[HN Gopher] The 'Race to 5G' Is Lobbyist Nonsense
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The 'Race to 5G' Is Lobbyist Nonsense
Author : rahuldottech
Score : 96 points
Date : 2020-01-27 20:05 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.techdirt.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.techdirt.com)
| josephd79 wrote:
| Doesn't matter, they'll limit the amount of bandwidth you will be
| allowed to use under the "plan" and then charge you crazy for the
| overages. Which would make it damn near unusable to begin with.
| Hell, I read an article that ATT cap theirs at 15 gb a month plus
| $10 each gb you go over. I'd burn through that in 1 day, shit
| maybe 1 afternoon.
|
| Hard to get excited about anything when the prune juice posse
| creates policies for this stuff and have no idea how a family
| uses or consumes data anymore....
| dom2 wrote:
| I'm not familiar with 5G infrastructure at all really, but a
| friend of mine brought up that they were worried about China
| beating the US to 5G deployment because if China did so, other
| counties would be more likely to use Chinese tech to setup their
| own 5G networks. This in turn would pose security issues as there
| seems to be concern over whether or not China could be trusted
| not to use their tech as spyware. Is anyone familiar with the
| issue who can speak more on this?
| frequentnapper wrote:
| the issue is much bigger than just spyware. If a nation allows
| Huawei or any Chinese company to build its future tech
| infrastructure such as 5G, they are basically signing over
| their national security and interests over to the Chinese govt.
|
| E.g. your nation has someone who speaks out against the Chinese
| govt or something as dumb as making fun of the Chinese
| president. Hand him over or else we flick a switch here and the
| power grid in your city X goes down and there's nothing you can
| do about it.
|
| Why do yo think China is pushing Huawei so hard and vowing
| trade punishment against any nation in the EU or elsewhere if
| they stop Huawei? They want to control the future of those
| nations. This will give China every leverage they can get in
| terms of trade, compliance, security, etc. basically making
| each of these nations a vassal state to China.
| rusk wrote:
| Makes sense to me ... I just cant get over how people are
| being labelled cranks for voicing what are pretty common
| sense concerns. I guess in the public mindset wireless
| network != critical infrastructure.
| cesarb wrote:
| > Hand him over or else we flick a switch here and the power
| grid in your city X goes down and there's nothing you can do
| about it.
|
| The issue in your scenario is not who built the
| infrastructure, but who has remote access to it. Why would
| the manufacturer of (for instance) the PLCs controlling a
| substation have remote access to it? Wouldn't they be
| isolated in their own subnetwork, firewalled so that only a
| few hosts in the substation operator's network can reach it?
| mping wrote:
| I'm not familiar, but it was US's own NSA that was caught red
| handed. China has an aura of non compliance and state sponsored
| hacking but I trust them as much as the US.
| henryfjordan wrote:
| I wouldn't trust the US govt (where I live) with my personal
| secrets, but I would trust them to protect the trade secrets
| of a business based in the US (yay corporatism!)
|
| I don't think China cares about my personal secrets nearly as
| much as the US does, but they are pretty actively engaging in
| state-sponsored corporate espionage.
| redisman wrote:
| > I don't think China cares about my personal secrets
| nearly as much as the US does, but they are pretty actively
| engaging in state-sponsored corporate espionage.
|
| This is only scratching the surface. Don't forget their
| extensive tracking and imprisonment of ethnic minorities,
| political "dissents", etc. Seeing how they treat their own
| people, I can only imagine what kind of pressure they'll be
| able to exert on small(relative to China) countries that
| gave them control of their communications systems.
| henryfjordan wrote:
| Oh yeah, they certainly are using the data of their own
| citizens. I meant my data as a US citizen.
| noja wrote:
| > I wouldn't trust the US govt with my personal secrets
|
| > I would trust them to protect the trade secrets of a
| business
|
| Would you trust a US business to protect your personal
| secrets more than the US government? Why?
