5G for the past and the future
filed Dec 7, 2023, 2:15 PM GMT
"The race to Five G is over --
now it’s time to pay the bill
Networks spent years telling us
that 5G would change everything.
But the flashiest use cases are nowhere to be found --
and the race to deploy the tech
was costly in more ways than one".
Allison Johnson,reviewer,
with 10 years writing about consumer tech.
She has special interest in
mobile photography and telecom.
Previously worked at DPReview.
At the ConsumerElectronicsShow in 2021,
5G was everywhere.
It was the future of mobile communications
that would propel autonomous vehicles,
remote surgery, and AR into reality.
The low latency! The capacity!
It’ll change everything, we were told.
Verizon and AT&T wrote massive cheques
for new spectrum licenses
and T-Mobile swallowed another network whole
because it was very important
to make the 5G future happen
as quickly as possible and win the race.
CES 2024 rolled into Las Vegas at the beginning of the year and was all about AI and 2025 is just around the corner of the year. While telecom executives were eager to shout about 5G to the rafters just a few years ago, 5G was sotto voce in 2024. While it is true that 5G has actually arrived and is on the planet, the fantastic dreams of 2020 haven’t materialized.
Instead, we have Swifties streaming concert footage and a new way to get internet to your home router. But deploying 5G at the breakneck speeds needed to win an imaginary race resulted in one less major wireless carrier to choose from and lots of debt to repay. Now, network operators are looking high and low for every bit of profit they can drum up — including [from] our wallets.
First, it tried to tell us that "mm Wave" was the 'real' 5G, Then it tried to sell us on "low-band" 5G which was often slower than 4G. The company is slowly converting its existing network into standalone 5G as it lights up mid-band spectrum, but that’s a years-long mast-by-mast chore. (5G is a concept for fifth generation technology standard.... Wiki)
Selling private networks, or secure, high-bandwidth networks, for industrial and manufacturing businesses is a possible earner. But it is hardly mentioned beyond a few passing remarks about its potential. One problem standing in the way is that carriers aren’t set up to sell their services to specific industries. If you need to sell 5G and edge computing services to a hospital, you need a sales organization that understands healthcare, that knows exactly how hospitals run and knows what their problems (and solutions) are. You need that for every vertical industry — for transportation, logistics, manufacturing, hospitality. And that’s just a hard thing to do.” Edge computing services enable devices to process data at the source, rather than send it to a remote data centre. Bringing 5G to manufacturing isn’t exactly a snap of the fingers, either. Not every kind of manufacturer needs or even wants 5G. There is some potential in certain kinds of manufacturing but core factories tend to be old and don’t lend themselves to fast upgrades. SIM card in my 1982 robotic arm? I could do it, but is it worth it? What does it deliver?
There is one 5G use case where the big three are finding traction in America and it comes up over and over again in their earnings reports: fixed wireless access, or FWA. If you’re keeping score at home, that’s internet that comes to your house over radio waves rather than a cable. It is a total non starter in the UK because 'fibre is everything' and til such time is it IS everything we are not going to talk about FWA
Fixed wireless access (FWA) is a form of broadband access that uses a wireless connection to attach premises to the broader internet. FWA uses wireless devices to connect homes to high-speed internet. Antennae are mounted on the roof or on a pole, less expensive to install by several orders of magnitude than fiber optic cable and there is no need to dig up streets. If there’s a real, transformative benefit in 5G, it will be a combination of network advances and changes in behaviour. People will start to see 5G working in situations where they wouldn’t expect to have a reliable data connection -- just ask the Taylor Swift fans who moved a collective 29 terabytes of data on AT&T’s network in a single day on her Arlington, Texas, Eras Tour stop. Crowded stadium events are where 5G’s extra capacity really blows LTE into the weeds ... when you can stream video from a packed stadium to your storage at home while you are in the moment changes your thinking on what to expect from your mobile phone ...
Network slicing, where carriers can give priority to certain kinds of network traffic is another likely way 5G will go.
That’s important for safety-critical applications, like autonomous cars. Slicing would allow networks to “prioritize the car going through the intersection [at the expense of] the YouTuber in the backseat.” At the moment they can’t distinguish. You need a standalone 5G network to make that work, something only BT has achieved so far and something almost no-one in Joe Public's orbit knows about.
