Verizon's 5G Network Can Only Cover 'Certain Seating Areas' In a Basketball Stadium (techspot.com) 66
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechSpot: 5G wireless technology is the next big thing in the mobile industry, and ISPs are pushing it quite heavily. Unfortunately for Verizon, the company's efforts to promote its implementation of 5G have not been perfect lately. The ISP announced that its 5G network would be available in three NBA arenas (with seven more planned to receive it) in the coming months -- however, even in that relatively small area, the 5G coverage is not strong enough to support the entire arena. According to Ars Technica, the network will only cover "certain seating areas." NFL stadiums are in a similar boat -- Verizon is bringing 5G to those arenas, too, but only select seats will have access. Of course, the average football stadium is considerably bigger than most basketball stadiums, so that's a bit more understandable. Verizon's 5G coverage will first extend to three NBA arenas -- Chase Center in San Francisco, Phoenix's Talking Stick Resort Arena, and the Pepsi Center In Denver -- and then to seven more by the end of the 2019-2020 basketball season.
isn't this how physics works? (Score:4, Informative)
millimeter wave is short range for small areas and small amounts of people. you deploy a bunch of these in dense places to avoid the interference from multiple towers that use lower frequencies.
you don't even need to cover the entire arena, just the parts with the most people
Even the NYC subway is rolling out millimeter wave signaling because of the short range
Re:isn't this how physics works? (Score:5, Funny)
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And sub6 coverage could even give better than 4G speeds to the rest.
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Hmm... (Score:3, Insightful)
I've been wondering the same (Score:2)
the more I wonder if it's really the next big thing
Reading about the substantial technical issues with devices and with network equipment, I have to wonder if we'll really ever see a nationwide 5G rollout - or if instead we'll just see a handful of cities that all have mediocre coverage.
I don't think Starlink can compete on speed and certainly not latency, but it will have have range in spades and could suck all of the funding out of the system for super expensive 5G rollouts.
I don't think there were ever
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I don't think Starlink can compete on speed and certainly not latency, but it will have have range in spades and could suck all of the funding out of the system for super expensive 5G rollouts.
If you're basing your assumptions about poor latency off of existing satellite services like HughesNet then you'd be mistaken that Starlink will have the same issues. HughesNet satellites are in geostationary orbit, 22,000 miles above the earth. Starlink will be as low as 220 miles and no higher than 750 miles. That's upwards of two orders of magnitude difference there.
Consider that the distance between NYC and LA is 2,400 miles, and suddenly those Starlink satellites aren't really all that far away. If
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Great points, I didn't know about the differences in operating height. That combined with the sky-blanketing numbers of Starlink units seems to bode well... I know someone who lives in the countryside that is very eager for Starlink to launch.
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headline from 2026....
"Kanye West sells Montana ranch after 300 5G towers spoil view"
headline from 2056...
"Sprint denies boom in cranial carcinomas around towers is linked to 5G deployments"
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Starlink probably won't work too well inside buildings larger than a single story wooden house. To cover buildings, if you were using Starlink you'd put a receiver on the roof and provide signal via wifi or some other local area wireless inside the building.
Starlink will be more useful for rural users, or vehicles like cars, trains, ships, aircraft, etc. If you had a Starlink-capable mobile phone it would probably have fallback to local networks for when you're in a crowded area.
Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
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(To elaborate, I'm not counting Starlink's low-latency-across-ocean use cases for stuff like stock markets, I'm talking about its end use case for mobile devices.)
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The more I hear about 5G and it's varieties the more I wonder if it's really the next big thing or the next big waste of money...
It's the next big waste of money thing.
I feel like SpaceX's Starlink is going to be deployed before Verizon and their ilk get more than a few prime areas covered. I'll wait for a Starlink phone before buying a 5G brick.
Starlink phones will be cheaper than classic satellite phones, but still more expensive than a normal cellphone. It'll be useful for hotspots, though. Right now I'm on Exede. It goes up to 20 Mbps, but streaming video is throttled to hell, the cap before everything is throttled even harder than hell is small, and latency is about a full second on average. Starlink can't come soon enough for that use case.
Re: Hmm... (Score:2)
> I'll wait for a Starlink phone before buying a 5G brick.
Version 1 of Starlink will require a pizza-box-sized phased antenna array with a fixed mount and some aiming.
A "Gobal" cell phone on Starlink is currently science fiction. Maybe by 2030?
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The more I hear about 5G and it's varieties the more I wonder if it's really the next big thing or the next big waste of money...
Define 5G. You seem to be falling into the same trap as everyone else who looks at the mm-wave frequencies only and then dismisses an entire technology that has impacts and benefits for all frequencies in all ranges and all devices. 5G will be the next big thing. There's zero question about that. It just won't have anything to do with these stupid articles talking about a small set of frequencies.
