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Comment by FlyMoreRockets | Hacker News Reader

> I want fast, reliable telecommunications everywhere I go.

Don't leave the city then. 5G has very limited range and doesn't work in rural areas where there aren't enough customers to provide needed geographical coverage.

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Will it even be good in the city? I live in a city and 4G is pretty crap. Drops the connection all the time, speeds are poor, latency is high.

My understanding is that 5G is specifically designed to improve that situation, at the expense of things like range and building penetration.

I understand that to do this you would need to blanket an area. I don't have any issue with that, it's the correct thing to do. What I do have issue with are these ISPs and telecoms are going to do a half assed job to maximize profit, just like they've done with every other technology in their possession. They can do this because you are beholden to them with no alternative in the market. Their track record is very poor to build reliable infrastructure, and for 5G to work you need reliable infrastructure. It doesn't matter what the specific technology is if you fail to build it optimally.

The only way this works is if carriers invest in a ton more hardware, which means leasing more tower space, creating new tower space, getting creative with placing radios in areas where you can't really put towers, etc.

That's expensive. What's also expensive -- sometimes even more expensive -- is running wiring to all those places to connect those radios to the backhaul network.

I frankly do not expect US carriers to go to that expense, at least not universally.

I thought in this system we have, companies did what consumers wanted?

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