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AT&T's First Mobile 5G Service Will Be Available in 12 Cities Starting Friday
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Interesting that the less regulated most business friendly states get it now, while heavily regulated unfriendly places like California and New York do not.
I believe 5G home internet could spell the end for wireline providers (cable, DSL, etc) if they don't screw it up with unreasonable data caps. performance issues, or pricing. Wireline providers are either going to have to pivot to wireless, find a way to massively reduce their service plan cost, find a way to massively increase their speed relative to 5G, or go out of business. I think most people will just bundle their home internet with their wireless service. Verizon has already unveiled 5G for $50/mo if you're on Verizon, $70 if you're not, with unlimited data. AT&T's plan is laughable by comparison. I think 5G will be most useful for home internet to start. Phones don't really need this kind of speed yet, and the early chips will be fairly power hungry.
I'm currently fighting with att to fix my internet that keeps going offline for several minutes at a time. They can't see the problem and want to replace my identical cable box for a 3rd time. I wish I could get this wireless internet because I'm just exhausting trying to get att to fix my internet that has been unusable for 2 months now.
I love how on the display of the Netgear 5G router it says there's a 15GB data cap.
Says it all really doesn't it? - Take 5G service for your home (as this is intended for home usage) and get such a small data cap that it's essentially useless for anything but light web browsing. Even moderate YouTube video streaming would eat that cap pretty quickly.
Says it all really doesn't it? - Take 5G service for your home (as this is intended for home usage) and get such a small data cap that it's essentially useless for anything but light web browsing. Even moderate YouTube video streaming would eat that cap pretty quickly.
1G networks launches. Random people with nothing but a rudimentary grasp of biology or physics: "This will cause cancer!" -No such thing has happened.
2G networks launches. Random people with nothing but a rudimentary grasp of biology or physics: "This will cause cancer!" -No such thing has happened.
Home WIFI networks launches. Random people with nothing but a rudimentary grasp of biology or physics: "This will cause cancer!" -No such thing has happened.
3G networks launches. Random people with nothing but a rudimentary grasp of biology or physics: "This will cause cancer!" -No such thing has happened.
4G networks launches. Random people with nothing but a rudimentary grasp of biology or physics: "This will cause cancer!" -No such thing has happened.
5G networks launches. Random people with nothing but a rudimentary grasp of biology or physics: "This will cause cancer!" -Gee, I wonder.
2G networks launches. Random people with nothing but a rudimentary grasp of biology or physics: "This will cause cancer!" -No such thing has happened.
Home WIFI networks launches. Random people with nothing but a rudimentary grasp of biology or physics: "This will cause cancer!" -No such thing has happened.
3G networks launches. Random people with nothing but a rudimentary grasp of biology or physics: "This will cause cancer!" -No such thing has happened.
4G networks launches. Random people with nothing but a rudimentary grasp of biology or physics: "This will cause cancer!" -No such thing has happened.
5G networks launches. Random people with nothing but a rudimentary grasp of biology or physics: "This will cause cancer!" -Gee, I wonder.
I'm not really convinced that 5G speeds server any purpose for what most people do. 4G LTE handles everything just fine, why do I need substantially faster speed? Email? No. Web browsing? No. Streaming music and movies? Nope. None of these benefit from faster than LTE speeds. And if the carriers are only going to dole out their data in small buckets for high prices, there goes any excitement I might have about 5G...
It’s nice to see posts such as this. Technology is moving too fast with not enough cause and effect time allowed, IMO. The only time my phone is against my ear is where privacy is required. Otherwise it’s on speaker, or BT. I carry on a belt clip. With 5G’s lack of penetration inside structures you can bank on millions of repeaters going up around us as well.
More needs to be done on the possible effects of 5G.
5G plans will be a premium product. I was told they will be about 25% higher than LTE plans. They need to recoup the billions invested.
Why can’t people read beyond the Marketing hype? It’s all about being first to a technology that no one can use. What does it do to you if no device can support it? It’s like ATT saying they have fiber Internet in your neighborhood except the last 50 yards are conventional wire. Useless! Anyway, eventually we’ll all be on 5G but some (Android) sooner than others (Apple). For now, you should all focus on Gigabit-class LTE which only the XS and XS Max can support.
Wireless spectrum is and always will be a finite resource that is far more susceptible to changing environmental conditions. Hopefully 5G (fixed wireless specifically since it can scale far better than mobile for home broadband applications) can act as a feasible alternative and spur much needed residential broadband competition.
It's important to note that spectrum isn't the only way to do wireless communication. Quantum entanglement will likely one day replace spectrum for secure, unlimited, FTL communications.
You're right of course, but it reminds me of a video I saw a couple of days ago, a huge 100 pound HDD (~1980) for $250,000, now that I call expensive
Even though I'm getting a fraction of the theoretical throughput that's supposed to be available with LTE -- I'm getting anywhere between 4 Mbps to 60 Mbps down on AT&T depending on where I happen to be -- those speeds are fine for the things I use a phone for today.
My biggest gripe with AT&T is not the speed of the service, but rather the places where there is no service. I know 5G is supposed to be like the cellular version of a mesh network so that could solve some of today's coverage problems. We'll see how long it actually takes the carriers to get that infrastructure in place on a large scale. My guess is 5 to 10 years.
At home, I have no need for 5G connectivity because I pay $70/month for gigabit fiber from AT&T with no data cap.
All that said, I'll let someone else be the guinea pig for AT&T's 5G service.
My biggest gripe with AT&T is not the speed of the service, but rather the places where there is no service. I know 5G is supposed to be like the cellular version of a mesh network so that could solve some of today's coverage problems. We'll see how long it actually takes the carriers to get that infrastructure in place on a large scale. My guess is 5 to 10 years.
At home, I have no need for 5G connectivity because I pay $70/month for gigabit fiber from AT&T with no data cap.
All that said, I'll let someone else be the guinea pig for AT&T's 5G service.
Why do people say this? Faster speeds do not automatically correlate to more data used. Google maps is going to use the same amount of data, it's just going to display that data to you faster. A 300mb youtube video is still 300mb, no matter if that's being delivered to you at 4G or 5G speeds. Now if you've got crappy service and slow speeds, then you will definitely be able to consume content quicker and more of it. But the speeds we have aren't really stopping people from consuming their data. Ridiculous argument for the most part.
Nice to see 5G is beginning to roll out but it will be like the current situation with 4G. All of the carriers need to improve the coverage in small towns, along the interstate highways, etc., so there is consistent service.
You're right about lack of coverage in all areas. It is laughable when Verizon shows their map of 4G coverage across the country. I have been in areas that shows 3G or 4G with slow service.
And 640K of memory was more then enough at one point. Though I do agree, that caps would hamper any benefit of 5G service. Also, I’m more excited for 5G service as a home ISP. This way the monopoly of the likes of Comcast would be over (again, need caps to be removed).
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Most video players downgrade the quality to 480p (or less). Faster speeds will definetly bump that up (1080p would require 4x the amount of data, 4K at 16X). I’m sure some people would also leverage hotspot funcationality more if there was adequate bandwidth. I’d never try to download any file >100Mbps over my tethered laptop over 4G/LTE, but with 5G I could see myself downloading 1G+ files. Though none of that will matter if the caps remain the same.
It can't even penetrate glass or walls and they have to put repeaters on like every light post to get any coverage. lol