Case in point: If Verizon wanted to cover the entire stadium with 5G service then they could do so with a about
and now much bandwidth per cell? (Score:2)
and now much bandwidth per cell?
1G/1G, 10G/10G, 25G/25G?
You don't say (Score:2)
So now that they've got the concessions they wanted on the strength of promising the Moon, the backpeddling begins.
Well slap my ass and color me surprised!
As long as ... (Score:4, Funny)
and they want this for home use??? (Score:2)
and they want this for home use???
So an full block useing this can get slower then and block full of cable subs?
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Wow, it's almost like all the vendors and all the consumers purposefully ignored long-term planning in their haste to grasp onto the promise of profit... now where have I seen that before?
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Put some dish up on the premises wanting 5G.
Data moves from the dish to the kerb network using the magic of 5G...
Dont have the premises too far from the kerb. Dont have the kerb blocked by anything.
That dish has to see the 5G kerb infrastructure.
5G for all down the kerb.
Ensure a very short distance and keep everything away from between the dish and kerb.
The money that Verison doesn't want to spend (Score:2)
Verizon is just a cheap-ass company not willing to invest in multiple antennas to make sure everyone in the stadium has coverage.
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The entire area would have to get a new network to support all the new antenna locations.
2. Map the site, do lots of math, place the multiple antennas.
3. Test.
Fill in with more antennas as needed until 5G for all...
Again and again for all of the big buildings around the US?
5G is a money making scheme, not a real technology (Score:5, Interesting)
The international telecommunication cartel (telcos and smart phone companies) always make a killing when they roll out a new "generation", even if they don't agree what a generation really means. They had corporate plans to get that money now so they took whatever crap was currently ready and shoved it out the door.
If we're luck 5G as it is currently defined will die on the vine. It is pre-failed. It would be for the best if it never rolled out. They should wait for something useful before they stuff this dead rat into everyone's pocket.
Unfortunately, because it is an international cartel, even if no one buys it consumers will still pay the cost for making this turkey fly. It's not like the government will protect you, given that the cartel controls the government.
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the cell coverage area is too small
Uh, no. Small cells are how you get more throughput. If a cell is maxed out, you split it into two smaller cells and you have double the throughput. Not enough? Split it into 4 cells, or 256 cells or however many you need. This is what the "cell" in "cellular network" refers to. The vast majority of the increased throughput in the cell phone network over the years has come from reducing the size of the cells, not from improving the encoding schemes or expanding the spectrum allocations.
5g can cover big rang
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Technological advances that cost more but don't deliver more cost effective service are exercises in stupidity. Current indications place 5G in this category.
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All of those costs you mention are smaller for a small 5g cell than for a 4g-sized cell.
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"Uh, no. Small cells are how you get more throughput."
Not if you've already maxed the bandwidth of the trunk line feeding the location.
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Well... yeah? In case it wasn't obvious, I was talking about the RF side.
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And then you have serious RF issues with anything else that might need the bandwidth.
I understand the issues, as I've built the physical and RF network layers for hospitals.
Try thinking in terms of stadium population potential. You would need a local ISP in the stadium to handle that kind of traffic demand.
Then the interference of the thousands of transceivers you'd need to achieve proper coverage for those tens of thousands of people.
All that energy used and e-waste generated (after useful lifetime of the
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The trunk line will most likely be fibre and won't cause much in the way of RF interference. It's not like you'd need an entire ISP for it, just a high-speed network and uplink. The 5g side won't cause much interference either, because the higher frequencies used by these small cells don't propagate very far (which is in fact the very thing which allows them to be so small in the first place). Plus, since the cells are small, the per-cell power requirements will be much lower than a full-sized cell. The ove
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not because it is useful
You could just have lead with the fact you don't have a clue what 5G is, it would have saved us a bit of reading.
It's a power hog
So was LTE-A, and LTE, and 3G, and Edge, God I remember turning off GPRS on my phone to stop that nasty power hog. How did we survive!
and the cell coverage area is too small
The cell coverage area for 5G is identical to that of 4G. The cell coverage of high speed services delivered by mm-wave frequencies is smaller. If you want to complain about that then do, but talking about "5G" just makes you look ignorant.
The international telecommunication cartel (telcos and smart phone companies) always make a killing when they roll out a new "generation", even if they don't agree what a generation really means.
Are you saying that newly
Re:Why can't I get TV at the ballpark? (Score:4, Insightful)
https://amazon.com/s?k=portabl... [amazon.com]
5G coverage not enough to support entire arena? (Score:2)
It's not a matter of coverage but of allocated spectrum. Each device is vying with the others of limited bandwidth. In such a small area as a stadium it isn't possible to get full coverage. I somehow don't see 17,000 client devices getting 2.5 GB/s or even an average of 111.8 Mbps.
