Youtube click a 30 minute video and in 30 seconds I see it's not what I want, currently it might only download (buffer) a few more minutes, with new speeds it could download the whole video in 30 seconds so now instead of using a 50MB of data it might have gone through 500MB of data. Do this a few times and your data goes quick...
It would be great if we were just given a quality option, or control for buffering. The individual app developer could absolutely provide us with this, but they seem to choose not to.

The closest thing to this that I am aware of is T-Mobile binge on. And even that isn't really what we are talking about here.

Netflix will also lower stream quality based on detected throughput. I'm unsure why they don't want to give user adjustable settings. It might be nice for someone not on T-Mobile to reduce the quality of their stream and this save data.
 
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I'm not very knowledgable on standards of cellular speeds, but when LTE first came out I thought it advertised as being "Long Term Evolution" meaning they would use the same towers and whatnot and be able to continuously improve LTE speeds with minimal cost for many years to come, making it pretty much unnecessary to come out with "5G."

Did I just make that all up?
 
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Bandwidth doesn't matter anymore. What matters is response time.
 
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