Even if 5G isn’t just smoke and mirrors in 2025, UK networks apart from EE backed themselves into a corner. The networks thought they had a golden goose with 5G, but so far, it’s just laying cuckoo eggs — expensively, at that and while they’re waiting for their efforts to bear fruit, they’re looking for other ways to boost their bottom line.
It probably doesn’t help that Americans have just two other networks to choose from even if they were determined to jump ship. And that’s one more piece of the 5G puzzle that’s missing: the fourth wireless carrier that was supposed to materialize from T-Mobile’s Sprint acquisition deal. T-Mobile was allowed to gobble up Sprint by selling Boost to Dish Network, which would use it as a springboard to become the country’s fourth wireless carrier while building its own standalone 5G network from scratch. Dish has met the coverage requirements defined by FCC. But it’s not as simple as “if you build it, they will come.” When it was sold to Dish, Boost had 9 million subscribers; now it has 7.5 million. According to founder Charlie Ergen on the company’s last earnings call, of those 7.5 million people, the “vast majority” don’t have a phone that works on Dish’s network. Instead, they run on the networks of AT&T or T-Mobile, which Dish contracts with as an Mobile Virtual Network Operator. (MVNO is the shiniest mirror and the sweetest smoke of the block and like smoke and mirrors) ... NO! You do not want to know how MVNO cuts mustard. More phones are slowly beginning to support Dish’s network bands, including the iPhone 15. But according to Ergen, the timing of T-Mobile’s shutdown of Sprint’s legacy CDMA network meant that Dish had to replace a lot of phones for customers at a time when most new phones didn’t support the new network. Those customers likely aren’t ready to replace their phones just yet.
CDMA is the tech at the core of Pentragon's wifi
5G will improve as time marches on as it tends to, particularly when the networks have fully deployed standalone 5G. But we can probably stop holding our breath for that killer app and make peace with the fact that technological progress is often slow and boring — moving forward mast by mast and not by leaps and bounds. In the short term, its greatest effect might be a more consolidated, more expensive wireless broadband market. If it’s any consolation, you can take some comfort in the fact that we probably won’t be seeing commercials for 6G anytime soon. CDMA is Code Division Multiple Access. Look it up
filed Dec 7, 2023, 2:15 PM GMT
"The race to Five G is over --
now it’s time to pay the bill
Networks spent years telling us
that 5G would change everything.
But the flashiest use cases are nowhere to be found --
and the race to deploy the tech
was costly in more ways than one".
Allison Johnson,reviewer,
with 10 years writing about consumer tech.
She has special interest in
mobile photography and telecom.
Previously worked at DPReview.
At the ConsumerElectronicsShow in 2021,
5G was everywhere.
It was the future of mobile communications
that would propel autonomous vehicles,
remote surgery, and AR into reality.
The low latency! The capacity!
It’ll change everything, we were told.
Verizon and AT&T wrote massive cheques
for new spectrum licenses
and T-Mobile swallowed another network whole
because it was very important
to make the 5G future happen
as quickly as possible and win the race.
CES 2024 rolled into Las Vegas at the beginning of the year and was all about AI and 2025 is just around the corner of the year. While telecom executives were eager to shout about 5G to the rafters just a few years ago, 5G was sotto voce in 2024. While it is true that 5G has actually arrived and is on the planet, the fantastic dreams of 2020 haven’t materialized.
Instead, we have Swifties streaming concert footage and a new way to get internet to your home router. But deploying 5G at the breakneck speeds needed to win an imaginary race resulted in one less major wireless carrier to choose from and lots of debt to repay. Now, network operators are looking high and low for every bit of profit they can drum up — including [from] our wallets.
