[yllus]

I remember listening to a Masters In Business podcast [1] with the President of Qualcomm and listening to his explanation of why 5G was going to be a huge game-changer. He perked my interest by mentioning that he thought that _everything_ would have a 5G chip in it one day - garbage cans, mailboxes - but otherwise did not by my judgment give any significant reason that 5G would change something in the market when compared to 4G technology.

Does anyone have a strong reason they think that higher speeds and (I assume) low latencies would unlock something in the economy we're currently unable to achieve? I just don't see it.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/audio/2020-03-13/cristiano-am...

[grahamburger]

The real motivation here is that mobile carriers want to take market share from cable companies. Mobile carriers want to be able to provide wireless to your phone that is good enough that you will pay more for an unlimited plan and cancel your cable subscription. 5G doesn't really do that much for garbage cans, they could already have 4G or wifi chips in them if anyone wanted that.

[manuelabeledo]

In most EU countries and in the US, major wired network companies are already in the wireless market (T-Mobile, Vodafone, AT&T, etc.), so your take would make sense only if they were to stop laying fiber, and replace it with towers. To achieve this though, it would require a massive investment, especially to circumvent network congestion.

[grahamburger]

> To achieve this though, it would require a massive investment, especially to circumvent network congestion.

AKA: 5G

[manuelabeledo]

Not quite. It would require a massive investment on top of the current 5G deployment.

Replacing fiber, cable, or DSL with 5G in dense urban and suburban areas is definitely not what is currently under development.

[grahamburger]

The wireless distribution layer is really the only place mobile carriers are meaningfully bandwidth constrained. It's (relatively) easy and cheap to 10x or even 100x bandwidth available at a tower. The hard part is delivering that capacity to the end user. That's where 5G comes in.

[jariel]

There is an argument that it's crossing a magic boudnary to the point wherein it's almost like 'WiFi' as opposed to 'Wireless' in the sense that the bandwidth is there, and there is plenty of it.

If Qualcomm and the Carriers were not stuck in the 1940's with their utterly byzantine business models (remember 10-cents per WAP page on feature phones? They thought there were geniuses and were going to dominate with that Einstein business model) - then - the notion of 'your toaster on 5G' is a very material feasibility.

There is definitely the theoretical possibility for a 'true IoT revolution', but I think that the variety of ways they shoot themselves in the foot will keep any revolution at bay for a while.

Some 'dynamic' carrier in Japan, Korea or wherever could literally do something transformative and the rest wouldn't budge.

It took the creation of the iPhone (innovation + market power) to force a lot of theses parties to shift gears.

Startups, without power, won't be able to budge carriers, they have to be forced.

[georgeecollins]

AR is one case. Maps are great today, but just last week someone delivering packages saw that I was pushing a bike and asked me how to get into the local bike shop. The entrance is in the alley, and at the end of canopy that is not easy to find at all. I believe that image recognition and a very fast connection could help with that problem.

It seems like a gimmick, but how many times have you known the address and not known where the door was? It happens a lot in medical buildings.

[yllus]

I'm all for an Assassin's Creed style augmented reality view of the world! But I don't see why it's something 5G would usher in over 4G (or 3G).