| henryfjordan wrote:
| You misunderstand a bit. If I were Coca-cola, I would
| trust that the NSA would never ever reveal my secret
| recipe. But at the same time I wouldn't trust them not to
| read the private messages of my employees for other juicy
| stuff.
|
| America cares more about corporate rights than human
| rights.
| ptx wrote:
| That's nice for the American company, but why should
| companies and individuals in the rest of the world trust
| this American private/public conglomeration with their
| data? Foreigners have no rights under American law, from
| what I gather.
| nesky wrote:
| 5G will need it's iPhone moment.
|
| In my opinion that will be gaming, sports and live events in
| cutting edge quality VR applications. If consumers can buy a
| 'digital ticket' and watch the World Cup, Superbowl, Indy 500, Le
| Mans, etc. in whatever cutting edge quality exists at the time in
| VR you'll have that moment. You'll be able to buy digital season
| tickets for the NY Yankees right on the 3rd base line (your
| friends will be there next to you represented by their memoji or
| the like so you're still watching the game with your buddies),
| buy a ticket for an Indy Car race and be able to watch the race
| in VR as if I was sitting in Alexander Rossi's seat from start to
| finish. The next question is how much will I have to pay to not
| have commercial breaks...
| gambiting wrote:
| I just don't understand what that has to do with 5G. You could
| build such a thing already just using WiFi, and yet....no one
| has done so. I mean, where are people likely to sit and use
| that VR headset and watch a world cup? On a sofa in their home
| where they have fast wi-fi, or on a park bench where they have
| to rely on 5G?
| nesky wrote:
| If you have 1M people around the world checking into a VR
| camera atop a car going around the Indianapolis Motor
| Speedway at 200MPH you need bandwidth and image quality. I
| want to see what the driver see's in near perfect image
| quality and be able to look around when he goes wheel to
| wheel around a turn. The entire layer of crap that's fed from
| whatever service, NBC, ABC, ESPN, etc will flatten and the
| consumer will be able to watch the event as if they were in
| the action themselves. 5G will help in driving that
| engagement.
|
| EDIT: Given how crazy America is about football, my guess as
| well is the NFL could sell millions of VR related tickets to
| the Superbowl in a similar scheme. The hitch in my opinion is
| commercial breaks will ruin the experience if commercials as
| they're broadcasted today happen in VR - people will want to
| plug themselves into the action with no obstructions.
| iamaelephant wrote:
| Please explain what this has to do with 5G. Be specific.
| redisman wrote:
| Again, you're just describing Wifi plus unspecified VR
| magic. Why do you need 5G for this at home VR thing?
| soylentcola wrote:
| Just think if this level of marketing, lobbying, and energy was
| channeled into something like a national fiber broadband utility
| available to everyone.
|
| "But," you may ask, "why would industry groups ever push
| something like that? Such a thing would cost loads of money and
| put market dominance at risk!"
|
| And then maybe you start to wonder why they're in such a rush to
| fight for the subsidies, investment, and contracts for "more
| wireless, but faster and more G's!"
| state_less wrote:
| Yes, and I can't talk with other radios either, I need to talk
| to a provider's cell tower. I have to drop down something
| ancient like a VHF radio to do peer to peer communication at
| long range.
|
| PS. If I'm wrong, please let me know. I'd love to hear about
| any developments in long range P2P wireless phones.
| rolleiflex wrote:
| I do Aether (P2P Reddit~ish, https://getaether.net) and I
| investigated doing something like this over radio mesh
| networks. Specifically doing it over HAM radio was one of the
| possibilities. The plan was something like doing anycast over
| Radio.
|
| Turns out, even those bands do have a lot of limitations. For
| example you cannot use any encryption, which makes most of
| the modern tools out of the picture because TLS is
| impossible. There are some workarounds like doing TLS with
| blank keys, but far as I understand it is dicey so far as
| legality goes. (The data on Aether is public, but we use
| encryption tools for authentication of messages.)
