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Wireless Networking The Internet

The Promise of 5G 158

An anonymous reader writes: From instant monitoring of leaking pipelines, to real-time worldwide collaboration, the increase in machine-to-machine communications that 5G allows will change the way we live. This TechCrunch article takes a look at the promise that 5G holds and its possibilities. From the article: "By 2030, 5G will transform and create many uses that we cannot even think of yet. We will live in a world that will have 10-100 times more Internet-connected devices than there are humans. Hundreds of billions of machines will be sensing, processing and transmitting data without direct human control and intervention."
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The Promise of 5G

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  • Flying Car (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 16, 2015 @07:18PM (#50328201)

    This is the contemporary version of the "flying car". It's nonsense that will never happen. Ever.

    • by pepty ( 1976012 )

      Hundreds of billions of machines will be sensing, processing and transmitting data without direct human control and intervention."

      Cell phones, cars, kettles from China that come with hidden hardware for plugging into botnets ... we'll be up to a hundred billion easy.

    • by gl4ss ( 559668 )

      well.. 5g "will happen" and it will be faster than stuff before.

      but really whe the fuck do you need to make an article about it that doesn't talk anything about the technologies trying to be that technology?

      well, it's techcruncchchhchhchch. never ever open a link to there, it will just make you more stupid. and you know what, I bet 10 000 cto's are mailing this to their ceo's in an effort to seem like they're on top of things.. that's what wankcrucnhhch is for - another thing it's for is to inject a news st

  • by Assmasher ( 456699 ) on Sunday August 16, 2015 @07:18PM (#50328207) Journal

    I mean, afterall, we're all so good at network security now...

  • Thoughts (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DaMattster ( 977781 ) on Sunday August 16, 2015 @07:18PM (#50328209)
    I just cannot get excited about 5G because there are still large gaps in 4G coverage. I'd like to see the telecoms finish what they started.
    • by sshir ( 623215 )
      Those places (in US) which do not have 4G right now, will not get 5G pretty much by definition. If I understand correctly, 5G is exclusively for areas with very high population density. Basically, thanks to physics, your cells are of the size of a city block. So if you do not have enough customers at that scale - you do not get 5G.
    • The internet of things is going to spread the technological distribution from the creepy uber-geeks who are embedding processors in their heads, to the Mexican fisherman [wanttoknow.info] who still gives it a "Meh, gringo."
    • Re:Thoughts (Score:5, Interesting)

      by mjwx ( 966435 ) on Sunday August 16, 2015 @08:50PM (#50328549)

      I just cannot get excited about 5G because there are still large gaps in 4G coverage. I'd like to see the telecoms finish what they started.

      I can't get excited over 4G because we haven't actually got it yet. LTE is still a 3.9G tech, LTE Advanced was supposed to be the first 4G technology according to the ITU definitions.

      But then the marketing trolls decided that they could just re-define words to mean whatever the hell they wanted to and 4G went from a well defined standard to arbitrary marketspeak. Some telco's had rebranded HSPA+ as 4G, because of this 5G has no real meaning and it will just lead to marking one-upmanship. "Our competitors are still on 6G, we've gone to 11G" without actually telling you they haven't changed technology at all.

      • Part of the blame lies with the ITU for defining a pie-in-the-sky practically sci-fi (for the time when it was specified) standard as the next official milestone. That left all of the carriers in a tough spot, as they would be investing millions or billions in rolling out a brand-new technology (LTE) that would give them an order of magnitude speed boost, but would be forbidden from calling it a next generation technology.

      • But then the marketing trolls decided that they could just re-define words to mean whatever the hell they wanted to and 4G went from a well defined standard to arbitrary marketspeak. Some telco's had rebranded HSPA+ as 4G, because of this 5G has no real meaning and it will just lead to marking one-upmanship. "Our competitors are still on 6G, we've gone to 11G" without actually telling you they haven't changed technology at all.

        So 4G is the Firefox of wireless?

