5G Could Mean Less Time To Flee a Deadly Hurricane, Heads of NASA and NOAA Warn

Worse than that, if they make it the standard across the board like they did 3G and then 4G you wont have any coverage at all. The transmit wattage is much less and will require many more towers to be installed to even provide the coverage rural folks like us have now. And they are just not going to spend the money to add these towers. The last thing AT&T and Verizon and carriers give a crap about is rural folks. They would rather not even have to deal with us at all, and if they could they would just shut all rural off so that they don't have to maintain those towers for just a few customers let alone add anymore to provide 5G coverage. So what will happen is they will have only 5G "service packages" available and rural folks like us will have to pay it just to get service at all even though we will not have 5G capability. I have dealt with these companies for many many years now as a rural customer and I have their extortion and discriminatory business model down to a science.

The cell phone networks get oversold that's why they are so satured. They lease their spectrum for pennies on the dollar to generic cell phone companies like Walmart. You pay a premium for the brand name only nowadays, they saturate their nodes and just make up excuses like you need to buy the next gen wireless, and even in the las vegas area which was one of the first 3g spots I still use 3g exclusively even though I have had 4g since its first launch it doesn't work indoors whatsoever in apartment complexes because they oversell the spectrum.
 
Worse than that, if they make it the standard across the board like they did 3G and then 4G you wont have any coverage at all. The transmit wattage is much less and will require many more towers to be installed to even provide the coverage rural folks like us have now. And they are just not going to spend the money to add these towers. The last thing AT&T and Verizon and carriers give a crap about is rural folks. They would rather not even have to deal with us at all, and if they could they would just shut all rural off so that they don't have to maintain those towers for just a few customers let alone add anymore to provide 5G coverage. So what will happen is they will have only 5G "service packages" available and rural folks like us will have to pay it just to get service at all even though we will not have 5G capability. I have dealt with these companies for many many years now as a rural customer and I have their extortion and discriminatory business model down to a science.

I'm not so sure of that; I believe it'll be transmitting at the same power as 4G. If they utilize existing spectrum and repurpose it for 5G, then it should travel relatively the same distance. Carriers are also petitioning the FCC to allow more radiated power, at the antenna, to help boost coverage and especially to ensure millimeter wave can actually do its job.

Either case, I'm fairly confident to say 4G will exist alongside 5G for years and years. 1xRTT (for CDMA areas anyway) is still operated and maintained, and it's been around for nearly 20 years.

Even rural areas will get benefit, it just won't be as huge; a 20-35% increase in bandwidth isn't particularly stellar, but it is still an improvement---the real improvement is the touted benefits latency reduction, with promises that this will finally be the generation that has landline like latency (I won't hold my breath on this one, but 4G -> 3G did seem to improve things by 40-50% from my testing...so if we got that kind of improvement again, or better, then it'd be within the ballpark of what landline is).
 
I'm not so sure of that; I believe it'll be transmitting at the same power as 4G. If they utilize existing spectrum and repurpose it for 5G, then it should travel relatively the same distance. Carriers are also petitioning the FCC to allow more radiated power, at the antenna, to help boost coverage and especially to ensure millimeter wave can actually do its job.

Either case, I'm fairly confident to say 4G will exist alongside 5G for years and years. 1xRTT (for CDMA areas anyway) is still operated and maintained, and it's been around for nearly 20 years.

Even rural areas will get benefit, it just won't be as huge; a 20-35% increase in bandwidth isn't particularly stellar, but it is still an improvement---the real improvement is the touted benefits latency reduction, with promises that this will finally be the generation that has landline like latency (I won't hold my breath on this one, but 4G -> 3G did seem to improve things by 40-50% from my testing...so if we got that kind of improvement again, or better, then it'd be within the ballpark of what landline is).

More power output will help but there are a lot of factors working against us rural folks.

Currently the true speed capabilities of 4G and 4G LTE are already not even what they are advertised to be and it gets even worse when you get out in the sticks and I predicted this reality when 4G came out. As it is now with 4G LTE, true LTE service is fringe in rural areas sometimes not even available. And since a 5G higher frequency shorter wave length is even more susceptible to being obstructed by physical mass and does not travel as far this reality is going to get worse. This is why 5G requires more towers closer together to provide the same coverage as 4G has now. Even with more output from existing towers truly getting the capability is going to be very limited if you are indoors or behind buildings blocking "line of site" to the tower.

