White House Pledges $400M To Back Speedier 5G Wireless Networks (fortune.com) 86
The Obama Administration has announced a new funding initiative to ensure the United States maintains its leadership in the mobile technology space. For this, it will spend over $400 million on large-scale test platforms led by National Science Foundation with an aim to develop and advance wireless technology to 5G and beyond. Fortune reports: To be sure, the private sector has also been getting smarter and better organized for 5G this year and the new Obama effort will be conducted in conjunction with a bevy of technology and telecommunications partners. All four major wireless carriers, AT&T, Verizon Communications, Sprint, and T-Mobile, are participating. Tech companies on board include Intel, Juniper Networks, Qualcomm, and Nokia. Notably, Apple, Google, and Microsoft are missing from the list. "These super-fast, ultra-low latency, high-capacity networks will enable breakthrough applications for consumers, smart cities, and the Internet of Things that cannot even be imagined today," the White House said in a statement. The report adds: The transition to the next generation standard for wireless networks, so-called 5G, has so far been fraught with confusion, complications, and even some contradictions. But in a few years, when 5G gear sending data at up to 100 times the speed of current networks is commonplace, people may remember July 2016 as a major turning point. The private sector has offered mixed messages about when 5G will be available for regular people and just what it will be used for. Without many standards yet agreed upon, some predicted 5G would be ready starting next year, but others said not until 2020 or later. Some wanted to use it to speed up smartphone connections, while others said it was better suited to improve home and business Internet connections or to collect data from smart devices in the "Internet of Things."
5x more data caps (Score:5, Insightful)
The speeds will increase, but the old dinosaurs won't let go of their silly data caps.
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When was that then, must have missed it.
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The 80's is calling.
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Wish they'd quit calling collect.
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"United States maintains its leadership in the mobile technology space."
When was that then, must have missed it.
Damn you, I was coming here to say just that. :-)
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My home internet service sucks. My LTE cellular data service is twice as fast (and 15x upload).
So 10Gbps is great and all, but what I really want is for my cellular plan to have much higher caps so that I can ditch the landline service.
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I have just the opposite.
Very fast cable modem, marginal LTE.
Only one has caps. And it's the slower, much more expensive option.
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I have excellent wired *and* mobile connectivity.
But I live in Sweden, so that doesn't count.
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Do you have a spare bedroom?
Re: 5x more data caps (Score:2)
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Mine's exactly the same. I don't live in a city (more of a small town really), and data service here sucks, and voice isn't that great either. But I have cable internet service through Metrocast and it works great. It's not expensive (compared to similar service in this country at least), it's reliable, and there's no caps or usage rates.
If your home internet service is slow or has caps, there's something seriously, seriously wrong.
I don't have any cellular data caps BTW, the service just sucks because t
Re: 5x more data caps (Score:2)
To clarify, my home service is slow but does NOT have caps.
The problem is, I would just use cellular if it did not have the caps.
At least you guys have a home option that is both fast and essentially unlimited.
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I've seen this quote somewhere before... (Score:1)
Translation: We don't know, what we don't know.
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Re:I've seen this quote somewhere before... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's the 2016 update to the language of the 1996 Telecommunications Act. And this will be another federal payment to the same fraudsters that already made hundreds of billions on that scam without anyone of consequence noticing.
Re:I've seen this quote somewhere before... (Score:4)
It's the 2016 update to the language of the 1996 Telecommunications Act. And this will be another federal payment to the same fraudsters that already made hundreds of billions on that scam without anyone of consequence noticing.
The people of consequence noticed, and they're back for more. The revolving door of corporate welfare and lobbying are well-understood and when the politicians get to run out in front of the parade, it's a win-win as far as they're concerned.
Because the people who have been kept from learning critical thinking in the schools will eat it up, and most of the rest of them will vote for either Clinton or Trump, so no change is guaranteed.
The People are getting what they want. Democracy, idiocracy, take your pick.
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Kinda reminds me of a variation of the old Rocky And Bullwinkle cartoons...