| [deleted]
| craftinator wrote:
| Well, I'd like to take this moment to announce 6G, which on a
| logarithmic scale is twice that of 5G. 6G is the future of being
| a G; it'll be so much more G-like than current G's, you won't be
| able to keep from throwing your money at us. Soon, 6G will be in
| your home, offices, cars, underware drawers, lawnmowers,
| fireplaces, cerebelli, quants, and everywhere else as well. 6G is
| the ubiquitous marketing campaign that you didn't know that you
| both don't want and can't resist! 6G, coming to a dimension near
| you soon!
| FlyMoreRockets wrote:
| Except rural areas.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Where is the race to optic fiber?
| mohankumar246 wrote:
| I think the article does a fair work in answering this question
| - Optic fiber will not get the $ into the pockets of oem's or
| carriers. And it's already there in several metros(even in
| India)
| tonylemesmer wrote:
| Is 5g attractive to vendors because it's harder to turn off than
| a plugged in wire? With landline you can unplug or filter within
| your premises. With 5g they can push megabit speeds without any
| of your own premises equipment.
| perpetualpatzer wrote:
| It's possible that that would be a "benefit", but I'd expect
| that it's way down the list behind:
|
| * infrastructure buildout costs in cities are reduced because
| you don't need to run a wire into each individual building,
|
| * "fast enough" wireless could capture the usage/spend
| currently delivered by landlines, but the reverse isn't true
| because most people like to take their phones out of the house.
| notlukesky wrote:
| When 3G first came out it was a disaster for most carriers. The
| phones were buggy and hard to come by. More importantly there was
| no compelling reason to use data from your phone till the iPhone
| and then Android appeared. The previous generation of
| "smartphones" (like Symbian and NTT Docomo imode) tried to dumb
| and water down the Internet. 5G will present similar problems in
| the early stages. There are not enough compelling applications
| for the increase in bandwidth now, but there sure will be later
| on. So I don't see a race to it now. It's the next evolution in
| the cycle of faster speed.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| 3G was particularly bad in dense urban areas such as Los
| Angeles and NYC. It wasn't so bad if you were in some heartland
| city like Rochester, NY. 4G increased the ability to handle
| high density to the point where NYC quit making excuses about
| how their infrastructure was wiped out by the flood.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > I don't see a race to it now
|
| I think it would actually be better to slow-walk 5G and let
| other nations work through all of the inevitable problems the
| initial deployments will have.
|
| This "race" to 5G has never made any sense to me at all. What
| is the advantage to being the first to roll this stuff out?
| llukas wrote:
| Selling very detailed location data.
| brundolf wrote:
| > but there sure will be later on
|
| Like what? I remember having a 3G iPhone and actively looking
| forward to 4G because bandwidth actually limited certain tasks.
| Since 4G has become widespread, I've never felt that way. The
| only time I notice my phone's finite bandwidth is when
| buildings are blocking my signal, which will only be _more_
| prevalent with 5G because millimeter waves can 't penetrate
| materials.
|
| There is literally no media that my device makes use of that it
| can't download in a comfortable amount of time. With modern
| compression technology, even streaming HD video is basically
| seamless over cell towers. _Years_ ago I was able to play
| online games by tethering my Xbox to my phone. I just don 't
| have a use for more bandwidth.
| cobookman wrote:
| Using cellular for home internet is what I hope 5G brings us.
|
| 5G is fast enough to the point where I could just ditch my
| cable internet line, assuming there's an adequate bandwidth
| cap.
| unapologetic wrote:
| I would honestly much rather have consistent 4g speeds than
| try to jump to something faster.
|
| In the middle of Seattle there are still holes in coverage
| where I data speeds slow to a complete crawl.
| brundolf wrote:
| Exactly. And of course the situation is much worse anywhere
| outside of a major city. Pushing a newer, faster, shorter-
| range technology is the opposite of what needs to be worked
| on.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Coverage holes are the real problem in American wireless.
|
| It's awful in rural areas, and often still pretty bad
| around big cities.