It will also be much more affected by weather such as snow, heavy rain, dust storms, or even just high winds because of wind the static. 5G is also more susceptible to decreased performance concerning number of devices. So the number of devices your one local tower is now handling at 4G is going to affect the capability of 5G even more and just reduce it back down to 4G speeds anyway. 5G requires more infrastructure and equipment to handle the same amount of devices and bandwidth within a coverage area to actually provide true 5G capability.

If we get it at all on the current tower density there will be a renewed trend of front porch sitting because that will be the only place it might work. It will indeed require more towers to be put up in order to replace current 4G coverage, and the carriers are just not going to spend the money to do this in rural areas. They absolutely do not care if rural folks can take full advantage of a service or not. Not enough customers and demand to spend the money on. But you can bet that the service contracts will be "one size fits all, take it or leave it" that includes pricing for 5G capability that most rural folks will not even be able to take advantage of. And you can also bet they will force everyone to buy new 5G capable phones whether they can take advantage of 5G or not, remember when AT&T and Verizon forced all their customers to do this when they went from 3G to 4G? Crooked bastards.

Even the recent tests they have conducted in the city with what they thought was enough tower coverage and power were spotty and insufficient compared to 4G...

"Starting with the Verizon store on Michigan Avenue, Dolcourt tested the 5G node, and the results were mixed. She experienced intermittent 5G connectivity, often resorting to switching in and out of Airplane Mode to get the network to connect.

Unable to get a clean comparison test in the store, Dolcourt moved onto round two of testing at the Merchandise Mart, which is also the headquarters for Motorola. Across the street just outside of the Shamrock Club is another 5G node. While the speed tests were better, Dolcourt found that downloading the large PUBG app took six minutes, indicating that the phone was not receiving 5G speeds—the download time was the same as that of the 4G network.

For the third round of testing, Dolcourt utilized the 5G node right outside of the Chicago Art Institute. Standing directly underneath the node, she described the 5G service as "flickering," and even though she received 5G-level speeds during the speed test, the network completely stalled when she tried to download an episode from the Netflix app. Removing the 5G mod, Dolcourt tested the 4G network to see if it fared better but experienced the same issue.

The final test took place a couple blocks away from the famous Chicago Theater. Dolcourt conducted her tests in the same manner, but was unable to connect to the 5G network at all, despite standing directly beneath the node. She made several attempts to connect: Toggling in and out of Airplane Mode four times, removing and reattaching the 5G mod, only to discover that the mod had 0% power, meaning there was no way for her to connect. In this case, the node might not have been the issue, and there is no way to know how it would have performed during testing.

Here's what she said about how the testing went: "Not very well, actually. It was more like a wild goose chase. But remember: This network is only one-day old, so I wasn't expecting this to be amazing speeds with absolutely no problems whatsoever. But it was basically a complete and utter disaster, unfortunately." Dolcourt predicted that even a year from now, 5G phones will not be the norm, as not all cities or areas of cities will have coverage."

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/testing-verizons-new-5g-network-in-chicago/

"Walking around Chicago, we saw how fleeting 5G connectivity can be. It’s roughly a third of a mile from the Verizon Store on the Magnificent Mile to the CTA station at State and Chicago. Once we left the store, we never saw the 5G UWB logo flash up on our phone.

Some of the test sites where we had the most stable 5G connections proved how fleeting 5G connectivity can be at this point in its development. Standing on the steps of the Merchandise Mart, we enjoyed a fairly stable connection. But when we walked 13 paces to a sign with the Motorola logo, the logo on our phone fluctuated between LTE and 5G. By the time we crossed the street to the front of the Kenzie Chophouse, the 5G signal was gone.

It was a similar story at Ontario and Wells. Right outside of Al’s Beef, 5G connectivity was fleeting. It was stronger across the street though, with the signal becoming more consistent in the middle of the crosswalk. (We do not advise standing in the middle of Ontario Street to test 5G networks.)

Verizon is using mmWave technology for its 5G network which depends heavily on line of sight. Coverage figures to improve over time, as Verizon builds out its 5G network in this city and elsewhere — the carrier plans to launch 5G in 30 cities by the end of 2019. But if you’re expecting ubiquitous 5G coverage at this point, you’re going to be disappointed, something Verizon itself would readily acknowledge."

https://www.tomsguide.com/us/verizon-5g-speed-test,news-29802.html


How Will 5G Use New Cell Towers?

In order to provide 5G service on a large scale, carriers will need to add at least 250,000 new small cell sites nationwide. However, though these small cell technologies perform similar functions, they’re not your typical cell tower.

While most current cell towers are large, freestanding behemoths, the cell towers of the future are smaller devices which companies aim to mount onto lampposts, rooftops, traffic lights and other appropriate spots around cities and towns.

