[thomspoon]

Lower latency, easier to place cells in public places due to a broader range of frequencies, better bandwidth. The lower latency part is what’s going to enable edge computing for AR/VR, autonomous driving (separate via V2V but related), and other functions that need low latency. Cell phones are just a bonus.

Also, a lot of telecoms are kind of ignoring 4g/lte deadspots in favor of just putting new NSA 5G cells it seems. I’m excited, but I’m also biased because I work in the industry.

[PhantomGremlin]

a lot of telecoms are kind of ignoring 4g/lte deadspots in favor of just putting new NSA 5G cells

That just emphasizes what marketing bullshit 5G is. Telecoms won't properly build out infrastructure to avoid LTE deadspots, and yet are pushing 5G. But ... people say that proper 5G needs many many more cells than LTE!

[Rebelgecko]

The 5g signal I get at home is only through T-Mobile's lower bands, which are apparently slower than 4G. It's a bit silly

[ac29]

> Telecoms won't properly build out infrastructure to avoid LTE deadspots, and yet are pushing 5G

Its not entirely irrational - if your customers spend 99% of their time in some given area, it could make sense to improve capacity in those areas instead of chasing that last 1% of coverage.

[baby]

This is why this industry should be nationalized

[mnm1]

> Also, a lot of telecoms are kind of ignoring 4g/lte deadspots in favor of just putting new NSA 5G cells it seems. I’m excited, but I’m also biased because I work in the industry.

T-Mobile has actively reduced coverage these last few years where I live. Went from having almost full bars to almost nothing and calls never being put through and dropping. Just a mile or two from at least three different towers. Even with their lte hotspot placed inside my house, their network doesn't work well. I see commercials about 5g and I think, how about implementing 1g first and getting basic phone service before pretending to deploy some bullshit 5g that likely won't be around for years and no one gives a fuck about? Anyway, I have no delusions about fixing this. Unfortunately Verizon is cdma so the only real competitor is att. Tried Google fi but it wasn't great and Comcast can go fuck themselves. So either I switch to a carrier that is more expensive and likely just as bad or I stay with the shit service because the telecom idiots decided to downgrade their network ten miles outside one of the biggest cities on the west coast.

You'll have to excuse me for being skeptical about a technology pushed by telcos that in 2020 still can't get a basic cellphone voice call to connect or text messages to send reliably even with an lte hotspot literally inches away from a phone they claim 100% support for.