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Verizon: 5G Speeds On Low-Spectrum Bands Will Be More Like 'Good 4G' (arstechnica.com) 84

Posted by BeauHD from the reality-check dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: 5G won't be much different from 4G outside dense urban areas, a Verizon executive said yesterday. The massive hype around 5G has focused on speed improvements expected on millimeter-wave spectrum, which wasn't previously used on mobile broadband networks. But 5G on lower-spectrum bands will be like "good 4G," Verizon Consumer Group CEO Ronan Dunne said at Oppenheimer's annual Technology, Internet & Communications Conference (webcast link).

"While we can deploy and we will deploy a 5G nationwide offering, the lower down the spectrum tiers you go, the more that will approximate to a good 4G service," Dunne said. "The truth is, we have a very good 4G LTE service in parts of the US where our competitors don't. So if someone else is rushing to bring out 5G nationwide, it may be because they don't have credible 4G LTE coverage in those areas to start with." Dunne noted yesterday that the amount of spectrum in each band will play a huge role in determining the speeds available over 5G. The more spectrum you have, "the more of the features and capabilities of 5G that you can enable," Dunne said yesterday.

He continued: "We want to have both a coverage strategy and a capability strategy, and a very large majority of the volume of data that we carry on our networks goes to large, dense urban environments. From a population point of view, [big cities have] significantly less than half of customers, but from a data traffic point of view, it's significantly more than half. When it comes to the ability to use 5G as a significant capacity enhancement, there's more of an opportunity to leverage that in urban areas."
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Verizon: 5G Speeds On Low-Spectrum Bands Will Be More Like 'Good 4G' More

Verizon: 5G Speeds On Low-Spectrum Bands Will Be More Like 'Good 4G'

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  • Makes Sense (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Ryzilynt ( 3492885 ) on Thursday August 08, 2019 @08:11PM (#59065828)

    Considering 5G uses 3 times the energy , and needs 3 times as many towers (do to it's shorter range).

    I was wondering how and when they were going to try to spin this.

    • Considering 5G uses 3 times the energy , and needs 3 times as many towers (do to it's shorter range).

      I was wondering how and when they were going to try to spin this.

      *Due

    • Re:Makes Sense (Score:4, Informative)

      by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Thursday August 08, 2019 @08:23PM (#59065884) Homepage Journal

      He's talking about 5G protocols on low-frequency bands (probably band 13, being Verizon), not the high-frequency stuff.

      A recent demo from China pushed 1.3Gbps over 5G (high-frequency), so having the radio on full power for 1/3 the time ought to be fine for almost everybody.

    • "Considering 5G uses 3 times the energy"

      Per second, or per byte?

      • "Considering 5G uses 3 times the energy"

        Per second, or per byte?

        If you could do the calculations i'm sure we'd all appreciate it. We are looking for the number of bits transmitted per Joule of energy expended,

        From what I have read it's a lot more than 4g.

        But do prove me wrong.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          I'm not looking it up for you, but at the air-interface level itself, 5G is 15-25% more efficient than 4G. Not really a big deal.

          Where it shines is enabling huge channel widths (think hundreds of MHz wide vs. 5-20 MHz wide in 4G) in the high-band/mmwave spectrum ranges that can enable things like approaching gigabit speeds. But yes, those super high frequencies have little to no range and use a ton of power. I'm not a luddite or whackjob, and even I don't want to stand next to a base station blasting out hu

          • I'm not looking it up for you, but at the air-interface level itself, 5G is 15-25% more efficient than 4G. Not really a big deal.

            Where it shines is enabling huge channel widths (think hundreds of MHz wide vs. 5-20 MHz wide in 4G) in the high-band/mmwave spectrum ranges that can enable things like approaching gigabit speeds. But yes, those super high frequencies have little to no range and use a ton of power. I'm not a luddite or whackjob, and even I don't want to stand next to a base station blasting out hundreds of watts at 39GHz.

