this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2023
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[–] [email protected] 93 points 11 months ago (9 children)

I haven't even bought a 5G phone yet. My carrier keeps threatening to cut 4G coverage in various areas, and has already axed 3G entirely, rendering large swathes of otherwise perfectly functional devices useless. So far my 4G Moto Z still works. For now.

At this point my conspiracy opinion that the constant "generation" changes are mostly to just force people to buy/lease new phones and devices. Even pokey old 4G has always been more than fast enough for all of my mobile internet activities. Hell, even 3G was.

I have no less than four otherwise flawlessly functional phones in a desk drawer that just won't work with my cell carrier because they've either turned off 3G or discontinued the specific 4G bands those devices need.

[–] [email protected] 53 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I live in a medium size city with extensive Verizon coverage. 5g here is still dogshit. It's always slower than LTE and even though towers are everywhere, my phone is constantly switching back and forth.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago (1 children)

mmwave 5g or "5g"? On T-Mobile near me I get anywhere from 200Mbps down to over gigabit down depending on the location.

A few areas are the shitty 5g that's essentially 4g+. But most areas around me have really good coverage with pretty insane speeds.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

How would anyone know? Why is it even possible to "fake" 5G? Just makes everyone that doesn't know about it to just complain and think it sucks.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

I totally agree with you that generation changes are either currently or going to be used as a form of planned obsolescence. I reckon that within 10 years or so we’ll have sub generation types (things 6.5G) that will force people to buy new devices.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (6 children)

What percentage of people use 3g only phones? If it's 1%, does it make sense to keep those services running just for those people?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It's not necessarily phones. It's trackers, monitoring devices, laptops, access points, and tablets that all run over 3G bands.

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[–] [email protected] 71 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (6 children)

4G, 5G and now 6G are worthless if cell providers don't provide enough bandwidth to the towers. The range also keeps decreasing as the generations increase, so now there are these big gaps that 3G used to cover.

In my area, 5G is slower than 4G and both have lower signal and slower speeds than 3G used to have. I need a dual SIM phone and to constantly switch my phone between AT&T and T-Mobile, and both are crap. I only use about 1GB in total too, and I'm lucky if I can pull more than 1 megabit on either service. I miss 3G speeds, coverage, and competition.

Worst of all, AT&T is forcing home users to switch to a 5G hotspot from DSL. It's probably a big part of why the cell towers are always overloaded too. Imagine running your home internet on 1 megabit with constant drops...

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[–] [email protected] 58 points 11 months ago (14 children)

"This is an important research question because we can see mobile traffic going up over the next decade by a factor of 10 or even a factor of 20. "

Wtf are they going to do with that? Always-on video from wireless devices everywhere? Holographic movies on every web page? It sounds terrible. I remember having to make phone calls for basic communication. These days you send a text or email, except now and then you want the higher bandwidth of a voice call. That is, we have been moving toward LESS bandwidth rather than more.

Whatever is imagined being done with all the new bandwidth can't be good.

[–] [email protected] 58 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Your personal usage does not align with the majority. Look at tiktok, it's social media based around endless video files. It's not an occasional text or email, it's hundreds of videos that your constantly scrolling through.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The carriers love to brag about high capacity and fast speeds but they're still unwilling to deliver the bandwidth. They're all advertising "unlimited" data but if you scroll TikTok for a while they'll block your line for "excessive" data usage or throttle you down to 256kb/s.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

OK, good point. Are people using mobile data for that? Yes you're right I'm not on social media etc. Also I'm on a super cheap mobile plan with enough monthly data to check email and look at some occasional web pages, but if I want to watch a video I almost always use home internet for that. I guess if this super high bandwidth mobile stuff kills Comcast though, some good will have come out of it. The Register article talks mostly about IoT and "AI/ML" rather than social media though.

Is 5g mobile data cheaper for the end user than 4g in practice? The sticker prices and advertised data caps for monthly plans look to me to be about the same as before, but maybe more of the data cap is usable in practice.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (3 children)

OK, good point. Are people using mobile data for that?

Unlimited data. You do whatever you want, whenever you want, wherever you want.

I haven't seen any carriers charging extra for 5g but I don't see why it would be more expensive since the quicker you're done using the data the quicker the tower can serve someone else.

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 11 months ago

Wtf are they going to do with that?

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 11 months ago (1 children)

They're making the data faster, but most plans are still limited to something ridiculous like 20G/month. What's the point of being able to stream 4K video or whatever if that's going to burn through your data allowance in seconds?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

A huge part of newer mobile network generations is the increased capacity. Faster speeds is effectively the same as more capacity in the towers.

