5G we hardly knew ya!

I don't quite get it yet. Due to caps I don't really do much heavy lifting with my phone. Surfing the web or social media or even streaming a podcast barely uses any speed.

It's like home internet. I think I can buy up to a 1gbps from my provider now, but 300mbps seems to be more than fine.

I guess 5G or 6G would get more interesting, if could somehow drop data caps so the technology could compete with home broadband. Otherwise I'm seem less enthusiastic about it than others... lol.

The entire point of 5G in Canada is to get users out of their data ration as quickly as possible so the carriers can enjoy the free cash that comes from $1000/GB overage fees. 6G won't change the business model.

The alleged consumer benefits of 5G--much less 6G--will never materialize in Canada under the current carrier business model and regulatory environment.

@zod

5G is not about speed. It is more about network capacity. Speed is just a bi-product

They envision a world where everything is connected. Your cars are talking to each other to avoid collisions etc. - Autonomous or self driving cars

Carriers are already including 10 Gig packages and some offer 25 Gigs. They will eventually give you unlimited because they have the capacity and they can monetize your data. You are the product. With the data, they know when you go to work, how fast you get there, how often you get gas etc. If you don't use data, they have nothing.

Just look at how much data a Tesla is collecting.

Who isn’t working on 6G?

China sent a 6G test satellite last year and Huawei has had a 6G R&D center in Ottawa since 2019.

This is normal, you don't wait for market saturation to start working on the next upgrade.
As noted in the article its not expected until 2030. If they waited 5+ years until 5G goes mainstream then 6G would take till 2035 or much later.

Same with 5G, they didn't wait until 4G was ubiquitous before starting on 5G, once a standard is approved you start on its successor.

Quentin5 wrote: ↑ This is normal, you don't wait for market saturation to start working on the next upgrade.
As noted in the article its not expected until 2030. If they waited 5+ years until 5G goes mainstream then 6G would take till 2035 or much later.

Same with 5G, they didn't wait until 4G was ubiquitous before starting on 5G, once a standard is approved you start on its successor.

But where does it stop? If it can't stop, then why isn't someone trying to skip something and work on 7G right now?

playnicee1 wrote: ↑ But where does it stop?

It never stops. Progress will happen no matter what we try to do to suppress it.
Its human nature.

As Henry J. Kaiser once said: You can't sit on the lid of progress. If you do, you will be blown to pieces.

If it can't stop, then why isn't someone trying to skip something and work on 7G right now?

Progress is typically incremental. Its also often path dependent.

Quentin5 wrote: ↑ Progress is typically incremental. Its also often path dependent.

I argue it's deliberate. Make sure everyone buys the phones with a certain max level of G first, then tell them they need a new phone...and another new phone...so they may have the ability to do 7G now, but that messes up sales.
(something like that...)

playnicee1 wrote: ↑ I argue it's deliberate. Make sure everyone buys the phones with a certain max level of G first, then tell them they need a new phone...and another new phone...so they may have the ability to do 7G now, but that messes up sales.
(something like that...)

Planned obsolescence is a thing. Though often new features is what causes people to jump ship. Sometimes its the marketing of those features.
Longer battery life, battery wearing out, Wirth's law, keeping up with the Joneses, its a rich tapestry.

middleofnowhere wrote: ↑ The entire point of 5G in Canada is to get users out of their data ration as quickly as possible so the carriers can enjoy the free cash that comes from $1000/GB overage fees. 6G won't change the business model.

The alleged consumer benefits of 5G--much less 6G--will never materialize in Canada under the current carrier business model and regulatory environment.

The only thing that got me onto 5G was Telus offering me an unlimited plan with 25 gigs at 5G speeds and the rest at 4G or 3G or whatever slower speed they still offer. It's only like $15 more than my previous 4GB of 4G. It seems they're wising up and actually offering things that are somewhat acceptable these days since people are catching on to just how quickly they can burn through data at these faster speeds.

playnicee1 wrote: ↑ I argue it's deliberate. Make sure everyone buys the phones with a certain max level of G first, then tell them they need a new phone...and another new phone...so they may have the ability to do 7G now, but that messes up sales.
(something like that...)

Agreed, years ago you use to upgrade your phone because the camera or resolution on the new one was significantly (and noticeably) better. Now? You can't even tell, so why even upgrade? I have the original iPhone still in the box, just the jump from it to the iPhone 4 or Galaxy S3 is huge but you can't even tell these days.

Piro21 wrote: ↑ The only thing that got me onto 5G was Telus offering me an unlimited plan with 25 gigs at 5G speeds and the rest at 4G or 3G or whatever slower speed they still offer. It's only like $15 more than my previous 4GB of 4G. It seems they're wising up and actually offering things that are somewhat acceptable these days since people are catching on to just how quickly they can burn through data at these faster speeds.

It's not unlimited at 3G/4G speeds after 25GB. It's unlimited data at a max of 512Kbps.

4G LTE on TELUS, BELL can get you gigabit speeds depending on your location and device. But you can probably get 200Mbps is most urban settings depending on the phone on LTE.

They're not going to give you unlimited data at unthrottled LTE speeds.

ThiruIO wrote: ↑ It's not unlimited at 3G/4G speeds after 25GB. It's unlimited data at a max of 512Kbps.

4G LTE on TELUS, BELL can get you gigabit speeds depending on your location and device. But you can probably get 200Mbps is most urban settings depending on the phone on LTE.

They're not going to give you unlimited data at unthrottled LTE speeds.

That would be too good to be true, yeah. It's still data with no overage charges, though, which is much better than what they used to offer. The speed after 25 isn't really that important to me.

5G is about spectrum efficiency vs LTE (which was more efficient than 3G).

Speed increases on 5G vs LTE-A is very nominal at the moment.

Even when mmWave is implemented 5G speeds vs LTE-A speeds isn't all that significant.

But carriers have to adopt it purely for sales and marketing purposes fearing customers will switch to the carrier that offers the latest fad.

They will have to offer 6G, 7G and etc.

5G is about spectrum efficiency vs LTE (which was more efficient than 3G).

Speed increases on 5G vs LTE-A is very nominal at the moment.

Even when mmWave is implemented 5G speeds vs LTE-A speeds isn't all that significant.

But carriers have to adopt it purely for sales and marketing purposes fearing customers will switch to the carrier that offers the latest fad.

They will have to offer 6G, 7G and etc.

ThiruIO wrote: ↑ Speed increases on 5G vs LTE-A is very nominal at the moment.

That's not likely to change.

Both 5G and LTE offer data rates that are very close to the physical limits of what's possible given the radio spectrum available for general-purpose cellular connectivity. The only way to get radically improved speeds in general use would be to allocate more spectrum to cellular (pushing out existing radio spectrum users) or decrease cell size. 5G doesn't do this -- and there's no reason the carriers couldn't do this with 4G if they wanted.

What 5G offers is the ability to use millimeter-wave frequencies to offer absurdly high data rates at very short ranges. This is extremely useful to carriers for serving venues--such as stadiums, convention centers, airports, and amusement parks--where huge numbers of people congregate in a small area, but actual performance for users will be no better than uncongested LTE because each 5G MMW cell will be serving hundreds or thousands of phones.