First, it tried to tell us that "mm Wave" was the 'real' 5G, Then it tried to sell us on "low-band" 5G which was often slower than 4G. The company is slowly converting its existing network into standalone 5G as it lights up mid-band spectrum, but that’s a years-long mast-by-mast chore. (5G is a concept for fifth generation technology standard.... Wiki)
Selling private networks, or secure, high-bandwidth networks, for industrial and manufacturing businesses is a possible earner. But it is hardly mentioned beyond a few passing remarks about its potential. One problem standing in the way is that carriers aren’t set up to sell their services to specific industries. If you need to sell 5G and edge computing services to a hospital, you need a sales organization that understands healthcare, that knows exactly how hospitals run and knows what their problems (and solutions) are. You need that for every vertical industry — for transportation, logistics, manufacturing, hospitality. And that’s just a hard thing to do.” Edge computing services enable devices to process data at the source, rather than send it to a remote data centre. Bringing 5G to manufacturing isn’t exactly a snap of the fingers, either. Not every kind of manufacturer needs or even wants 5G. There is some potential in certain kinds of manufacturing but core factories tend to be old and don’t lend themselves to fast upgrades. SIM card in my 1982 robotic arm? I could do it, but is it worth it? What does it deliver?
There is one 5G use case where the big three are finding traction in America and it comes up over and over again in their earnings reports: fixed wireless access, or FWA. If you’re keeping score at home, that’s internet that comes to your house over radio waves rather than a cable. It is a total non starter in the UK because 'fibre is everything' and til such time is it IS everything we are not going to talk about FWA
Fixed wireless access (FWA) is a form of broadband access that uses a wireless connection to attach premises to the broader internet. FWA uses wireless devices to connect homes to high-speed internet. Antennae are mounted on the roof or on a pole, less expensive to install by several orders of magnitude than fiber optic cable and there is no need to dig up streets. If there’s a real, transformative benefit in 5G, it will be a combination of network advances and changes in behaviour. People will start to see 5G working in situations where they wouldn’t expect to have a reliable data connection -- just ask the Taylor Swift fans who moved a collective 29 terabytes of data on AT&T’s network in a single day on her Arlington, Texas, Eras Tour stop. Crowded stadium events are where 5G’s extra capacity really blows LTE into the weeds ... when you can stream video from a packed stadium to your storage at home while you are in the moment changes your thinking on what to expect from your mobile phone ...
Network slicing, where carriers can give priority to certain kinds of network traffic is another likely way 5G will go.
That’s important for safety-critical applications, like autonomous cars. Slicing would allow networks to “prioritize the car going through the intersection [at the expense of] the YouTuber in the backseat.” At the moment they can’t distinguish. You need a standalone 5G network to make that work, something only BT has achieved so far and something almost no-one in Joe Public's orbit knows about.
Even if 5G isn’t just smoke and mirrors in 2025, UK networks apart from EE backed themselves into a corner. The networks thought they had a golden goose with 5G, but so far, it’s just laying cuckoo eggs — expensively, at that and while they’re waiting for their efforts to bear fruit, they’re looking for other ways to boost their bottom line.
It probably doesn’t help that Americans have just two other networks to choose from even if they were determined to jump ship. And that’s one more piece of the 5G puzzle that’s missing: the fourth wireless carrier that was supposed to materialize from T-Mobile’s Sprint acquisition deal. T-Mobile was allowed to gobble up Sprint by selling Boost to Dish Network, which would use it as a springboard to become the country’s fourth wireless carrier while building its own standalone 5G network from scratch. Dish has met the coverage requirements defined by FCC. But it’s not as simple as “if you build it, they will come.” When it was sold to Dish, Boost had 9 million subscribers; now it has 7.5 million. According to founder Charlie Ergen on the company’s last earnings call, of those 7.5 million people, the “vast majority” don’t have a phone that works on Dish’s network. Instead, they run on the networks of AT&T or T-Mobile, which Dish contracts with as an Mobile Virtual Network Operator. (MVNO is the shiniest mirror and the sweetest smoke of the block and like smoke and mirrors) ... NO! You do not want to know how MVNO cuts mustard. More phones are slowly beginning to support Dish’s network bands, including the iPhone 15. But according to Ergen, the timing of T-Mobile’s shutdown of Sprint’s legacy CDMA network meant that Dish had to replace a lot of phones for customers at a time when most new phones didn’t support the new network. Those customers likely aren’t ready to replace their phones just yet.