Because 5G uses shorter radio wavelengths, the towers needed to pick them up can be smaller than their predecessors. This makes them easier to place in great numbers. However, these new cell towers are also causing conflict between telecom companies and local governments and municipalities, since they need to be installed on a large amount public property.

The location and appearance of new 5G cell sites in your area will likely depend on your local government’s negotiations with service providers — unless, of course, you live in one of the 13 states which have passed legislation restricting local oversight of 5G infrastructure.
Will Traditional Cell Towers Be Replaced?

The answer to this question, at least for now, remains “no.” It seems most traditional cell phone towers will remain active for the foreseeable future.

Some carriers will upgrade existing cell towers for use with 5G signals, effectively integrating current infrastructure into the new system. These existing towers could especially help transmit signals through rural locations where very few objects stand in the way.

However, it’s important to note that existing cell towers may also continue transmitting 4G signals to areas without 5G service. Though companies expect 5G to increase coverage overall, 5G won’t launch everywhere immediately.

Urban areas, like the cities companies are currently using as test sites for the technology, will likely benefit from 5G before more rural areas. Some communities with very low populations may not see 5G service for some time due to the high cost of setting up several smaller 5G “towers” to serve a low population area. Because of this, existing cell towers and other communication infrastructure will remain essential for keeping people connected to the rest of the world.

Eventually, it’s possible that cell phone towers will become obsolete. After all, some companies are already developing direct device-to-device mobile connections, which could eliminate the need for bulky cell phone towers altogether. Whatever the future holds, the transition will occur slowly.

https://www.thewhizcells.com/will-cell-towers-become-obsolete-with-5g/
 
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The cell phone networks get oversold that's why they are so satured. They lease their spectrum for pennies on the dollar to generic cell phone companies like Walmart. You pay a premium for the brand name only nowadays, they saturate their nodes and just make up excuses like you need to buy the next gen wireless, and even in the las vegas area which was one of the first 3g spots I still use 3g exclusively even though I have had 4g since its first launch it doesn't work indoors whatsoever in apartment complexes because they oversell the spectrum.

Sometimes there is no advantage with the 4G capability because of device usage numbers, bandwidth, and physical mass obstructing it , and this is going to be even worse with 5G because it requires more infrastructure and equipment to provide true 5G capability to the same number of devices using it.

Why the Older, Slower 3G Network is Sometimes Better Than 4G

"In general, you want your iPhone or iPad to connect to the fastest available mobile network when you're out and about, especially now that all new and recent models of these products support fast "4G" networks. But, sometimes, the reliability of a mobile network is more important than the maximum potential speed of that network, and in these cases you might actually be better off intentionally limiting your iDevice to an older, slower mobile networking standard.

Mac Geek Gab listener Andrew illustrated this advice with an example: while recently attending a busy sporting event, Andrew and others had difficultly accessing online services like Facebook and Twitter. Andrew's iPhone was successfully connected to his mobile carrier's 4G network with plenty of "dots" of signal strength, but the process of uploading or downloading data from the Internet took forever, if the task completed at all.

Then Andrew noticed some other spectators sitting nearby who seemed to have no problem tweeting or posting Instagram photos. These folks weren't using a different, seemingly superior mobile network. Instead, their success in getting online at this busy sporting event was due to the fact that their phones were older, and didn't support the latest 4G networking standards, thereby limiting them to the area's 3G network."

https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/why-the-older-slower-3g-network-is-sometimes-better-than-4g
 
I'm not so sure of that; I believe it'll be transmitting at the same power as 4G. If they utilize existing spectrum and repurpose it for 5G, then it should travel relatively the same distance. Carriers are also petitioning the FCC to allow more radiated power, at the antenna, to help boost coverage and especially to ensure millimeter wave can actually do its job.

Either case, I'm fairly confident to say 4G will exist alongside 5G for years and years. 1xRTT (for CDMA areas anyway) is still operated and maintained, and it's been around for nearly 20 years.

Even rural areas will get benefit, it just won't be as huge; a 20-35% increase in bandwidth isn't particularly stellar, but it is still an improvement---the real improvement is the touted benefits latency reduction, with promises that this will finally be the generation that has landline like latency (I won't hold my breath on this one, but 4G -> 3G did seem to improve things by 40-50% from my testing...so if we got that kind of improvement again, or better, then it'd be within the ballpark of what landline is).

