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Comment by takeda | Hacker News Reader

> I want cellular that is competitive with cable internet. I want bandwidth available for IoT devices.

It never will be though. Whatever frequencies you can do wirelessly you can do over a wire without the interference of other users using the same frequency at the same time.

Also a lot of promises 5G offers only sound good on paper. The higher frequencies don't travel well through walls (that's why it uses lower frequencies as well) and the maximum speed being talked can only be obtained during tests, but in the real deployment it has to be shared over all users.

Another problem is that the speeds don't mean sh*t if we have the same data caps, in fact higher speed is worse, because many applications will switch to a higher bitrate and consume more data, even when there's no noticeable difference on a phone.

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>> I want cellular that is competitive with cable internet. I want bandwidth available for IoT devices.

> It never will be though. Whatever frequencies you can do wirelessly you can do over a wire without the interference of other users using the same frequency at the same time.

this is true in principle, but not necessarily in practice. I suspect it will hold for the near/medium future, but I can imagine a world where much more money is invested in improving mobile networks than home cable connections, causing the latter to stagnate.

most "normal" people I know don't even own a desktop computer. there are no devices in their homes that connect via ethernet (or even have an ethernet port without a dongle!). at a certain point, it might make sense to ditch the home modem/router altogether and scale up wifi networks to the point where they basically merge with cellular.

I agree the internet is increasingly carried over radio these days (e.g. WiFi, LTE, Satellite). Wireless still seems pretty young and crude yet. There seems to be plenty of room to grow with respect to negotiating power levels, frequency use, routing topologies and so on.

I think big fiber backhauls are still going to be a thing though.

> I think big fiber backhauls are still going to be a thing though.

absolutely, I'm just talking about wired vs. wireless as available to the typical consumer. the fiber would be the backhaul for an entire city block or neighborhood. just speculation.

agreed, the lower fixed costs of ripping up roads and driveways to install is key for understanding the benefits of 5G

> but I can imagine a world where much more money is invested in improving mobile networks than home cable connections, causing the latter to stagnate.

This seems like a misunderstanding of the technologies. Mobile networks modulate RF and emit it via antennas, cable networks modulate RF and carry it via RF cables (aka coaxial cable, or "cable"). Its the same technology from a fundamental standpoint, but the latter has superior propagation characteristics and dramatically reduced noise. Wireless can't be better than wired - if it was, you'd just connect the LTE or whatever transceivers to the cable plant and be done with it.

People always talk about 5G signals not travelling well through walls. I wonder if they also get held up trying to travel through the human brain.

Ever been in a crowded area and couldn't get a connection to anything with your phone? UWB 5G is going to solve that problem.

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