Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/12/17/5g-is-bs.html
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I work at a major mobile carrier’s hq, and let me tell you, the hype is real. It is internally a very big deal that we have the first operational nationwide 5G network and also the most towers etc. Never mind there’s only one device on the market that works with our network so far.
We have so many 600Mhz narrow band ads just posted up on the walls.
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The phrase “peak bullshit” feels a bit ominously portentous to me, almost magical, because whenever it gets used it seems to set a threshold that someone, somewhere, inevitably greets with “hold my beer” and amply exceeds.
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Got caught in a downpour at the airport yesterday and learned that the millimeter wave porno-scanners can’s see through wet clothes.
Those milimeter 5G bands are going to work great in the rain right?
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Funny enough, mm wave 5G interferes with weather radar and satellite water sensing.
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Not to mention, 5G means ass-wads of satellites. Lots more crap to keep track of.
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3g in 1999?
Santa is bringing me 5G for Christmas. I think…
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5G is one more G than 4G. That’s more than enough hype for most consumers, surely.
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I was looking at buying a 5G Note 10 and then I realized when I researched what 5G actually is really isn’t very useful.
First of all it’s not a cohesive technology in practice- what is being called 5G is slightly different for every major network. The easy way to say this is the bandwidth they are all using is a different wavelength and you cannot get one phone on One Network right now and get it to work on another’s 5G.
You’re pretty much locked into whatever 5G Network you choose with the phone.
The main thing is 5G is extremely local only- much higher download and upload speed but very very limited in distance- like I’ve read in places 50 ft 2 maybe a hundred feet from a hotspot.
You aren’t going to be driving around even in a populated area and get this. It is something you only get if you are sitting down most likely at a restaurant or Cafe, or doing something when you are near captive at a certain location that happens to have it.
Basically if you think this is going to make the availability of the internet greater, you are sadly mistaken.
There really isn’t much as a consumer to be really enthused about here just another proprietary network with limited usage
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Perhaps I’ve been overly enmeshed in U.S. politics, but surely the peak bullshit of 2019 had nothing to do with 5G.
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25% MORE G!!!
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Yeah, where I work the killer apps for 5G right now that everyone is talking about is Home Wireless ISP, so basically a 5G to Wifi converter for those who are either too lazy, poor, or in a renting situation and can’t pull fiber/copper into their home.
The other big big app is fleet and product management, because 5G allows for pretty much cubic centimeter grade geolocation. Every 5G beacon can also be used to figure out even what pocket your phone is in.
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Except!! States like Ohio and Florida have passed carrier-fellating laws that allow the building of 5G towers with no local review possible, so they have built 40-50 foot 5G towers in people’s front yards, in the grass strip between the sidewalk and street. And they’re doing it cheaply, so it looks like crap, and quickly so they can get them in before enough people complain that the legislature actually thinks about responding. Hundreds of thousands of these things are coming!
SO BEAUTIFUL.
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Fueling my Hayduke-ian / Durdenian fantasies. Thanks for the heads-up in case they try that noise where I live.
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So 2018.
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Exactly. This is not the way to tempt fate, because fate has demonstrated again and again s/he has a much bigger bucket of shit than you can even imagine.
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Seems to me that the most interesting band is the UHF one stolen from TV broadcasters.
With the added bonus that, at least in some zone of Europe, will make flat screen TV with only DVB-T useless and forcing people to but the new “smart” ones.
I have a really nice DVD recorder that is easy to use for people accustomed to use VHS recorders. Select the channel, pop in a blank DVD, and press Record. Finalize and use the disc everywhere.
Try to to this with modern PVR…
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It does feel a bit early, but could be correct. For people talking about it, anyway.
I remember going to an event in 2000 about WAP. (Remember WAP?)
At that point the only phone that could do WAP was the Nokia 7110, and it was pretty limited. A lot of the technical discussion focused around how WAP was designed to be limited. The phones couldn’t run a full HTML parser, and the networks couldn’t deliver the bandwidth to feed in large media or data sets. Funnily enough, one of the things being offered was a “WAP Transcoder” that could turn your HTML pages into a deck of WML cards.
There was a feeling in the room that whilst the networks would soon remove the limits on media with their 3G upgrades, the processing power on the device would remain an issue for a long time. With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that phone processing power and storage rapidly outstripped all expectations.
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Looks like free electronics to me… *yoink*