    • Are you saying I shouldn't buy Cat6 cable to replace my Cat 5E because there's still one run of Cat 4 cable in my house?

      I hate the idea of stalling technical progress because the previous generation failed to reach 100% ubiquity and would sooner not pay a telecom company to install equipment which is actively reaching end of it's lifecycle.

    • Everyone said the same thing about 4G... and you know what? They were right. Right now, there are STILL large gaps in 3G coverage!

    • by antdude ( 79039 )

      Heh, I still have that problem with 3G. I just want stabliblity (sometimes bad as 1X and nothing) and decent unlimited speeds with it.

    • I was told 4G would 'revolutionise' my life and I'd be throwing away my "old tech" home broadband because 4G was going to be so awesome.

      I actually do have 4G in a few places I spend a lot of time. There's no way I'd ditch my broadband for it though - I've tried using it for tethering, and it's terribly slow compared. It just doesn't cut it against even a decent ADSL broadband connection (let along against fibre or similar). It's fine for downloading my email on the move, and even for looking stuff up online

  • Waste of time (Score:5, Informative)

    by manu0601 ( 2221348 ) on Sunday August 16, 2015 @07:23PM (#50328223)
    There is not much more in this article than in Slashdot summary. You can skip it.
  • by jonnythan ( 79727 ) on Sunday August 16, 2015 @07:29PM (#50328241)

    5G will turn this one-way interaction we have today with data into something new. Imagine a new network that will enable machines to communicate instantly without any human intervention, and to do things on our behalf and for our benefit without our active engagement.

    ... What? Is 4G too slow for "machines to communicate instantly without any human intervention"?

    And speaking of 4G vs 5G... I can burn through my 5 GB/month data allowance in about 45 minutes by maxing out my 4G connection. Not in any hurry to do it in 45 seconds via 5G.

    Our cars will download real-time traffic information and use it to avoid congestion and accidents, getting us safely and quickly where we need to go.

    O RLY? 4G is way too slow for real-time traffic.

    • by rockout ( 1039072 ) on Sunday August 16, 2015 @07:40PM (#50328289)

      ... What? Is 4G too slow for "machines to communicate instantly without any human intervention"?

      O RLY? 4G is way too slow for real-time traffic.

      Are you having an argument with yourself?

      • Are you having an argument with yourself?

        No, I'm not.
        Yes, I am!
        Am not!
        Oh shut up. Y'know, sometimes, I really get on our nerves.

    • There is far more to 5G than speed increases.

      Less latency, better tower handover, less setup and negotiation time, by all first research it will have a far more efficient use of bandwidth and equipment allowing a much larger subscriber density (which is critical when every bloody device is IoT)

      No one gives 2 shits about the speed except for those people working on using 5G to backhaul data from 5G subscribers.

    • by gl4ss ( 559668 )

      2.5g is fast enough for real time traffic updates..

      what you need is less shitty data plans from your provider.. oh finland finland home of the 10 bucks/month / 100 gb+ connections.

  • Watch out (Score:5, Funny)

    by PPH ( 736903 ) on Sunday August 16, 2015 @07:29PM (#50328243)

    Hundreds of billions of machines will be sensing, processing and transmitting data without direct human control and intervention.

    Your toaster is talking about you behind your back.

    • by kesuki ( 321456 )

      to think instead of skynet launching a nuclear strike, the instead will make our fridges burn out, tie up our comm networks, say they're obsolete every 18 months, make our toast have colored sprinkles when we ordered them plain, and will refuse to accept our credit cards because we didn't entire the pin number fast enough. oh yeah, and a few more rads of exposure every 18 months as they invent new standards of communication.

    • by mspohr ( 589790 )

      Have your refrigerator call my shoe to set up an appointment... we can talk about it.

      • by KGIII ( 973947 )

        The guy who says such a thing has to be named Vinnie and have a New York accent, say Queens, and I am in.

