AT&T's Current 5G Is Slower Than 4G In Nearly Every City Tested By PCMag (arstechnica.com) 47
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AT&T smartphone users who see their network indicators switch from "4G" to "5G" shouldn't necessarily expect that they're about to get faster speeds. In PCMag's annual mobile-network testing, released today, 5G phones connected to AT&T got slower speeds than 4G phones in 21 out of 22 cities. PCMag concluded that "AT&T 5G right now appears to be essentially worthless," though AT&T's average download speed of 103.1Mbps was nearly as good as Verizon's thanks to a strong 4G performance. Of course, AT&T 5G should be faster than 4G in the long run -- this isn't another case of AT&T misleadingly labeling its 4G network as a type of 5G. Instead, the disappointing result on PCMag's test has to do with how today's 5G phones work and with how AT&T allocates spectrum.
The counterintuitive result doesn't reveal much about the actual differences between 4G and 5G technology. Instead, it's reflective of how AT&T has used its spectrum to deploy 5G so far. As PCMag explained, "AT&T's 5G slices off a narrow bit of the old 850MHz cellular band and assigns it to 5G, to give phones a valid 5G icon without increasing performance. And because of the way current 5G phones work, it often reduces performance. AT&T's 4G network benefits from the aggregation of channels from different frequencies. "The most recent phones are able to assemble up to seven of them -- that's called seven-carrier aggregation, and it's why AT&T won [the PCMag tests] last year," the article said. 5G phones can't handle that yet, PCMag analyst Sascha Segan wrote: "But 5G phones can't add as many 4G channels to a 5G channel. So if they're in 5G mode, they're giving up 4G channels so they can use that extremely narrow, often 5MHz 5G channel, and the result is slower performance: faux G. For AT&T, using a 5G phone in testing was often a step backward from our 4G-only phone."
The counterintuitive result doesn't reveal much about the actual differences between 4G and 5G technology. Instead, it's reflective of how AT&T has used its spectrum to deploy 5G so far. As PCMag explained, "AT&T's 5G slices off a narrow bit of the old 850MHz cellular band and assigns it to 5G, to give phones a valid 5G icon without increasing performance. And because of the way current 5G phones work, it often reduces performance. AT&T's 4G network benefits from the aggregation of channels from different frequencies. "The most recent phones are able to assemble up to seven of them -- that's called seven-carrier aggregation, and it's why AT&T won [the PCMag tests] last year," the article said. 5G phones can't handle that yet, PCMag analyst Sascha Segan wrote: "But 5G phones can't add as many 4G channels to a 5G channel. So if they're in 5G mode, they're giving up 4G channels so they can use that extremely narrow, often 5MHz 5G channel, and the result is slower performance: faux G. For AT&T, using a 5G phone in testing was often a step backward from our 4G-only phone."
That's normal (Score:5, Funny)
Currently the signal has also to carry the viruses, that makes it slower.
Re:That's normal (Score:5, Funny)
I was thinking that ATT would be the better choice, because it's 5G can't spread the virus as fast as the other guys networks.
Re: (Score:2)
Hey ! Looking for some fun to get into? () Me too! Let's get to know each other on a much more personal level ==>> gg.gg/m2nn4
AT&T, the only thing known to man likely to spread a virus faster than an internet whore.
Conspiracy OD (Score:2)
Wait, there are too many conspiracies to sort out here. By "virus" do you mean Russian interference viruses, spammer viruses, Covid, or all 3?
Being a troll is getting complicated these days.
Re: (Score:2)
"Being a troll is getting complicated these days."
Seeing your uid, we'll get off your lawn, Sir.
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DUHH, the slower you start it, the more tiers of speed you can add extra charges for, at least three speed tiers and then expect volume caps and just to really fuck you over, all sorts of buried apps to chew through your data cap, that you can not stop and random free speed boost to chew through your data in seconds.
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DUHH, the slower you start it, the more tiers of speed you can add extra charges for, at least three speed tiers and then expect volume caps and just to really fuck you over, all sorts of buried apps to chew through your data cap, that you can not stop and random free speed boost to chew through your data in seconds.
Something to be said for the "giant Reese's Pieces mug" wielding guy to pave the way for throttling. He'll be rich beyond his wildest dreams
Some new tech is inherently for suckers (Score:4, Informative)
Sometimes, a new technology can sound promising, but after looking at the details you realize you should stay far away from it for some time at launch, probably for a few years at least.
5G is one such technology. The chipsets drain battery life, and as we see the implementations are more than haphazard.
In this case it's way better off and enjoy faster mature 4G for several years thanks to the people who are early adaptors clearing themselves out of the 4G pool...