"Hey, Rocky! Watch me make $400 million disappear up my hat!"
"A-gain...!?"
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right, mexican
What the hell for? (Score:2)
Who is actually asking for this? As it stands, current cellular networks are capable of doing everyone a person could reasonably need, short of downloading 4k uncompressed bukake porn.
Oh wait, that's right. Networks want to make it as easy as possible for you to blow through your absurdly and arbitrarily tiny data quotas. They need to get their lobbyist money somehow, so they can convince the gov't that even those caps are too large.
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A higher-capacity network theoretically lets the carrier fit more customers onto the same spectrum.
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But if they never increase the backhaul once the packets hit actual wire, they still have the same clogged shitty network that gives them justification for data caps.
Who cares what the flow rate of tap water is at your faucet, if there's a clogged pipe feeding your whole house a drip at a time?
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Unless they run their backhaul on wireless, then 5G wouldn't make the slightest difference. AFAIK, once the wireless packets hit the towers, it then goes underground via physical networks, which is orders of magnitude more bandwidth than wireless ever could.
And regardless, I believe at least one carrier has already admitted that they've already got plenty of infrastructure to handle the job. The only reason they force such low caps, is because they're allowed to get away with it.
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Unless they run their backhaul on wireless
I seem to remember reading that a lot of cell towers run their upstream on point-to-point microwave links, especially in remote areas where burying fiber would be cost prohibitive.
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I'd settle for my carrier remembering to rebalance or put up a new tower or two in areas with new construction. I'm literally a 2-min drive from a major freeway and I can't even connect a voice call unless I'm outside on my porch. (And that is 1-bar signal then, at that.)
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I'm 1 mile from a major interstate, an Intel dev site, and an HP dev site.
I can't make calls on Verizon inside my house either.
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My guess is that the corporations and the NSA are asking for this.
The former wants to own the standards and their patents so they can make more money licensing the technology around the world.
The latter wants to make sure that spying is baked into the goods and that the owners of the tech are the corporations they can most easily inject backdoors into.
The whole thing gets rolled up into a "vital national security interest" kind of thing with lots of whispering that we don't want to become dependent on Huawe
All Hail... (Score:1)
to the Crony Capitalist in Chief!
But fear not, Hillary will be completely different, having no connections to big banks or corporations AT ALL!
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Hilary takes 30% kickbacks for spending crony money from the government, in case you wondered what her cut was. So in this case she would get $120 million if she were the one doing this. *
* Based on numbers from Bill's salary ($16.5 million) as a board member from a university that got grants from state department of $55 million. There was a non-profit in the middle so they could claim it was clean, but owner of the non-profit and university paying Bill was the same guy. In addition to being bad at email
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Strangely, telecoms don't even make the top 20 for Hillary [opensecrets.org].
You're correct about the banks though. They are, by far, #1 for her. But I'm sure she'll regulate the shit out of them once they buy her the election.
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I doubt that they make the top 20 for anyone...
Most telecoms prefer to buy congressmen anyway - they're far cheaper, and they get more done (from a 'subsidize-and-monetize-me point of view, anyway).
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True, Hillary goes for bigger fish.
Also, "regulating the shit out of companies" is one of the prime mechanisms for crony capitalism, so that's in character.
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Really, how is she actually a presidential candidate?
Because the DNC are a corrupt cabal who have selected her as their next President, and a majority of the Democratic voters (especially ones in the South) are stupid enough to buy her bullshit. Many of them even actually believe that it's a good idea to elect someone who's visibly corrupt because they think this will translate into "getting things done" in Washington for them somehow, or that this is necessary for that candidate to win (even though Bernie
Think you misspelled Cheaper Gigabit Networks (Score:1)
Like in First World Nations, where it's $20 a month with no data cap and 20 Gbps Internet, not US $300 with a cap and 20 Mbps Internet.
You know, like in a real country.
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"it's $20 a month with no data cap and 20 Gbps Internet"
No one gets 20 Gbps for $20 a month. While I agree that the US is behind, if you really believe the ISPs are making billions from capping and overcharging, then you should invest in such companies and reap the rewards.