            Luckily, even if you have one outside your house or workplace on the nearest telephone pole, it probably (hopefully?) won't be able to poke through walls or windows at the legal power levels so you should be safe unless your job is standing outside in a park under a lamp post selling hotdogs or something. In that case, I'd invest in a high-quality actual, real tinfoil hat.

            It might poke through windows a little bit.

            A company that specialized in EMI/RFID shielding...

    • The cell companies have already decided how many cell towers they want outside the cities and it won't change. They already decided how much bandwidth they want to feed to those towers and it's not going to change. They already chose what generation of tech they have in the country and that's not going to change. This high tech 5G stuff will only be rolled out in the areas where it pays to roll it out. They won't even think about building 5G in the countryside until those paid for rural cell towers wear

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Bengie ( 1121981 )
      5G uses less power for a given frequency, obstruction, and noise. High frequency 5G uses a lot of power, mostly because higher frequency requires smaller antenna, which are... get this.. smaller. MU-OFMA+beamforming will be awesome. A 5G tower at 900mhz might not offer any single device any more bandwidth than a 4G tower at 900mhz, it can support about 20x more active devices at the same time. 4G and 5G do share a lot of fundamental tech, but 5G dials it up to 11. Comparing 4G and 5G is like comparing a bea

    • Considering 5G uses 3 times the energy , and needs 3 times as many towers (do to it's shorter range).

      I was wondering how and when they were going to try to spin this.

      You do realise that the 3 times more energy and 3 times more towers only applies to the higher frequency services which is precisely what this story is *not* talking about right?

      • Considering 5G uses 3 times the energy , and needs 3 times as many towers (do to it's shorter range).

        I was wondering how and when they were going to try to spin this.

        You do realise that the 3 times more energy and 3 times more towers only applies to the higher frequency services which is precisely what this story is *not* talking about right?

        You do realize the title of my original post is "Makes Sense" right? As in They are not actually going to be offering "real" 5G because it wouldn't be cost effective, because it requires 3 times the number of towers and uses 3 times more energy...... So they are going to be offering 5G at lower frequencies that will be "like good 4G"......

        Makes sense ... that true full power 5G is not going to be offered....was wondering how they were going to try to spin this....

  • What he conveniently fails to mention is that the signal penetration inside buildings is going to be much, much better at the lower frequencies than at the higher frequencies. Which will become known as "5G's dirty little secret" that it essentially works when you're outside or near a window that has direct line of sight to the tower.

    • Because 3G definitely just disappeared the instant that LTE started building out, right?

      No wait they're only turning that off now. So I guess that if you can't get the new lower-freq 5G, or WiFi, there's still good ol' LTE 4G.

  • 5G is 4G (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dicobalt ( 1536225 ) on Thursday August 08, 2019 @08:31PM (#59065908)
    Only in America.

    • This is always how it was going to work:

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      "5G NR speed in sub-6 GHz bands can be slightly higher than the 4G with a similar amount of spectrum and antennas"

      So, yeah, about 4G performance. Modulation and encodings are about as optimized as you are going to get. Barring any great breakthrough, you aren't going to squeeze more throughput out of the same bandwidth / channel size.

      The faster speeds come with the higher frequencies, but with reduced range.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Bengie ( 1121981 )
        While most clients are downloading, 5G is full duplex, which effectively doubles the total bandwidth. That's an engineering feat onto itself. And no, it's not fake full-duplex across different channels.
        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Bengie ( 1121981 )
            While it is very true that most clients don't upload much, unless doing live streaming, in order to download, the client must ACK the data. While it is not much data, about 1 unit up for every 30 units down, it spends a lot of time sending. There is a lot of overhead to send a small amount of data. That's wasted time that it could be receiving. Even a 100Mb Ethernet at half-duplex can only max out around 60-70Mb/s. To think wireless could do much better than a wired medium is a bit optimistic.
    • ISPs and phone company advertising reminds me of the troubles the Soviet Union had in monitoring their domestic production of goods. Basically, the demands were ever increasing, far beyond what the industries were capable of, yet the punishments for failing to meet these expectations were unnervingly severe.