CDMA is the tech at the core of Pentragon's wifi
5G will improve as time marches on as it tends to, particularly when the networks have fully deployed standalone 5G. But we can probably stop holding our breath for that killer app and make peace with the fact that technological progress is often slow and boring — moving forward mast by mast and not by leaps and bounds. In the short term, its greatest effect might be a more consolidated, more expensive wireless broadband market. If it’s any consolation, you can take some comfort in the fact that we probably won’t be seeing commercials for 6G anytime soon. CDMA is Code Division Multiple Access. Look it up
My original plan for 2023 had been to crane out and hard stand for "The 22/23 Winter" defined in my case as between the end of December 22 and "Easter" 23. The plan had been connived with the marina as early as Jan 2022. Instead of going back into the water in 2023 inside the M25 I would be craned onto a lorry and brought to the Midlands. In the event, 'Easter' came and went. The boat stayed put. Somehow a crane and a lorry were never available at the same time. I had got used to the marina. With mains power to charge the computer and keep batteries up, I never had to run my engine although the option was always there. Solar helped if the sun shone and actually it shone quite often. I had enough charcoal to stay warm through an average winter but we got a mild one. I've been living off-grid for years but always had shore back-up. I wondered what would be needed if I lost that option. All my 'on the boat' writing was actually done in libraries where my laptop would charge as I worked.
The first seeds of off grid independence are sown
Could I get communications totally on board and dispense with libraries and shore power altogether? I was making a one-hour trip to get an hour on the library computer and then an hour trip back to the boat. Sometimes I would take the Satellite with the trailing wires of the charger and brave the weather. It was all very tedious. There had to be a better way. During that winter, a plan was hatched to make comms independent of the land. After all, is that not what my 'off-gid' future lifestyle should be about? The marina supplied limited wifi in the contract but with up to 50 boats in the yard the system was maxxed out. I would need independent onboard WiFi and enquiries among boaters quickly showed that no-one had much more than a 'dongle' on a bit of wire. I would also need a means of charging computers etc that was independent of mains electricity. So I dusted my electronics training and started research.
The best aerial I could locate to meet my needs was joint-ventured between PRC and RSA. A Poynting was sourced and identified as essential. I decided the Omni 600 5G model was best future- proofed so that was what I got. For the router I avoided PRC and opted for a Lithuanian Teltonika RUT241. The Poynting is sophisticated kit. Two aerials and embedded software are enclosed within the unit and are marine and arctic spec. They seek and interpret incoming signals, sort out a best compromise and transfer the result to the Router by hard wire. The Teltonika then analyses what the Poynting has on offer and decides what is best for the user and belts it out inside the hull. I have loaded as many as eight devices with no loss of performance in soak tests during 2024.
[20230515_Poynting600 650]
My then computer was a Toshiba Satellite which was charged via mains using 20v input through a jack-plug socket because that is how it was then. I needed 20-24v DC to charge the Satellite and looked at solid state inverters. A Norwegian "Mascot 8600" was acquired (at a price) from RS Watford and given a lead and a compatible jack-plug. A messy solution but workable. Voltage smoothing was unnecessary as the Mascot had everything built in ... (that is what 'at a price' means!) ....
Technology was moving very fast in 2024 and when I discovered I could buy laptops, think-pads and notepads chargeable from 12v USB sockets which were and are being progressively fitted to the boat I went for the new technology and compatible mobile phones as well ... I may as well deal with my latest approach to mobile phones here as part of comms. because reliable off-grid is very different from land solutions. I have two Samsung A04es each with two sims, huge storage and extra storage on chips.. I have not measured accurately but the two devices can probably store a terabyte between them which is just as well because there are apps on board using gigabytes and all for a cause.
The main onboard laptop now is a Dell Latitude 7390 backed up by a Dell Latitude 5285 WiFi initially went on trial in mid 2023 after the boat had been lorried to the Midlands and delivered excellent results over that Summer in that I never recorded a null signal at any mooring on the Leicester Arm which goes through some hungry mileage. The Poynting did what it said on the box and the router digested and delivered everything supplied by the aerials ... Yes! I said aerials.
Poynting 600s have two aerials inside the shield and they talk to each other. One polarizes horizontally and the other vertically. Having discussed what they are doing among themselves, they send separate outputs by hard-wire to the Teltonika which then beams a composite signal from its own internal aerial for use by the laptop and other devices in the boat.