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5G is mostly a set of protocols and standards. It has the potential of being faster and/or more reliable, but only if most of the layers are working near optimum. The devil's in the details, and those details are still a work in progress.
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It has the potential of being faster and/or more reliable
Oh I agree, probably in a few years or so there will be some real value to it.
I'm just saying you could tell even before the first 5G phones launched that was not going to be true for some time, once you understood what some of those standards were asking for... making early adoption of 5G phones a sketchy prospect at best, in a way that was not true for easy 4G adoption for example.
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The problem of "being slower" has to be weighed against the risk of outside snooping.
That's because our current leader is a moron.
First rev (Score:2)
Don't forget this is the first revision of the hardware. The same thing happened when LTE was rolling out. It tested slower than 3G initially.
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Don't forget this is the first revision of the hardware. The same thing happened when LTE was rolling out. It tested slower than 3G initially.
For this long though? I don't remember LTE being too slow at launch, and it seem like adoption and usefulness was very rapid. And the thing is good 5G still seems like maybe a year off, or more...
I could be mis-remembering the situation I suppose, but I do not remember the issues seeming to be to the same extent.
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True, but 5G in Australia proves that wrong somewhat with it being in many cases 3 to 5 times faster than 4G
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4G was much the same. The carrier Three in the UK went legal on some other carriers because their 3G was superior to the 4G offered by the others. Ultimately, it came down to the backhaul in the other carriers was pathetically scaled and so slowed down the actual data rate.
It's no surprise 5G is the same - they said it would revolutionise our lives and the world would never be the same again. Just like they said for 4G (and probably 3G, I don't remember).
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"5G" is a whole bunch of different things. Some hammer battery life in exchange for speed (theoretically), some are designed for ultra low power IoT type applications. It seems that AT&T have selected a particularly shitty variant to deploy.
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Mobile wireless standards areone such technology
FTFY. This isn't new. It's not even recent. It dates back to the first mobile phone. Early adopters have down sides.
i never got full 4G (Score:2)
I was never moved up from LTE to 4G. I never saw the full 4G performance, any subset below 4G data is by definition LTE. My confidence is low that 5G will be anything more, and while disappointing it's not surprising that 5G is substantially less than 4G. The realities of roll-out is not compatible with marketing, it hurts these carriers to turn the technology into a marketing buzzword. Because they'll never be able to execute to our expectations satisfactorily.
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I was never moved up from LTE to 4G.
I guess you also hate Obamacare because you have coverage through the Affordable Care Act?
LTE is the same as "4G".
inflammatory portion of reply elided (Score:2)
LTE is the same as "4G".
LTE [wikipedia.org] refers to a number of standards between 3G and 4G. The wikipedia page explains it more completely than I can (emphasis mine):
The standard is developed by the 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project) and is specified in its Release 8 document series, with minor enhancements described in Release 9. LTE is sometimes known as 3.95G and has been marketed both as "4G LTE" and as "Advanced 4G", but it does not meet the technical criteria of a 4G wireless service, as specified in the 3GPP Release 8 and 9 document series for LTE Advanced.
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ITU later decided that LTE together with the aforementioned technologies can be called 4G technologies.
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You misunderstand that. You can call the final spec 4G, you cannot call some subset of it 4G
No Huawei... (Score:1)
no speed.
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Well ok, it might work as advertised with your nose stuck to the cell tower.
I have a theory (Score:2)
I glued thousands of maple leaves on my wall (Score:2)
Besides being very decorative, it keeps out the nasty 5G radiation.
Whatever they can get away with. (Score:4, Interesting)
AT&T will provide the minimum service that people will put up with, just as they have done for years with broadband in the US. People in Europe and Japan have always had better service, and usually at a lower price. I guess AT&T is too busy now trying to resuscitate its dying pay-TV businesses to spend energy on network connectivity.
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Not only that... (Score:4, Insightful)
Not only that, but AT&T's prices are higher in nearly every city tested. But for the higher price you do get shittier service.
Programming Help (Score:1)
Simple answer is. (Score:2)
Cue (Score:1)
Ha Ha (Score:1)
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It appears faster to me. (Score:2)
PC Mag may be checking big metro areas. But my location 5g is giving me speeds between 100-200 mbs. While my 4g gives me about 50 mbs.
Every generation is like this (Score:2)
Every new wireless generation experienced the same phenomenon.
Re: Every generation is like this (Score:2)
Welcome to Slashdot, a site developed and hosted in the U.S., with a focus on U.S. stories, and a largely American user base.
You are welcome here, foreigner.