This means that companies could actually afford to start offering unlimited data caps, there just has to be the push to do so. But I do genuinely believe that within a decade there will be no more datacaps for mobile data in cities, at least (or at least plenty of plans with unlimited and no throttling). Well, idk about the US considering you got data caps on broadband, but, I'm sure Europe will get it.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (2 children)

And nobody will ever need more than 640K of memory, so the fact that even your cell phone carries vastly more than that must mean you yourself are up to no good, right?

Even if you're not dealing with a constant video stream, the power of the internet lies in moving vast amounts of data around. Yeah a lot of that information is based of corporate privacy invasion, but you also have things like medical databases or performing jobs remotely. I had gigabit routers in my home at a time when 10/100 routers were still typically used even in businesses. If you have a capability, someone will find a way to make use of it and new innovations will pop up that we hadn't even considered before. Imagine where we would be at if Xerox hadn't invented the mouse and GUI desktop years before personal home computers were even available.

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[–] [email protected] 46 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Most want ubiquitous and affordable/cheap mobile internet without the hassle of signing contracts. Moving tech tiers past 4G isn't relevant for consumers as of now.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Said the Phone/ISPs top earning guys while looking at their bank accounts extracts.

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

Why don't we just skip 6G and just go straight to 7G

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (2 children)

If they're going to skip anything, it's going to be 8.. Because 7, 8, 9!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

Nah dude... That's why they skipped 9 because 7 ate it. 9 was never a viable option

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 11 months ago (5 children)

If 5g makes the frog gay would 6g negate it?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

Nah this will be something related with Satan and 666 and hell and so on.

The 6 Gs of the apocalypse. G G G G G G

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

Gluttony, Gargoyle, Gollum, Ganesha, Gabriel, Gesus...

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago

It makes them trans

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago

Nah dude, this time it'll make the snakes gay. 7g will affect even more species, where the end goal is 10g: make the planet gay!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

Well yes, since it makes the frog trans so it goes from gay to straight

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Silicon Valley really wants to make XR a thing.

Current tech does not need 5G and the shit that they think will need 6G is just needless XR systems that will be steaming an unjustifiable amount of data from the "cloud".

The enshittification continues. Happy 2024 folks

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 11 months ago (1 children)

With 4G covering all my needs flawlessly, idk if I'd need a new gen. With a laptop, probably, but a smartphone, or even tablet? Ping across the globe is a bigger offender than speeds. Having a 2-3 sec delay when calling anyone, even though having a smooth detailed picture, is more annoying than having a 480p and an instant response. Cloud gaming suffers from it too. But that's on ISPs, international lines, and that's harder to change than introducing the 6G in phones and local towers.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (2 children)

mmwave 5g has some incredibly low latency compared to 4g. You'd be surprised how much of your latency is just from you to the tower.

Right now when it's not busy mmwave 5g doing a speed test I have 45ms latency and 3ms of jitter. 4g is 54ms with 12ms of jitter. When the network is loaded there's a HUGE difference. 5g can handle so many more people at once so your latency is never really that high. But when 4g is loaded down latency gets huge fast.

Ping from china to me in the US is sub 250ms on my wired internet connection so that's not really the problem. The rest is whoever is doing your phone call.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Obviously being remotely planted in your brain with radio waves to control your mind and actions, like voting for [OPPOSITE POLITICAL PARTY] or making you throb and drip for [OPPOSITE PREFERRED GENDER]. Wake up sheeple!!!11!

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I can hear the conspiracies already!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (2 children)

The wave forms of 6G will physically break the ankles of birds in flight and neuter your dog through the roof of the house. Yoghurt will never taste the same and your feet will go up two sizes forcing you to buy new shoes. The writing is clearly on the wall.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

If the carriers keep offering 10GB per month or "unlimited" plans, why I would want to spend the whole big amount in 5 seconds?

I didn't see the point there.

From my humble POV they just want to advertise and marketing about they being the first ones in having 6G while the thing they should do it's INCREASE THE FUCKING DATA AMOUNT, PEOPLE(ME) NEED MORE DATA NOT SPEED TO SPEND THEIR DATA IN 5 SECONDS. DUMB MFS.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago (4 children)

We Moroccans don't even have 5G countrywide yet, and yet you guys are already prepping for 6G? At least wait for everyone to catch up.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago

I have no 5G where I live. Maybe it's time to wait??

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago

WE DIDN'T NEED 5G

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago

Does this mean we can do proper voice over 4G already? Last time I heard it was just for the selected phone models with specific software.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

I’m still waiting for 5G to revolutionize everything like every carrier promised it would.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

Qualcomm is erect

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

GTA V has 9G LMAO

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

it would be difficult to make it good

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

The fact that she's wearing a yellow shirt in the article thumbnail makes this just 👌

https://youtube.com/watch?v=RKc4QhMSFG8

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