past and the future
Allison Johnson,reviewer,
filed Dec 7, 2023, 2:15pm
"The race for 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".
ConsumerElectronics2021
Allison was there 5G was everywhere
"Future of mobile communications
would propel autonomous vehicles,
remote surgery, and would make
Augmented Reality become Reality
The low latency! The capacity!
5G is about to change everything"
Verizon & AT&T in the USofA
wrote massive cheques
for new spectrum licenses
T-Mobile swallowed "Boost" whole
... "because it is very important
[for us] to make the future happen
[now] and [for us to] win the race"
2024 rolled into Las Vegas January
While telecom executives had been
shouting about 5G to the rafters
just a few years ago in 20 and 21,
in Vegas 2024 5G was sotto voce.
5G has actually arrived of course
and is working very well. In Qatar
but 2020 dreams have not [yet?]
materialised ... tout la monde.
Instead, we have Texan Swifties
streaming concert footage
directly to their home routers.
Deploying 5G at the speeds needed to win an imaginary race resulted in one less major wireless carrier to choose from and lots of debt to repay in the USofA. Operators in 2025 and facing 26 are looking for any bit of profit they can drum up
They had tried to tell the USofA that "mmWave" was 'real' 5G. They had tried to sell "low-band 5G" which was slower than 4G. AT in USofA is now trying to convert its existing network into stand-alone 5G as it lights up mid-band spectrum, but that’s a years-long mast-by-mast chore.
5G as a concept for fifth generation
technology standard ... see Wiki
Selling private networks, or secure, high-bandwidth networks, for industrial and manufacturing businesses is being whisper touted as a possible earner, but only as passing remarks about its potential.
The main problem is that carriers aren’t set up to sell their services to specific industries. If you want to sell 5G and edge computing services to a hospital, you need a sales team which knows and understands healthcare, knows exactly how hospitals work, knows the specific problems and has the solutions or at least how to approach them.
They are likely to be the doctors the nurses the attendants the cleaners in the hospitals and every other single 'vertical industry' — transportation, logistics, manufacturing, hospitality, hospitals needs similar structures and people.
Edge Computing Services
enable devices to process data at source, rather than send it to a remote data centre.
But bringing 5G to manufacturing isn’t exactly a snap of the fingers exercise. Not every manufacturer needs or even wants 5G. There may be 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 what does it deliver?
There is one 5G 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:
FWA isinternet that enters your house by radio wave rather than cable. It is a total non-starter in the UK because 'fibre is everything' and until such time as it IS everything we are not going to talk about FWA
FWA is what is fitted in Pentargon
Truly WIRELESS and truly off-grid.
Fixed Wireless Access is broadband access using wireless connection to attach a 'premises' to the broader internet. Antennae mounted on the roof on a pole are less expensive to fit by several orders of magnitude than fibre optic cable with no need to to dig up streets and gardens
The real, transformative benefit of 5G will be a combination of network advances and changes in behaviour.
People will start to see 5G working in situations where they would not have expected to find reliable connection
-- 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 a carrier can give priority to one kind of traffic is another likely way 5G will go. Network Slicing is for safety-critical applications, like autonomous cars, allowing networks to “prioritize the car going through the intersection [at the expense of] the YouTuber in the back seat.” At the moment they can’t.
Edit from here WIP 20250810
A standalone 5G network is needed to make Slicing work, something only BT has achieved so far in UK and something almost no-one in Joe Public's orbit knows about.
This is being experimented with as I edit in late 2025 while the streets of Leamington Spa and every town in England are dug up to bury fibre-optic.
Even if 5G isn’t just smoke n mirrors in 2026, UK networks ...
apart from EE
...backed themselves into a corner. They thought they had bought a golden goose with 5G, but so far, it’s laying cuckoo eggs — expensively, at that.
It probably doesn’t help Americans who have only 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 in the USofA that was supposed to materialise from T-Mobile’s Sprint acquisition deal. T-Mobile was allowed to gobble up Sprint by selling Boost to Dish, 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 meets FCC requirements. 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. All tech does, but it will only be when the networks have fully deployed standalone 5G. Stop holding your breath for that killer app and make peace with the fact that technological progress is slow and boring — moving forward ... mast by mast ... rather than leaps or bounds. If it’s any consolation, take comfort in the fact that we probably won’t be seeing 6G anytime soon.
