Comment by AshleyGrant | Hacker News Reader

Comment by AshleyGrant | Hacker News Reader

I use TMobile Home Internet that includes their 5G, both 600 Mhz (Band N71) and 2.5 GHz (Band N41). This means I don't see multi-gigabit speeds, but I routinely see 250-500 down/50-200 up on Band N41 and 15-30 mbit down/ 5-10 up on Band N71.

TMobile's 600 MHz signal just goes forever. A single tower can cover hundreds of square miles providing "LTE Speeds."

We live a mobile lifestyle, and 5G has been a massive win for us. We get LTE speeds out in the middle of nowhere and amazing speeds when we're closer to a tower. Last year, we spent a bit of time about in the desert 10+ miles outside Ely, NV. I was able to stream YouTube at 1080p without issue in the middle of nowhere thanks to 5G technology. Looking at CellMapper's data, we could have easily been much further out and still been fine.

I don't need multi-gigabit. I just need useful speeds, and personally 5G has been awesome.

So, when you’re 10+ miles outside Ely, NV how is 5G a material improvement over LTE? I’m not understanding your point.

Not the GP, but I think the point is that he can’t get LTE at all in the desert 10+ miles outside of Ely, NV, because there are no cell towers within range. He doesn’t get 5G speeds there, but he does get LTE speeds on the 5G bands because the range is so much better. Full disclosure: I am a 5G doubter, so this is interesting to me, and I am by no means a 5G expert, so I could be totally wrong about this.

Yea, I don’t get it. I have no problem streaming 1080p movies over LTE well over 10 miles from the tower in the desert…

On what carrier and with what device?

AT&T, original iPhone SE

Because for a given amount of physical bandwidth & power, 5G is going to be faster. 5G utilizes the available spectrum much more efficiently to give greater speeds on a given signal.

There's no way I would have been able to stream 1080p videos on TMobile's LTE 600 MHz band at that distance from the tower.

I think I read too much into the desert. I imagined line of sight, but you didn’t imply that.

Yeah, that's one of the things that's great about the 600 MHz spectrum. While it can't penetrate mountains, it can penetrate lots of other stuff. It's the old spectrum formerly used by UHF analog TV.

Don't get me wrong, I really prefer being on their 2.5 GHz when I can get it. It's way faster, but I'll take "fast enough" over nothing.

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