|
| When carriers claim they have coverage of 300 M pops, I
| wonder if it is more like 220 M pops. All the time I go to
| places that the carrier maps say have coverage and there is
| no signal.
|
| Efforts to parcel out money to improve rural cell service
| fell through because there are no useful coverage maps.
| jandrese wrote:
| Isn't this exactly what 5G offers? The mmWave stuff is
| largely a sideshow, but the big win was supposed to be
| allowing more people to share LTE frequencies without
| interfering with each other as much I thought?
| catalogia wrote:
| Since these towers have shorter range and less
| penetration, worse coverage is next to certain.
| julianozen wrote:
| I think perhaps being able to replace cable is the biggest
| benefit. This will force prices down in certain markets and
| allow consumers to choose between more consumer friendly
| companies then comcast
| gambiting wrote:
| Cable? As in....TV? At a risk of sounding dismissive -
| won't TV be dead by then? I'm 29 and I literally don't know
| anyone who watches actual live TV anymore. Well, no, that's
| not true, my grandparents do. But even my mum and my wife's
| parents have already switched to netflix-only situation,
| regular TV is just so full of ads and nonsense that it
| doesn't make any sense to pay for it.
| brundolf wrote:
| I think the parent comment was referring to hard-line
| internet, i.e. fiber and coax ("cable").
| DATACOMMANDER wrote:
| I only watch TV for sporting events. In my area, there's
| currently a legal battle going on between the "regional
| sports network" that has negotiated broadcasting rights
| with certain major teams and Comcast, to whom the RSN
| sells the programming. Comcast declined to renew their
| contract, so games played by those teams are blacked out
| for Comcast customers. The RSN is arguing that Comcast
| has a monopsony on the purchase of programming from RSNs,
| and that their goal is to replace them with a subsidiary
| of their own. The original complaint and Comcast's quick
| motion to dismiss show, if nothing else, that the RSN is
| legally out-gunned. It's possible that 5G could provide
| an economically viable alternative distribution method--
| i.e., "over the top"--for the RSN.
| catalogia wrote:
| If their target demographic all have Comcast internet,
| couldn't this RSN just start an internet streaming
| service and stream their content to those same customers
| without Comcast taking a cut?
|
| If for some reason they couldn't do that, why would 5G
| change anything?
| smabie wrote:
| I like TV because it tells me what to watch. I don't have
| to choose. I think other people derive a lot of value
| from this as well. I don't have TV but I'm at a hotel
| right now and watching TV while drinking beer (and typing
| this I guess) is pretty damn nice. It's possible that
| feeling would wear off if I had it around regularly,
| though.
|
| But I bet TV will still be a major thing, say, 30 years
| in the future. Right now 75% of households in the US pay
| for TV, so I think your comment is a little overblown.
| jedberg wrote:
| > It's possible that feeling would wear off if I had it
| around regularly, though.
|
| Over Christmas/New Years I was at my parents place, and
| they have DirectTV. The first few days were nice. After
| that I realized I was just watching for the sake of
| watching just to see what came on next, and it was all
| reruns of stuff I've already seen.
|
| I am a big fan of curation, but I much prefer the
| curation of seeing what the programmers put on in prime
| time and then watching it on demand, or Netflix's
| recommendations.
| rusk wrote:
| This is more blurb ... you're never going to beat wired.
| Simple physics. You can come up with more and more
| efficient ways to use spectrum but you're always going to
| saturate the commons at some stage. With hard wires you can
| have as many spectrums to share out as you have wires ..
| running side by side if you like.
| redisman wrote:
| Competition for ISPs is definitely welcome (even if it's
| from the darn big telcos). I'm open to this idea even
| though it'll probably be worse latency.
| matwood wrote:
| > The only time I notice my phone's finite bandwidth is when
| buildings are blocking my signal, which will only be more
| prevalent with 5G because millimeter waves can't penetrate
| materials.
|
| I'm pretty bearish on 5g in the short/medium term, but if
| carriers do deploy 5g it should mean many more smaller cell
| base stations. These extra stations should help in cities.
