“As mobile providers prepare to sink billions of dollars into the next generation of wireless networking, or 5G, engineers are still scrambling to nail down its technical details but were able to take key steps needed to start rolling out the network by the end of this year,” Ina Fried writes for Axios.
“The group left La Jolla with the features for the standards of its first version frozen and a solid start on the standards for the follow-on release, albeit with technical work yet to be done on all fronts,” Fried writes. “The industry wants to have networks up and running by the end of this year and early next year, with mainstream 5G phones on sale by the spring.”
Fried writes, “The groups were working against a deadline to finalize the first version of 5G that will power mobile networks starting in early 2019, known as Release 15.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Hopefully, 5G means real competition among ISPs, naturally ensuring real net neutrality.
MDN take assumes that the cell carriers are going to charge less per MB for fast 5G than for slow 4G, making them cost-competitive with wired ISPs. Why assume that?
MDN’s take is baffling. Even if they charged less, it’s still an issue with throttling or in other ways favoring content. AT&T with Time Warner and Verizon with AOL/Yahoo among numerous other deals and conflicts. Don’t forget, Comcast will be competing in the 5G space as well.
5G holds a lot of praise for small town and rural America. Places where it simply was not economically feasible to extend broadband with enough capacity for landline type data demand.
Done right, it could create a truly competitive broadband market for homes all over the country. Right now, most have at best one broadband carrier.
5G is not about rural America (or rural anywhere). It is not about replacing the wired last mile. It is not about giving wired speed to underserved areas.
5G is about higher instantaneous speeds (but not necessarily higher average speeds) than true 4G (higher versions of LTE-A, not LTE). 5G is about micro cells that allow more concurrent connections than 4G (or 3G) cells and therefore more concurrent users in an given area where micro cells are deployed (think the Long Island Expressway or I-5 in LA or the D.C. beltway during evening rush hour). 5G is about greater flexibility in channels and channel bonding giving more flexibility in instantaneous speeds than true 4G.
5G is not going to suddenly provide high throughput to your home or business. If you have a family with multiple TVs (let’s say 3 or 4) it is realistic to run HD or UHD movies on each of those concurrently with high quality over a wired connection. You’re not going to do that with a 5G. Even Netflix recommends a minimum of a 25 Mbps connection per UHD stream for best quality. 5G is not going to give you a sustained, average 100 Mbps over a greater than two hour period.
And MDN’s take about net neutrality just once again clearly demonstrates that MDN does not understand what net neutrality really means.
I had an interesting conversation with an AT&T wireless engineer a while back and he implied that offering quality fixed wireless in small towns and remote areas was going to be a fringe benefit to many people. Not the primary use, but is going to open millions of people suffering with satellite or worse internet up to a much higher quality service.
Lots of people are paying more- a lot more- for marginal broadband with low data caps than I pay for Comcast with a 1TB data cap. I get 120 down and 12 up for $79.95 and lots of people pay that much or more for a quarter of that speed with a data cap of less than 100 GB. AT&T Fiber us being built out and should be available late this year or early next.