This arrangement is ultimately designed for 5GNR. 5thGen is very advanced script, conceived in 2015, introduced in Qatar in 2018 and not yet in general or particular use worldwide. But 5thGen (5GNR) is now wired into Pentargon as part of future-proofing and I was looking forward to a time when I would get to see it working.
Teltonika uses an LED array which serves a similar function as the bars on your mobile. ONE LED means the router is analyzing signal of 1G grade. (1G is slightly above semaphore with flags but not quite as efficient). I sometimes saw one led under a bridge or in a gorge to tell me that although the system was sensing data it would not insult me my presenting it. TWO LEDS was an occasional experience which would not deliver best speed but served basic use and my needs were very basic most of the time back then. THREE LEDs showed up quite often, meaning I could actually do serious work with my laptop. Downloading on three leds took forever and uploading a bit longer but at least I was now freed of bus-rides to libraries which could save me as much as three hours per session. Moving towards the 21st century was beginning to deliver tangible benefit.
FOUR LEDs indicated fully-functioning "LTE" and is the commonest return I get on board on the canal. At that level I can do anything I want with any linked device and is equivalent to 4G that all modern phones work with. I have progressively changed all my sims to EE as it delivers the best service at the best price. "ALL of my sims" you ask? Yes! Sims are now fitted in laptops, notebooks, think pads and routers and I currently have six accounts. FIVE LEDs was to be the future, the internet of things, downloads in nanoseconds. From satellites even.
I had never seen FIVE LEDs until the day after I pulled in at Nether Heyford on Sunday 28th January 2024. I'd moved the boat from Bridge 32, to where the cut was wider and there was a better view of the sky for the solars. When I powered up the Router it showed FIVE LEDs. Hello? I have never seen FIVE LEDs. FIVE meant the boat was receiving next year's WiFi this year.
I had sniffed out a 5G node entirely by coincidence and my system had locked in. When your boat is properly wired for 5G and it senses 5G it locks in without any intervention. something like how induction loops sensing water will boil it for you. 5G may be in the future but it is in use here in England in 2025. And I have experienced it downloading a massive 500mb in less that five seconds. That is 100mb per second.
When 5G kicked in that first day I had been listening to Paul Brady singing 'The Island' on an old J3 mobile when I realized the clarity was superb. I could hear Paul's fingers hitting the strings and his intake of breath as he sang. This is what I used t experience at live gigs in smokey folk clubs in the '70s. So this is 5G. I had stumbled accidentally into a network rail node and my aerial had been integrated. Since then I have got 5G at other locations and am maintaining a watching brief.
Land houses will maybe get close about 2027 or 28
The first seeds of off grid independence are sown
Could I get communications totally on board and dispense with libraries and shore power altogether? I was making a one-hour trip to get an hour on the library computer and then an hour trip back to the boat. Sometimes I would take the Satellite with the trailing wires of the charger and brave the weather. It was all very tedious. There had to be a better way. During that winter, a plan was hatched to make comms independent of the land. After all, is that not what my 'off-gid' future lifestyle should be about? The marina supplied limited wifi in the contract but with up to 50 boats in the yard the system was maxxed out. I would need independent onboard WiFi and enquiries among boaters quickly showed that no-one had much more than a 'dongle' on a bit of wire. I would also need a means of charging computers etc that was independent of mains electricity. So I dusted my electronics training and started research.
The best aerial I could locate to meet my needs was joint-ventured between PRC and RSA. A Poynting was sourced and identified as essential. I decided the Omni 600 5G model was best future- proofed so that was what I got. For the router I avoided PRC and opted for a Lithuanian Teltonika RUT241. The Poynting is sophisticated kit. Two aerials and embedded software are enclosed within the unit and are marine and arctic spec. They seek and interpret incoming signals, sort out a best compromise and transfer the result to the Router by hard wire. The Teltonika then analyses what the Poynting has on offer and decides what is best for the user and belts it out inside the hull. I have loaded as many as eight devices with no loss of performance in soak tests during 2024.