5g has a shorter range and only works "line of sight" because it is using a different frequency spectrum. It can be blocked by things like trees too. That is why you need more, closer towers. It is also a huge energy hog on your phone battery so most will be programmed to avoid 5g unless it is using some resource intensive app (like gaming). Most of the time, people will still be using 4g. 5g isn't just a faster version of 4g.

https://www.businessinsider.com/5g-high-speed-internet-cellular-network-issues-switch-2019-4

First, we need a whole new infrastructure. Your cell phone provider, for example, will need to install a lot of new equipment for this new technology because 5G uses a totally different wavelength than the 4G standard your phone currently uses. The 5G standard uses millimeter waves, which are a lot shorter than the wavelengths 4G uses. The shorter wavelength means 5G can carry a lot of data much faster than 4G, but it also means a much shorter range. 4G wavelengths have a range of about 10 miles. 5G wavelengths have a range of about 1,000 feet, not even 2% of 4G's range. So to ensure a reliable 5G signal, there needs to be a lot of 5G cell towers and antennas everywhere. We're talking on every lamppost, traffic light, etc. because even trees can block 5G signals.

Antonio Villas-Boas: 5G isn't gonna be cheap. You know, each node, or mini cell tower, needs some kind of connection to it, and that means laying down fiber optic cables, and, you know, it's still an undertaking, and it's definitely not in the millions. It's definitely in the billions, possibly hundreds of billions.

Michelle: Not only will this cost billions of dollars, but there's also pushback from many local communities.


https://www.computerworld.com/article/3310067/why-5g-will-disappoint-everyone.html

Motorola’s Moto Z3 is the only phone currently available that can be upgraded to 5G. That would require a 5G Moto Mod add-on, which more than doubles the thickness of the phone. Still, it’s technically true that the first phone that can support 5G is already on the market.

When companies such as Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon say they’re going to roll out 5G in a city, what they mean is that 5G will be available in some limited pockets in that city.

Because 5G connections suck more power, the chips that power 5G will be designed to favor 4G and kick into 5G mode only when the application demands high bandwidth.

Because of the need to save battery, because of limited distribution of antennas and towers and because of interference issues, our 5G-enabled smartphones will face huge barriers to actually making 5G connections.

Let me be very clear: Five years from now your smartphone will be using 4G almost all the time, even when you’ve got a 5G phone in a 5G city.

It is also estimated to add another couple $hundred to the cost of each phone.



https://arstechnica.com/information...-isnt-for-widespread-coverage-verizon-admits/

Verizon's early rollout of millimeter-wave 5G is producing high speeds and throughput, but the high-frequency spectrum isn't suitable for widespread coverage, Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg said today.

One day after T-Mobile CTO Neville Ray wrote that millimeter-wave spectrum "will never materially scale beyond small pockets of 5G hotspots in dense urban environments," wireless industry analyst Craig Moffett asked Vestberg about Ray's statement during a Verizon earnings call.

Vestberg responded that millimeter-wave spectrum "has lived up to our expectation on performance" and will get better as Verizon improves the software for managing the spectrum. But he added a significant caveat.

"We will need to remind ourselves, this is not a coverage spectrum," Vestberg said.

Separately today, Moffett told CNBC that he thinks there is "zero chance" 5G becomes a ubiquitous technology by 2021.
 
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That's all dependent on the frequency used. The millimeter wave is, indeed short-ranged and needs those super hefty chips to do the lifting that you talk about.

The low band 5G will have similar range to standard 4G LTE, as it operates in the 600-900 MHz range...of course, it'll have far less bandwidth than the millimeter wave, but it will still be an improvement over 4G.

Mid-band 5G will have pretty decent speeds (definitely capable of over 100 megabits per connection), and is at a frequency range that it'll still work for rural areas and will pair well with micro-cells placed in a window. This is where it's expected that Sprint will have the real chance to dominate if the T-Mobile+Sprint merger goes through, since they have a plethora of 2.5 GHz spectrum, which, while it isn't great at penetrating structures, it does an "ok" job, can be paired easily with microcells, and isn't impacted by rainfade.


Incidentally your post brings up exactly the problem 5G has. It means different things to different people--it's not like 4G (where everyone standardized around LTE); it's a mish-mash of differnet technologies that operates at different frequencies. So to say "5G has less range" is very highly dependent on what *type* of 5G that you're talking about. If it's millimeter wave? Absolutely. If you're talking about low band or mid-band 5G? That's going to have similar range to most of the LTE networks already out there---though, again, the performance improvement over 4G will not be nearly as hue of a step as with 3G -> 4G. The main improvement will be lowering of latency.

It is incredibly important to mention frequency and 5G together, otherwise, it's a bit of a moot discussion point as who knows what you're really talking about.
 
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