iPhone 12 Lineup Enables Personal Hotspot Over Faster 5GHz Wi-Fi

[compwiz1202]

This will be fun to test, I travel a good bit for business. Hmm. I hope Verizon and AT&T don’t crank up the fees *skeptical hippo*

Even if not, the higher speed will chomp the priority data in no time and then down to 600 again for the month :/ To make money maybe they will sell upgrades to the hotspot.

 

[mazz0]

2.4Ghz wireless is at fastest 300Mbps theoretical. I’d say realistically 150Mbps in areas with no interference.
I hit almost 300Mbps on LTE yesterday, well surpassing the real speeds of 2.4Ghz WiFi.

Wow, I didn’t know 4G got that fast. I’m getting 6Mbps on 4G, so not really an issue for me (I get around 15 on the wired connection at home).

 

[compwiz1202]

Not only that, but 5GHz has less range than 2.4GHz and doesn't penetrate walls as well. When you're in a situation where you're running a personal hotspot for your laptop that's in the same room or even on the same desk, a 5GHz signal will let you connect not only faster, but without causing as much interference for other WiFi that may be in use nearby.

Plus more secure because no one outside or out of range can even try to hack you

 

[compwiz1202]

Which is good and as I would hope.

But does it do the reverse? Switch from 2.4 to 5 when it appears sensible?

I quite often take either the phone with hotspot in use, or the device using the hotspot around the house, into the garden, etc. I find it easy to get too far away from 5 and have to switch.

But if I return the devices into proximity, it would be reasonable to hope they could reconnect on 5 when the available connection is good enough.

This is what I wonder. It sounds like you have to choose 2.4 or 5 instead of being able to have different SSIDs for each?

 

[jezbd1997]

really? I always hear Australia has overpriced 3rd world internet with bad coverage. Maybe it changed in the last few years

It still is high priced. But no mobile internet since 4G LTE, Australia has been a leader in that department.
#7 in the world

Source: https://www.opensignal.com/reports/2018/02/state-of-lte

It’s a lot easier to deploy cable to a tower even if it’s in a remote location than to get fibre to every home. They are starting to get more fibre to homes which has been our only issue

 

[CarlJ]

I'm a bit irritated that Apple is holding this feature back on prior iPhones; they have the hardware to do personal hotspot on 5GHz bands.

My impression Is that, frequently when people say “the prior iPhone (or Mac or whatever) has the hardware for this”... actually it doesn’t quite - Apple has made some minor (occasionally substantial) change to the hardware that makes the new feature work more reliably the way they want. The problem isn’t that they intentionally block the feature on prior phones, it’s that they don’t put extra effort into porting the feature to previous phones that they don’t see as supporting the feature as well as the new hardware.

 

[klunernet]

Even if not, the higher speed will chomp the priority data in no time and then down to 600 again for the month :/ To make money maybe they will sell upgrades to the hotspot.

What is priority data? Over here in the EU, I can just use my entire 30GB bundle over the speed available (net neutrality, they are legally not allowed to do bad things to it). Costs me 25 euro per month, with umlimited texts (who still uses that?) and unlimited minutes.

 

[4jasontv]

Verizon has an LTE home internet option available for $40/mo. Not a mobile hotspot, but they want to upsell you on the service, which is why your hotspot is capped.

It's also only available in rural areas, or areas with excess 4G. The device has to be used in your home and can't be moved. And at an advertised 25 mbps down it's a far cry from the promises they made when they took money for fiber... Oh right, VZW and landline are different companies when they want to be. And look at that fine print. It will not be available anywhere there is fios or in-home 5G.

I have nothing against this service on its own - but this isn't an altruistic service trying to compete with big telecom ISPs. This is a company with unused bandwidth they had to roll out to be able to say they had the largest 4G network. It's Home Phone Connect 2. It's so nice we almost forget that they, and the others, lied about rural coverage to get a cut of 4.5 billion in taxpayer money. But that's water under the bridge. Now asking for $9 billion in taxes to roll out 5G on a map they admit isn't going to tell you where they had vs will have service.

 

[Apple4everr]

I tried this last night from a average 700-800 mbps on 5G I was able to tether it to my iPhone X and got 400-500mbps, so pretty decent

 

[strawbale]

EU is pretty much the same, 5G only available from big telcos with contracts, and we are far away from unlimited plans.

This is even true for some cable/dsl home connections, where the line is throttled after a certain amount of GB per month.

Re the latter: Not here in France, most (all?) adsl home connections have no data limit nor throttling. Mobile data deals called 'unlimited' sometimes throttle after a certain amount of data (100 or 200 GB per month), like mine (Prixtel, 20€/month for 200GB, thereafter throttled to a trickle).
BTW, I use all that data in an old phone set up as 4G hotspot, as my adsl home connection peaks at 2Mb/s, on a good day...)

As for 5G, Orange announced these prices, although hardly any coverage in France yet...:

In The Netherlands, unlimited 5G data starts at about only 30€/month. All data can be used as hotspot too.

 

[Toratek]

Nice! I just wish all of Apple’s lineup supported 802.11ax to really make the most of it.

The Apple Watch is only 802.11n for some bizarre reason.

Antenna and power constraints, most likely.

 

[Reason077]

As for 5G, Orange announced these prices, although hardly any coverage in France yet...:

View attachment 975089

In The Netherlands, unlimited 5G data starts at about only 30€/month. All data can be used as hotspot too.

Those France prices - ouch! In the UK I'm paying £30/month (33 €) for unlimited 5G data on a great network (Vodafone). No throttling or usage limitations, and typical speeds at my house (indoors!) are around 300 Mbps.

I can't get fibre in my building and the DSL in my area is terrible, so the 5G is great. Faster and cheaper than fixed wire broadband for me.

 

[BobKerns]

I don't understand why people think that if their internet is faster, they will use more data? Movies and media consume the same amount of data whether it's LTE or 5G. There are only so many hours in a month. You can't be mass-downloading stuff to your phone. Email, web, etc., still the same amount of data, just faster. Like if the city put bigger water pipes in the street outside your house, are you going to use more water just because the pipes are bigger?

Please explain how faster internet is going to make you use more?

There are two reasons:

1) YouTube and other streaming services adjust the streaming rate to fit the pipe. They actually send less data over a low-bandwidth or high-latency connection.

2) If people spend less time waiting, they can spend more time consuming bandwidth.

Of course, a lot of people just assume 2x more bandwidth = 2x more data. For other than streaming, if you do the same things, you consume the same data.

But there’s another confusion here, originating in the OP. The issue here isn’t 5G (a cellular protocol), but 5 GHz Wi-Fi. 5G does enter into it, in the sense that a faster WiFi connection is more likely to matter if you have a fast cellular connection. But, except when there’s a lot of interference, a faster WiFi connection won’t have any impact on how fast your overall connection to the internet is (and thus, whether you get full bandwidth streaming, or spend a lot of time waiting…)