The race to 5G is over — now it’s time to pay the bill | Networks spent years telling us that 5G would change everything. But the flashiest use cases are nowhere to be found — and the race to deplo...

One of my most disappointing moments as an adult, which is really saying something, was getting my wife a 5g phone and realizing it was not noticeably faster in any way to the one it replaced while on a 5g network using any data service.

This is a US problem but Americans don't travel enough to understand.

In the US I get shitty coverage and frequent tower handoffs to lower bandwidth signals. In a downtown capital city, I generally get 30Mbps to maybe 100Mbps outside on a clear day.

Contrast that with where I usually am, using actual good technology and true 5G, I get fibre-like pings with 1Gbps all the time, even inside buildings. If I'm outside near a tower like in the US, I get 2Gbps nearly symmetrically. Constant excellent signal, no disconnects, no dead zones.

It's just sad how easily the American populace is duped. Even the article mentions how there were continuous lies and the actual rollout to 5G will take many many years. The rest of the world has already done it. Heck, even Korea has announced 6G consumer installations in the next 5 years. And if you're by the Samsung Campus with a demo tech, you can use it now!

I still don't have 5G service because the cellular companies in Canada seem to think it is worth an extra $15/mo when even LTE is faster than I need on my phone.

5G mms is the high speed service. But its affected by wind, buildings and cars. And the phones that have it are expensive because the circuitry uses heaps of power and the battery is the most expensive part of the phone.

So mms is mainly being promoted for stationary devices, and in buildings that have repeater emitters.

The 5G low band phones are cheaper to make than 4G because the circuitry is more efficient so you can use smaller batteries.

5G has a more efficient algorithm for ordering incoming/outgoing signals, so like-for-like there is higher speed and less freezing. But in new areas the telcos just build fewer towers so the speed is no better than 4G.

FTA:

"Then, it (Verizon) tried to sell us on low-band 5G, which actually turned out to be slower than 4G in some cases. The company is now slowly converting its existing network into standalone 5G as it lights up mid-band spectrum, but that’s a yearslong effort."

This is why I have a 5G phone and a "5G" connection, but my speeds are shit.

14.9 down, 0.13 up.

I've noticed that while 5G is not much faster than 4G, it seems to be more reliable.

With 4G I'd get max speeds of 30mbps but often times it would be under 1mpbs, or dialup speeds if in a stadium.

With 5G, the max speed is more like 80mbps and it handles crowded spaces much better than 4G.