  • by JimMcc ( 31079 ) on Sunday August 16, 2015 @07:33PM (#50328255) Homepage

    The subject kind of says it all. Around here we have pockets of LTE, larger areas of 3G, but the bulk of our geographic area has no service or just barely enough to send and receive an SMS message. I don't see where 5G means a thing to us here.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Wow, it's almost like private businesses don't spend money to help poor people download Youtube videos of tractor pulls.

      Maybe you should move to the city, country bumpkin.

  • by paiute ( 550198 )
    Comcast will still be sodomizing their customers - even faster!
  • by areusche ( 1297613 ) on Sunday August 16, 2015 @07:38PM (#50328277)
    5G is going to be meaningless if it means carriers like Verizon and AT&T are metering usage at a per gigabyte rate. RIP grandfathered verizon unlimited data plan.
  • Anyone else get a feeling of: The Self Aware Colony [youtube.com] from good old Alpha Centauri? Layers and layers of automated systems that keep the cities running "smoothly."

  • by Anonymous Coward

    The Nokia executive who wrote this article is spouting misinformation here. Talking about 5G, when 4G systems don't exist yet. LTE (Long Term Evolution) service is 3G which is (in theory) moving towards meeting 4G standards of 1 gigabit/sec, but is nowhere even close to that now. It's only branding. Considering AOL owns techcrunch, this is clearly a PR/propaganda piece which no content of any actual value in the entire article. Even the slashdot summary is misinformed. The only way you'll be seeing 5G is in

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • If it's only branding, then what passes off as 4G is actually 4G?
      I don't remember that much what are the difference between LTE and LTE Advanced but we could care less about getting to 1 Gbps in unrealistic or useless conditions.
      The real performance is when e.g. 20 people are uploading or downloading simultaneously, in a real word setting. Does the "3.9G" LTE lose badly next to "real 4G" LTE? Or is it about the same, but the latter has a useless high-bandwith mode for feature checking and for allowing highe

  • By 2030 .... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by PPH ( 736903 ) on Sunday August 16, 2015 @08:00PM (#50328377)

    ... the carriers will be pitching 8G.

    Anything to trade you up to a new two year contract.

    • The RF technology doesn't do that. The latest super retina display that is so good you can't even make out pixels under the microscope will make you do that.

      • by laffer1 ( 701823 )

        It does because you have to buy a new phone to use it.

        • Except I don't know any body ever who has bought a new phone because they wanted to use LTE or 3G or 4G or whatever.

          Every single person I have ever met has a new phone because either:
          a) Their previous contract expired
          b) Apple released a new shiny thing they absolutely had to have and justified breaking their contract to get.
          c) Their company issued an upgrade.

          Part if this is usually to do with timing. When your new phone gets the latest and greatest modem there's every chance coverage even in major cities is

  • ... then this future will not materialize any time soon, as none of these devices will work right. If what happens currently with mobile phones is any indicator, then all the stupid mistakes will be made all over again with the "Internet of Things", likely including no easy way to patch your fridge, stove, etc. Of course, this may eventually be fixed, but there is no way in this universe to make that by 2030. If we are really lucky, mobile phones will be reasonable secure by then, but that is it.

  • by aNonnyMouseCowered ( 2693969 ) on Sunday August 16, 2015 @08:05PM (#50328401)

    The non-linear, if not exactly exponential, growth of information-related technologies from Moore's proverbial microchips to wide area network speeds appear to have the side effect of placing important aspects of global civilization under the control of a few companies when they have the equal potential to decentralize it. Why has Google search become for most people the starting point for research or Facebook the dominant means of text-based communication?

    I know the arguments for economies of scale. But why can't we have mesh or peer-to-peer versions of these technologies where we don't have to rely on the good intentions or fault tolerance of a few dozen IT behemoths? We now have the equivalent of an '80s supercomputer in our pockets. Why can't I just beam my documents or videos directly to my friend on the other side of town, instead of routing them right across the world?

