are they gonna fix the bug where it didn't turn everyone gay?
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None of this makes sense!
With 3G, we had clearly defined speeds, and what constitutes 3G.
4G mostly defined itself, but it left a bit of grey area.
Then 5G was posting speeds slower than 4G's top speed. There was never a defined speed range. The term 5G is nothing more than marketing. It means nothing.
I haven't even heard of 6G, but given how shit 5G's handling went right from the start, I assume 6G has to be inserted anally.
5G was mostly about cramming more connections into the spectrum and expanding broadcast range (as well as some other things), but it wasn't just about node speed on the network.
And it ended up posting significantly faster speeds in dense areas where they actually deploy the technology. My phone has hit 4Gb/s on it.
In a lot of places it got worse. At least I had reliable service inside my house on 2G and 3G. Now that those are gone, I have to use WiFi calling or try to find a spot outside where I may be able to get a bar of 5G if I'm lucky.
You're more secure using wifi calling anyway.
Unless you're using 5g NR SA which is the actual 5g - New Radio Stand Alone, which is supposed to be able to function, as the name implies, alone, without any fallback to insecure networks.
If you're using 5g NR NSA it still requires 4g to function.
I am in airplane mode 99.9% of the time, using wifi calling (sms/rcs also work over wifi), so my phone isn't susceptible to imsi catchers and such or location pinging.
Yes, I'm paranoid.
Everyone should be.
If you're that paranoid, then you shouldn't be using RCS. It's owned by google. XMPP and Matrix are secure, decentralized alternatives that don't give your data to google.
It was always meant to be great in dense areas, which it is, but marketers went all apeshit promising that it was going to be the second coming of Christ. Instead they should have shut the marketers ina corner and called it what it is, an enhancement to 4g. That 4g and 5g would hand off interchangeably.
This is why you should never let business dictate tech. They think they know what they're talking about but they don't, and end up pissing everyone off.
Yes, also, it should be criminal for home internet providers and phone service providers to conflate, directly or by implication, the "G" in 5G (fifth generation) and the "G" in 10G (ten gigabit).
I saw a commercial one day that went something like "Our competitors only have 1G; we have 5G. Don't you want to have the most Gs? We have the best Gs, no one has Gs like us. Don't settle for inferior Gs, call today!"
I remember commenting on the switch from 3g to 4g back around 2009 or so and they were already being deceptive in a lot of ways back then. Telecommunications has been a cesspool for decades.
5g is rebranded 4g during the rollout for 4g most providers couldn't hit the bandwidth targets so they branded things 4g LTE or 4g+ to denote it wasn't actual 4g. when they caught up and could actually support 4g they realized everyone thought lte or + were better because of course more things = better so they just changed it to 5g
I hate to tell you this, but 3G was a lie too. 3g should have been good to 100mbps.
“This network? It goes to 6.”
“Is it faster?”
“Yeah, it’s one faster.”
“So why not just make 5 the top number, and make 5 faster?”
“This network goes to 6.”
well because you have to actually change the equipment and not just put a label on it.
I'll just be happy if they have basic things like VoIP and emergency call handling properly defined.
Australia shut down our 2G and 3G networks, and it's been an absolute dumpster fire.
A bunch of early 4G phones drop back to 3G for voice calls, but that's really easy to check for and that's mostly old phones anyway.
The real dumpster fire was emergency calls. It turns out there's phones in the wild with fully functional VoLTE but internal logic that forces them to drop back to 3G or 2G specifically for emergency calls.
Other phones can make emergency calls, but only on certain networks - a phone will try any available network regardless of SIM card when making emergency calls.
Or a phone can make emergency calls on any network - but only if it's running the correct modem firmware version.
Or it'll work on any network if it has a Telstra SIM card, but if it has an Optus card it can't make an emergency call on Telstra because it isn't running the Telstra-specific VoLTE code anymore.
The best part is that this emergency call functionality depends on you specifically dialling the emergency number, so there's no way to test any device other than actually dialling an emergency.
Gotta love the non testable features.
"Can we place a test call?"
"Why would you want to do THAT?"
You can place test calls, but emergency calls are magically handled differently and the only way to trigger that is to make an emergency call.
Carriers can test phones in their labs, but they have no way to know what modem firmware end users are running. The same hardware sold in different places can have different software images loaded.
Call the nonemergency number and ask them how they want you to handle dialing the emergency number. Usually it's "yeah we got you, just call it and confirm it's not an emergency". Phone techs do this all the time.
Soo, proper encryption this time?
Not as long as the Epstein class is in power, no.
The only way that would happen ... is if Palantir gets a backdoor large enough to fit all of Alex Karp's ginormous forehead
4G is gigabit the problem is the users don't exist in a void where they have their own cell tower and also don't all have expensive devices and also radio interference exists cause of the sun, etc. Same with WiFi.
Experience is what enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again. (Earl Wilson)
In any next generation of cell phone networks, the providers should be forced to fill up all blind spots on the network with the new technology before they are allowed to upgrade existing networks.
This is like whan they came out with 3 and 4 blade razors and then just made all the same mistakes with the Mach 5 and its ilk
5 is good enough. Let's do something else
We should follow in the footsteps of many tech companies and stop numbering the Gs in favour of tagging on the year they were launched. So next year we wouldn't get 6G, we would get G2027. Sounds much cooler, doesn't it?
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