CDMA
Code Division Multiple Access.
CDMA is the purest rocket science.
Even AI cannot explain CDMA
in simple language
Look it up on Wiki
Allison Johnson,reviewer,
filed Dec 7, 2023, 2:15pm
"The race for 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".
ConsumerElectronics2021
Allison was there 5G was everywhere
"Future of mobile communications
would propel autonomous vehicles,
remote surgery, and would make
Augmented Reality become Reality
The low latency! The capacity!
5G is about to change everything"
Verizon & AT&T in the USofA
wrote massive cheques
for new spectrum licenses
T-Mobile swallowed "Boost" whole
... "because it is very important
[for us] to make the future happen
[now] and [for us to] win the race"
2024 rolled into Las Vegas January
While telecom executives had been
shouting about 5G to the rafters
just a few years ago in 20 and 21,
in Vegas 2024 5G was sotto voce.
5G has actually arrived of course
and is working very well. In Qatar
but 2020 dreams have not [yet?]
materialised ... tout la monde.
Instead, we have Texan Swifties
streaming concert footage
directly to their home routers.
Deploying 5G at the speeds needed to win an imaginary race resulted in one less major wireless carrier to choose from and lots of debt to repay in the USofA. Operators in 2025 and facing 26 are looking for any bit of profit they can drum up
They had tried to tell the USofA that "mmWave" was 'real' 5G. They had tried to sell "low-band 5G" which was slower than 4G. AT in USofA is now trying to convert its existing network into stand-alone 5G as it lights up mid-band spectrum, but that’s a years-long mast-by-mast chore.
5G as a concept for fifth generation
technology standard ... see Wiki
Selling private networks, or secure, high-bandwidth networks, for industrial and manufacturing businesses is being whisper touted as a possible earner, but only as passing remarks about its potential.
The main problem is that carriers aren’t set up to sell their services to specific industries. If you want to sell 5G and edge computing services to a hospital, you need a sales team which knows and understands healthcare, knows exactly how hospitals work, knows the specific problems and has the solutions or at least how to approach them.
They are likely to be the doctors the nurses the attendants the cleaners in the hospitals and every other single 'vertical industry' — transportation, logistics, manufacturing, hospitality, hospitals needs similar structures and people.
Edge Computing Services
enable devices to process data at source, rather than send it to a remote data centre.
But bringing 5G to manufacturing isn’t exactly a snap of the fingers exercise. Not every manufacturer needs or even wants 5G. There may be 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 what does it deliver?
There is one 5G 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:
FWA isinternet that enters your house by radio wave rather than cable. It is a total non-starter in the UK because 'fibre is everything' and until such time as it IS everything we are not going to talk about FWA
FWA is what is fitted in Pentargon
Truly WIRELESS and truly off-grid.
Fixed Wireless Access is broadband access using wireless connection to attach a 'premises' to the broader internet. Antennae mounted on the roof on a pole are less expensive to fit by several orders of magnitude than fibre optic cable with no need to to dig up streets and gardens
The real, transformative benefit of 5G will be a combination of network advances and changes in behaviour.
People will start to see 5G working in situations where they would not have expected to find reliable connection
-- 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 a carrier can give priority to one kind of traffic is another likely way 5G will go. Network Slicing is for safety-critical applications, like autonomous cars, allowing networks to “prioritize the car going through the intersection [at the expense of] the YouTuber in the back seat.” At the moment they can’t.
Edit from here WIP 20250810
A standalone 5G network is needed to make Slicing work, something only BT has achieved so far in UK and something almost no-one in Joe Public's orbit knows about.
This is being experimented with as I edit in late 2025 while the streets of Leamington Spa and every town in England are dug up to bury fibre-optic.
Even if 5G isn’t just smoke n mirrors in 2026, UK networks ...
apart from EE
...backed themselves into a corner. They thought they had bought a golden goose with 5G, but so far, it’s laying cuckoo eggs — expensively, at that.
It probably doesn’t help Americans who have only 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 in the USofA that was supposed to materialise from T-Mobile’s Sprint acquisition deal. T-Mobile was allowed to gobble up Sprint by selling Boost to Dish, 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 meets FCC requirements. 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. All tech does, but it will only be when the networks have fully deployed standalone 5G. Stop holding your breath for that killer app and make peace with the fact that technological progress is slow and boring — moving forward ... mast by mast ... rather than leaps or bounds. If it’s any consolation, take comfort in the fact that we probably won’t be seeing 6G anytime soon.