| catalogia wrote:
| Lots of little towers sounds logistically more challenging
| than a few big ones. And it's the sort of thing that
| requires constant reevaluation as new large buildings go
| up, shadowing regions that once had good coverage. Will
| carriers stay on top of the matter, or will coverage start
| to suffer? I'd bet on the later.
| pochamago wrote:
| Real time AR streaming. We likely can't get glasses with the
| necessary processor down to the right form factor, but they
| could offload that work to a server if you had 5g in place
| Barrin92 wrote:
| I feel like the last few years have been a constant letdown
| when it comes to consumer AR or VR. There just doesn't seem
| to be a lot of appetite for it even if you look at more
| powerful home systems.
|
| With Carmack leaving at Occulus and a lot of the startups
| not really amounting to anything I'm not so sure that this
| is just an issue of not enough mobile bandwidth.
| moron4hire wrote:
| I feel like you don't actually pay attention to VR and
| are just saying what you hear in the tech press.
| moron4hire wrote:
| I keep hearing VR and AR listed as reasons we need 5G, but
| literally no one I know in this industry is saying that. If
| anything, VR is going to _reduce_ bandwidth requirements
| for things like teleconferencing.
|
| You aren't going to stream anything to a headlocked headset
| over anything bigger than your LAN. Network latency will
| make you ill. And no, async timewarp is not the answer.
| That only gets you incidental movement from user to view.
| You still get massive latency in reactions to input, which
| can't be faked.
|
| Oh, I suppose maybe someone is thinking of 360 video. Not
| anyone I know. But could be someone.
| brundolf wrote:
| > We likely can't get glasses with the necessary processor
| down to the right form factor
|
| That's silly. We're already pretty close, and if they
| really had to offload some things then the powerful
| computer that's a couple feet away in your pocket would
| make much more sense. Plus, as I said we already stream HD
| video on 4G networks without much trouble.
| madengr wrote:
| The FCC is screwing hams, as usual, for 5G.
|
| http://www.arrl.org/news/fcc-formally-adopts-proposals-to-re...
| chooseaname wrote:
| Not to be that guy, but would we really expect anything else
| from Ajit Pai at this point? He's so far into Verizon, et al's
| pockets... it seems.
| dougmwne wrote:
| This article really missed the mark. Yeah, the 5G lobbying is
| using some really strange and confusing arguments that don't seem
| to make sense to DC outsiders. All you need to need to know is on
| the media page. Clearly Huawei is bad for business for the
| sponsors of this lobbying.
|
| https://5gactionnow.com/media/
| chooseaname wrote:
| From the link:
|
| > FOX BUSINESS: 74% of Americans think Huawei should be removed
| from U.S., poll shows
|
| I don't think 74% of Americans have even _heard_ of Huawei!
| Traster wrote:
| I remember being told that 5G wasn't about speed, it was about
| bandwith and every car would be transmitting 40Gigs an hour
| because of all the autonomous vehicles. That was the bullish
| picture.
|
| If your bullish picture was "Consumers are going to get nothing
| and it's going to enable autonomous vehicles that don't exist"
| then you're probably in trouble.
| Animats wrote:
| The article is on point. 5G has an advantage in only a few
| situations:
|
| - Very crowded areas, where you need lots of microcells so
| everyone can watch streaming video at once. Like stadiums.
| Verizon is making a lot of noise about 5G in NFL stadiums.
| Amusingly, latency for sports video is a big deal, because, in
| sports bars, not all the screens have the same amount of
| buffering in the path. So some people are cheering while others
| are waiting for their feed to catch up, and they feel left out
| and alone.
|
| - Moderately remote areas where the capability to drop to the VHF
| bands will provide some service far from towers. That's actually
| useful.
|
| Claims involving public safety and remote surgery are fantasy.
|
| Besides, once it's going, it will probably be overloaded, and
| there will be rate caps and data caps. But the capped service
| will be called "unlimited".
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