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"it's $20 a month with no data cap and 20 Gbps Internet"
No one gets 20 Gbps for $20 a month. While I agree that the US is behind, if you really believe the ISPs are making billions from capping and overcharging, then you should invest in such companies and reap the rewards.
I already do. It's called index investing.
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Mine is actually $150US, 12mb/s and a 30GB cap... but I don't rely on much infrastructure to get it - just electricity and a satellite dish.
But then, my nearest neighbor is 1/2 kilometer away, and the nearest town of any size is 32 kilometers off. Call it a balance between quiet nature and connectivity.
I may not be able to simultaneously download 36 blu-ray pr0n torrents within a reasonable amount of time, but as compensation I don't have to deal with the noise from another family living on the other side o
Porn & Stock Quotes (Score:2)
I don't need more speed (Score:4, Informative)
I need a bigger data cap.
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They're not selling what we're buying, though. That's how American industry works. It's not "free market"; it's not "capitalism"; it's plutocratic oligarchy. They don't care what you want, as long as you want what they're selling enough to buy it.
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is it really socialism when its really just a gift to friendly billionaires
Oh good, another subsidy... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet another subsidy to the telecoms to not deliver what they promise, and then go completely ignored by the government.
Sincerely,
my bi-directional 45Mbit access from the Telecommunications Act of 1996 [newnetworks.com] that should have been available 10 years ago according to the Act, and the hundreds of billions of dollars paid in the form of excise taxes by the public.
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That's all well and good, except that the past shows that conditions the government impose have no actual teeth behind them. Nobody bothers to check to see if the conditions are met, and if someone finds out the conditions were not met, nobody bothers to actually impose any sanctions or punishment whatsoever.
We're now 20 years into the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and very little of it has actually been implemented, other than the excise tax that the telecom companies happily cash the check on, and never
Oh please! Just say it! (Score:1)
The government is giving away money to its fat cat friends that will enjoy a nice cabinet position when the next president opens her little laundromat.
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There's a ton of things they could spend $400M on rather than a give-away to already-highly-profitable telecoms when 4G already is more than fast enough, at least when you can get it and you haven't hit a data cap:
Space exploration, disease research, Medicaid funding, SkyTran R&D, taking care of homeless/PTSD vets, just to name a few.
Another Giveaway? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why don't they collect on the broadband promises that never materialized from the last round of subsidies before giving away another half billion dollars? Oh, right, never mind. They're just bribing people with our own money and trying to make it sound like a good thing, knowing that most people won't be able to call them on it.
Maybe this time it'll be different? I wish I could believe that.
Correction (Score:5, Insightful)
White house pledges 400m to cell carriers profit margins
$400 million fits in tiny corner of black budget (Score:2)
> because data collection from "Internet of Things!!!!"
The only reason we need 5g speeds to collect data from myriad home devices is because each one is feeding audio/video back to the NSA.
How big was the bribe? (Score:1)
This is *not* a politically-motivated post, as it should not be, but really? 5G? Who said that (supposedly "my") government could spend $400M of *my* money (from taxes) to give the poor, starving cell carriers another, faster product to gouge consumers with? There are any number of better ways to spend $400M in the USA today. Its pretty disgusting.
Perhaps (Score:2)
this time around, those funds will come with some concrete conditions before they get paid out.
I will provide you with X amount of funding IFF you can show you have added Y amount of coverage over Z amount of time. Fail to meet those
obligations will require you to pay back any funding you receive.
While we're at it, perhaps we could add some riders on there as well.
BEFORE we give you any additional funding, you need to demonstrate why we should give a Telecom who makes Billions of dollars every quarter any
and the point? (Score:1)
You can already easily exceed your average data-cap with 3g.. why will more speed be so much better?
1st things 1st please (Score:1)
How about you get my parents something better than 1.5MB DSL first. More than 2 miles from Walmart and you are in the 3rd world :(
Speedier (Score:2)
Is President Dubya writing the headlines now?
giving to those who need it not (Score:1)