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And that is why Apple doesn't have 5G... (Score:2)
... on their iDevices. I thought iPhone 11 would have it. Nope.
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Dang (Score:1)
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5G Microwaves in the stands (Score:2)
Great for cooking your hot dogs too.
If 5G cannot effectively even cover a sports arena (Score:4, Insightful)
If 5G cannot effectively even cover a sports arena, how on earth are they planning to cover cities, with buildings full of metal, concrete, etc? A stadium seems like a fairly open and line-of-sight environment compared to cities.
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It can cover a sports arena, or a city, just fine. This particular deployment uses very small cells, but 5g supports the same cell sizes that 4g does and can get the same coverage.
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By the simple laws of physics, 5G cannot get more coverage than 4G per unit of energy. This is how radio frequencies work.
I can get a roughly 60% signal of 4G out in the middle of the Basin Wash halfway between LA and Vegas, roughly 20 miles from any sort of road and completely surrounded by the Cady Mountains. I can guarantee that 5G will not go past the first hump in the Cady Mountains, even if you put a tower at the top of Afton Canyon.
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So, what simple law of physics stops 5g from getting the same coverage that 4g does in that situation?
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5G runs in just-under-six gigahertz to millimeter range. A thin wall can stop the signal.
Do you even understand basic structural interference?
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It can run in those bands. It also runs in the same bands that previous standards do. Sort the frequency band table [wikipedia.org] on Wikipedia by frequency, and note how it goes down to 600 MHz.
You're not talking about 5g, you're just talking about high-frequency RF. They added those higher frequencies to 5g but they didn't remove the lower ones, and talking 5g on the lower frequencies won't cause a thin wall to start blocking them. That's not how basic structural interference works.
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By the simple laws of physics, 5G cannot get more coverage than 4G per unit of energy. This is how radio frequencies work.
Except 5G isn't a radio frequency. It's a complete technology set, and yes even with things like frequency and power density held the same the world has most definitely and consistently seen increases in coverage many thanks to our application of said physics.
I can guarantee that 5G will not go past the first hump in the Cady Mountains, even if you put a tower at the top of Afton Canyon.
You're ignorant and have no idea what "5G" is if you think that laws of physics some how limit you on a system which allows the same frequency and power, but have even tighter controls on noise and a better modulation scheme.
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"Except 5G isn't a radio frequency."
It is defined by a specific frequency range. under-six thru millimeter range. Paper practically stops it.
"You're ignorant and have no idea what "5G" is if you think that laws of physics some how limit you on a system which allows the same frequency and power, but have even tighter controls on noise and a better modulation scheme."
Lower frequencies travel through materials better than higher frequencies and certain frequencies are attenuated to a greater degree than others
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If 5G cannot effectively even cover a sports arena
5G can cover a sports area, and can do so with a small fraction of the equipment required. Verizon's extremely high frequency 5G service cannot do it.
Please learn what 5G is before posting further.
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5G in this context means 5G as implemented by a very large telco, in this case Verizon. People planning to use 5G devices or deploy 5G want to know real world coverage, which means coverage as implemented by telcos, not theoretical best case scenario dreamed up by some theoretical academic. What is possible doesn't matter to them, if it's not available for everyday use.
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And yet your original post only talked about what (you thought) was possible, not about actual deployment.
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Not at all. My original post talked about what the original root post said was not possible, i.e. to completely cover a sports arena with Verizon 5G. If you have data that disproves the original post, you should post it (in the main thread, not just in reply to my post).
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Nowhere does it say that it's not possible. All it says is that their actual deployment doesn't do it.
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The OP headline "Can only cover certain seating areas" implies that it cannot cover others, not that they could but chose not to.
That said, I'm sure if they wired each seat with 5G base station, it is possible to cover it all, but practically speaking, it seems it was too hard or too expensive to provide full coverage, hence my post - if they cannot *feasibly* cover a sport arena, how do they expect to cover dense cities.
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But I thought you didn't care about what was or wasn't possible, and only cared about what was implemented?
In any case, they could in fact feasibly cover all of the seating, and indeed all of the city, with 5g if they chose to do so. 5g gets the same coverage that 4g does when run on the same frequencies as 4g.
5G wireless technology is the next big thing in th (Score:2)
Select Seats = More $$$ (Score:1)
They are spinning this completely wrong. What they should be saying is:
"We've selected premium seating areas within these arenas to receive our next-generation 5G coverage. For a small additional fee, attendees can enjoy live-streaming of super-high def video feeds of the game, hear the announcers in the booth..." and so on and so forth..
And then sell the technology to the arenas as a way to establish a new premium revenue stream.
Creating classes of haves and have-nots is a tried and true, proven method to
verizon (Score:1)