[20230515_Poynting600 650]
My then computer was a Toshiba Satellite which was charged via mains using 20v input through a jack-plug socket because that is how it was then. I needed 20-24v DC to charge the Satellite and looked at solid state inverters. A Norwegian "Mascot 8600" was acquired (at a price) from RS Watford and given a lead and a compatible jack-plug. A messy solution but workable. Voltage smoothing was unnecessary as the Mascot had everything built in ... (that is what 'at a price' means!) ....
Technology was moving very fast in 2024 and when I discovered I could buy laptops, think-pads and notepads chargeable from 12v USB sockets which were and are being progressively fitted to the boat I went for the new technology and compatible mobile phones as well ... I may as well deal with my latest approach to mobile phones here as part of comms. because reliable off-grid is very different from land solutions. I have two Samsung A04es each with two sims, huge storage and extra storage on chips.. I have not measured accurately but the two devices can probably store a terabyte between them which is just as well because there are apps on board using gigabytes and all for a cause.
The main onboard laptop now is a Dell Latitude 7390 backed up by a Dell Latitude 5285 WiFi initially went on trial in mid 2023 after the boat had been lorried to the Midlands and delivered excellent results over that Summer in that I never recorded a null signal at any mooring on the Leicester Arm which goes through some hungry mileage. The Poynting did what it said on the box and the router digested and delivered everything supplied by the aerials ... Yes! I said aerials.
Poynting 600s have two aerials inside the shield and they talk to each other. One polarizes horizontally and the other vertically. Having discussed what they are doing among themselves, they send separate outputs by hard-wire to the Teltonika which then beams a composite signal from its own internal aerial for use by the laptop and other devices in the boat.
This arrangement is ultimately designed for 5GNR. 5thGen is very advanced script, conceived in 2015, introduced in Qatar in 2018 and not yet in general or particular use worldwide. But 5thGen (5GNR) is now wired into Pentargon as part of future-proofing and I was looking forward to a time when I would get to see it working.
Teltonika uses an LED array which serves a similar function as the bars on your mobile. ONE LED means the router is analyzing signal of 1G grade. (1G is slightly above semaphore with flags but not quite as efficient). I sometimes saw one led under a bridge or in a gorge to tell me that although the system was sensing data it would not insult me my presenting it. TWO LEDS was an occasional experience which would not deliver best speed but served basic use and my needs were very basic most of the time back then. THREE LEDs showed up quite often, meaning I could actually do serious work with my laptop. Downloading on three leds took forever and uploading a bit longer but at least I was now freed of bus-rides to libraries which could save me as much as three hours per session. Moving towards the 21st century was beginning to deliver tangible benefit.
FOUR LEDs indicated fully-functioning "LTE" and is the commonest return I get on board on the canal. At that level I can do anything I want with any linked device and is equivalent to 4G that all modern phones work with. I have progressively changed all my sims to EE as it delivers the best service at the best price. "ALL of my sims" you ask? Yes! Sims are now fitted in laptops, notebooks, think pads and routers and I currently have six accounts. FIVE LEDs was to be the future, the internet of things, downloads in nanoseconds. From satellites even.
I had never seen FIVE LEDs until the day after I pulled in at Nether Heyford on Sunday 28th January 2024. I'd moved the boat from Bridge 32, to where the cut was wider and there was a better view of the sky for the solars. When I powered up the Router it showed FIVE LEDs. Hello? I have never seen FIVE LEDs. FIVE meant the boat was receiving next year's WiFi this year.
I had sniffed out a 5G node entirely by coincidence and my system had locked in. When your boat is properly wired for 5G and it senses 5G it locks in without any intervention. something like how induction loops sensing water will boil it for you. 5G may be in the future but it is in use here in England in 2025. And I have experienced it downloading a massive 500mb in less that five seconds. That is 100mb per second.
When 5G kicked in that first day I had been listening to Paul Brady singing 'The Island' on an old J3 mobile when I realized the clarity was superb. I could hear Paul's fingers hitting the strings and his intake of breath as he sang. This is what I used t experience at live gigs in smokey folk clubs in the '70s. So this is 5G. I had stumbled accidentally into a network rail node and my aerial had been integrated. Since then I have got 5G at other locations and am maintaining a watching brief.
Land houses will maybe get close about 2027 or 28