      People who would have ended up in the Gulag if they spoke the truth, instead lied and falsified their reports. Paperwork and red tape was produced in droves, all detailing work that was fanciful. Produ

      • All measurements show value continues to skyrocket, as speed increases and dollars per byte decrease.

        In spite of rough edges from being free, this is why our supermarkets were stocked and communist ones were bare, with 8 hour breadlines.

  • Even though you'll be paying a premium for the " 5G " label, performance wise it won't be much different than the existing 4G for most.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mentil ( 1748130 )

      Will the latency be any better, though?

      • Will the latency be any better, though?

        Actually yes.

        In theory by about a factor of about Five (YMMV). Targets are 1~4ms, As long as you are using a 5G core network.

        If you are using a 5G core and 4G base stations, or 5GNR with a 4G core, or all 5G sw on top of 4G HW, expet significant deviations from that target

  • Why bother with 5g (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    When we have vast areas of the country barely getting any coverage?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dgatwood ( 11270 )

      When we have vast areas of the country barely getting any coverage?

      This. The Verizon statement appears to be saying that they'll get more benefit from 5G in cities because city-dwellers use disproportionately more bandwidth. What they failed to mention is the reason for that — that cities are the only places where you can get usable amounts of bandwidth....

    • Because no one cares about the vast areas of wasteland. Yes it sounds insensitive but it's true. You can't expect to live in the sticks and have inner major city style access to services.

      As for why ... well the answer is easy: Growth. It's not letting up. We are demanding ever more bandwidth and to not supply it would mean to put brakes on those demands which generally equates to a slowing of the economy.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • No strategy for fixing their bufferbloat yet? (Score:4, Informative)

    by mtaht ( 603670 ) on Thursday August 08, 2019 @10:59PM (#59066486) Homepage
    Early 5g results were dismal - 1.6 SECONDs of latency under load. I've seen worse wifi, but not recently. When will some telecom exec wake up and fix it? https://www.usenix.org/system/... [usenix.org]

    • the sooner we kill the RF voice interface and move to a standard IP based voice interface the better
      it consumes HUGE amounts of bandwidth, 4G basically just allows phones to drop to 3G to make calls... the sooner all phones actually transmit the voice data within IP packets then we can get High Definition voice and get back HUGE amounts of bandwidth...

        so you should be asking when Verizon are going to support HD voice (VoLTE (VoIP)) exclusively !

      regards

      John Jones

  • 6G are what the bigly winners are getting. [theverge.com] Never mind that it hasn't been defined yet. Those are the kind of details that low-energy losers fret over.

  • a.k.a. 5GE

  • I know I wasn't.

    I'd switch back to AT&T, but I expect even less of them, but we've all had our own bad experiences with certain phone carriers.

    I'm sure many here hate VZW as much as I hate ATT and don't mistake that for a love of VZW either.

  • The more I learned about 5G the more I came to believe that this would never leave the metro areas. The big selling point of 5G is the high frequency bands which allow for more bandwidth, but comes at the cost of not being able to go that far. I knew there was no way that 5G was ever going to deploy in suburbs and rural areas, and have been waiting for that confirmation for awhile now.

    The thing I want to know now is did all these telecoms get subsidies on the promise that 5G would finally bring high speed b

  • Personally I am happy with 4G speeds. However 5G brings a host of enhancements to the table, by far not the least of which is the higher subscribers per base station. 4G+ (LTE-A) speeds are great. But honestly I'd be more than happy with even getting HSDPA speeds in a stadium, or anywhere there are huge crowds of people.

    The investment is still worthwhile even if you ignore the unicorn promises of downloading a 2h Netflix movie in 5 seconds.

  • We renamed our old crap.

  • Do you mean to tell me that OTA speeds depend on physics rather than the magnitude of the number before the "G" in the marketing campaign?

    Say it isn't so...

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