    Critics scoffed at the ease with which a human "hacker" brought down the alien invasion force in Independence Day. I'm thinking the movie's a metaphor for where the Internet and all our information technologies are heading.

  • Yes, because you really need 5G over 3G for a pipeline monitor to send "There's a leak"

    • by binarylarry ( 1338699 ) on Sunday August 16, 2015 @08:17PM (#50328443)

      Silly Canadian, here in the US we use our cellular network for more than monitoring maple syrup storage silos.

      • Nobody expects the Canadian Maple Syrup Reserve! Our chief export is sap...sap and sucrose...sucrose and sap.... Our two exports are sucrose and sap...and waffles.... Our *three* exports are sucrose, sap, and waffles...and an almost fanatical devotion to hockey.... Our *four*...no... *Amongst* our exports.... Amongst our exportry...are such elements as sucrose, sap.... I'll come in again.
  • Coverage will be spotty, I am 80 miles from lower Manhatten and we still have dead spots. Radio signals has blind spots. $ fix that locals complain about cell towers.

    And what about security, will this prevent Russian gangs from looting my bank account.

    With 5G do you get free credit monitoring or virus scanning?

    Will my driverless car be able to be controlled by hackers using my sound system?

    The 5G forecast is cloudy.... film at 11 ... in other news you will be able to send email from your spreadsheet

    • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      The main push for this is control. Not to have to roll out optical per site that will be a shared common carrier to all other local brands.
      Limited bandwidth, cheap per gig plans per month or expensive plans for more data is the better lock in.
      If the local usage ever really gets saturated then the limitations of huge amounts of people wanting perfect low cost networking on very limited bandwidth will start to be interesting.
      Re "And what about security?" Local city, state, parish and federal gov official
  • by tlambert ( 566799 ) on Sunday August 16, 2015 @08:21PM (#50328457)

    Reach your data cap up to 40X faster!

    That is all.

  • If not, I won't see any difference, unless WIFI has a matching speed increase.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    The article shows a lot of numbers about the prospects of 5G that the author pulls out of his
    ass. He is wrong by a factor of 28 for yearly US car fatalities so we should not bother to
    think any other number is serious. Also I am not sure how the number relates to 5G.

    > The opportunity to not just reduce, but eliminate, car accidents will translate to saving more than one million lives every year in the U.S. alone.

    the real number is ~36k which is pretty big compared to other developed countries. That gives

  • Help me out folks - I don't have a smartphone. WTF does 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G mean? This is all I know about the N-G: I Want an I-Phone 4! [youtube.com]
    • The 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G, etc simply means you'll reach your monthly data cap faster than the previous generation of G while paying a higher monthly bill.
  • by swell ( 195815 ) <jabberwock@poetic.com> on Sunday August 16, 2015 @09:17PM (#50328651)

    "Statistics show that 20 percent of our water supply is lost every single day because of leaks in the pipes that make up the national infrastructure...
    Monitoring every pipe in real time would require the ability to gather and analyze huge volumes of data at speeds that are just not possible today. "

    I'm not sure how 5G is going to help our 100 year old supply pipes that we can't even afford to repair. Perhaps we can plug the cracks with 5G Nokia phones.

    This appears to be a promo aimed at ignorant investors. It's hard to believe that the Nokia CTO would write such nonsense to the tech savvy.

    • by adolf ( 21054 )

      My local municipality already monitors water lines on a per-household basis in near-realtime, using existing 900MHz license-free ISM bands.

      This is primarily for billing (there aren't any more human meter readers peering into holes in the ground), but is also used for leak detection.

      The system was rolled out quietly and without fanfare, and seems to work well.

  • Bandwidth caps are so low and prices for bandwidth are so high that even 4G isn't really practical. what are you doing with it?

    Most people have bandwidth caps around 2 GBs to 10 GBs.

    I'm over wireless anywhere internet provided by the cellphone companies. Its bullshit.

