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Comment by untog | Hacker News Reader

I love this project, and I dream of participating in it in my building that is wired for Optimum and Optimum only. It would be a great way to break out of that monopoly.

But I do wonder, how will the rollout of 5G affect projects like this? It's a non-profit so I'll always favor it as a community project, but once Verizon comes knocking with a home 5G router capable of fantastic speeds it'll tempt many, I'm sure.

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My cell service on LTE in the US is about as fast as my cable modem. But I can't just cancel my cable internet and tether instead, because every telco performs severe rate-limiting once you use up a bandwidth quota -- there's no truly unlimited data option.

So perhaps you're assuming that 5G will result in unlimited data and the obsolescence of cable internet as a result, but that's not obvious, at least to me.

> So perhaps you're assuming that 5G will result in unlimited data and the obsolescence of cable internet as a result, but that's not obvious, at least to me.

For some reason with every new generation of mobile broadband many people think this is just around the corner but I have yet to find any basis for this belief.

It's actually been happening for awhile now: https://www.telecompetitor.com/pew-smartphone-only-homes-gro...; https://www.pewinternet.org/2015/12/21/home-broadband-2015. Fixed broadband use peaked in 2013, at 70%. Now it's at 65%.

Fun Fact: Some carrier throttling works by throttling packets with an unexpected TTL. Android has a default TTL of 64.

You most certainly shouldn't set the default TTL of a tethered device to 65, because then your carrier may fail apply proper limits to that traffic.

Here in Asia, if my data plan is reached quota, I'll be charged by bandwidth: $x/MB and it's much more expensive than the normal data plans. So I still have full throughput but pay significantly more for it.

I'm curious what severe rate limiting looks like. I have a Sprint unlimited plan and I routinely use about 20-30GB of data/mo and I don't think I've ever been throttled, and if I have I haven't noticed it.

Looks like a totally unusable connection, barely able to load a web page, and here on Tmo it came with an SMS announcing it. It probably took more than 30GB.

There's an interesting org you can become a member of with unlimited 4G data. https://www.calyxinstitute.org/member/map

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