    I'm looking forward to google's new project where they only bill you for bandwidth used and they'll bill your bandwidth in a flat way. So the first megabyte costs as much as the last megabyte. The concept will be to run most traffic through wif

  • by nickweller ( 4108905 ) on Sunday August 16, 2015 @09:50PM (#50328739)
    How are all these 5G devices going to fit into the same rf spectrum?
    • by fizzup ( 788545 )

      How are all these 5G devices going to fit into the same rf spectrum?

      Shorter range. More towers.

  • by holophrastic ( 221104 ) on Sunday August 16, 2015 @10:16PM (#50328819)

    First, an inventor invented invented a pipe, and installed it, and it was found to leak. Then a plumber improved the pipe and re-installed it, and would never leak again.

    Then a new-age company said they could build a cheaper pipe to save costs. It was installed, and it leaked only sometimes. Then a plumber figured out precisely how often it would leak, and designed a maintenance plan to prevent it from leaking, so the leaking would never be a problem again.

    Then an accountant saw the money being spent on maintenance of a pipe that didn't leak, and reduced the maintenance until it started to leak.

    Now, a new-age company is offering to invent and build and install billions of sensors on the pipe, to see when it's leaking, so we'll know when to perform the maintenance.

    It'll work great. Not only will we know exactly when to send out the maintenance crew -- i.e. pretty close to the same rate as when the plumber designed the maintenance plan the first time, because he wasn't stupid -- but we'll spend more money on the sensors than we will on the pipe.

    As my mother's always said. You can pay me now, or you can pay me later. So the pipe will be cheap, and the maintenance will be occasional, and the sensors will be amazing.

    And then we'll save money on the sensors.

    And then we'll have a maintenance plan for the sensors.

    And then we'll start monitoring the sensors.

    It's turtles all the way down.

    Anyone remember how much the high quality pipe that didn't leak in the first place cost? I didn't think so.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Your base assumption is incorrect. The real goal of the sensor net is to register the detailed, real-time, water usage of every household. This data set will then be added to all the other data being collected to further advance the surveillance society we are living in.

      Leaking pipes is just the vehicle to sell this plan on.

    • This comment wins it all today. Spot on and exactly so. The concept of "do it right the first time" is rarely applied. We live in a "pay later" world.
  • by fluffernutter ( 1411889 ) on Sunday August 16, 2015 @11:02PM (#50328963)
    It won't be until 6G that the machines will rise up and overtake humanity..... Right?
  • Why is this a good idea? I have a house full of smart devices the last thing I want is them connecting directly out to the internet. Sure my house knows the weather forecast and adjusts heating/cooling based upon that. It knows when I'm headed home and to crank up the hut tub turn the lights on and continue my playlist from where I left off in the car. None of this would be aided by direct connectivity, it would only be giving up security and control.

    I would love a fridge that could tell me my current l

  • It is nice to know that the rest of the world will be able to enjoy the benefits of 5g, while here in the U.S.A. AT&T, Verizon and Sprint will be able to charge us $10/month for every device that we want to hook up (maybe more with inflation) plus taxes and "fees" and then put a pathetic data cap on the usage.
  • Don't bother reading if you expect to see any technical insight. The article summary is "oh gosh gee whiz it's so gosh darn fast" followed by a dump about all kinds of amazing things a really fast data link might enable.

  • by nikkipolya ( 718326 ) on Monday August 17, 2015 @02:50AM (#50329649)

    Hundreds of billions of machines will be sensing, processing and transmitting data without direct human control and intervention."

    Hundreds of billions of machines will be connected to botnets that will be indirectly controlled by humans for fun and profit at the expense of others.

  • This might appear 10 years sooner if the FCC would get the hell out of the way. Profit motive, you know.

  • I've got Bieber 6G Fever [youtube.com]!
  • Once everybody is on 5G, it will make it possible for ALL devices to show us advertising. Your refrigerator, your faucet, your toilet, your chair...they will ALL be conspiring to show you advertisements, all the time. As long as AdBlockPlus gets ported to all these devices, we'll be OK!

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