CDMA
Code Division Multiple Access.
CDMA is the purest rocket science.
Even AI cannot explain CDMA
in simple language
Look it up on Wiki
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 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 by bus to get a one hour slot on the library computer and then an hour trip back to the boat. Sometimes I would take my laptop 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 landside. 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 constantly maxxed out. I needed 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.
Antennas are Gaia's ears tuned to the universe
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 was future-proofed so that was what I got. For the router I opted for a Lithuanian Teltonika RUT241. The Poynting is sophisticated. 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. Teltonika then analyses what the Poynting sends in, decides what it considers best for the user. It then transmits it wirelessly within the hull of the steel boat which acts as a Faraday cage so no-one outside can even sense the router. I have loaded as many as eight devices with no loss of performance in soak tests during 2025. [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 late 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 four Samsungs all with two sims, big storage and extra addable as required. I have not measured but the devices can probably store most of a terabyte between them which is just as well because there are apps on board using gigabytes on their own and all for a cause.
The main onboard laptop now is a Dell 7390 backed up by a Dell 5285 WiFi initially went on trial in mid 2023 after the boat had been lorried to the Midlands. It 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. The router digested and delivered everything supplied by the aerials.
Poynting 600s have two aerials inside the shield and they talk to each other. One polarizes horizontally, the other vertically. Having discussed what they are doing among themselves, they send separate outputs by hard-wire to the Teltonika which unbelievably takes what the Poynting supplies and re-analyses it to tailor a best compromise for transmission within the boat, beaming a composite signal from its own internal aerial for use by all the devices within.
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. 5thGen (5GNR) is 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 the most basic use and my needs were very basic most of the time back then. THREE LEDs showed up quite often, meaning I could actually work with my laptop. Downloading on three 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 eight accounts. FIVE LEDs would 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 to a place where the cut was wide and there was a better skyview for the solars. When I powered up the Teltonica it showed FIVE LEDs. Hello? I have never seen FIVE LEDs. FIVE means the boat must be receiving next year's WiFi this year.
Entirely by coincidence the Poynting had sniffed out a 5G node and my system had locked into it. If a boat is properly wired for 5G and senses a node it locks in without any intervention. Something like how induction loops sensing water boil it for you. 5G may be in the future but it is in use here on my boat in 2025. I have seen it download a measured 500mb in five seconds. That is 100mb per second. (Land houses get maybe 27 or 28mb)
When 5G kicked in that first day on the Grand Union I was listening on a very old mobile to Paul Brady singing 'The Island' when I realized the clarity was superb. I could hear his fingers hitting the strings and his intake of breath as he sang. This is what I used to experience at live acoustic gigs in smokey Dublin 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 as I dabble along the ditches of England in August 2025.
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 by bus to get a one hour slot on the library computer and then an hour trip back to the boat. Sometimes I would take my laptop 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 landside. 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 constantly maxxed out. I needed 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.
Antennas are Gaia's ears tuned to the universe
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 was future-proofed so that was what I got. For the router I opted for a Lithuanian Teltonika RUT241. The Poynting is sophisticated. 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. Teltonika then analyses what the Poynting sends in, decides what it considers best for the user. It then transmits it wirelessly within the hull of the steel boat which acts as a Faraday cage so no-one outside can even sense the router. I have loaded as many as eight devices with no loss of performance in soak tests during 2025. [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 late 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 four Samsungs all with two sims, big storage and extra addable as required. I have not measured but the devices can probably store most of a terabyte between them which is just as well because there are apps on board using gigabytes on their own and all for a cause.
The main onboard laptop now is a Dell 7390 backed up by a Dell 5285 WiFi initially went on trial in mid 2023 after the boat had been lorried to the Midlands. It 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. The router digested and delivered everything supplied by the aerials.
Poynting 600s have two aerials inside the shield and they talk to each other. One polarizes horizontally, the other vertically. Having discussed what they are doing among themselves, they send separate outputs by hard-wire to the Teltonika which unbelievably takes what the Poynting supplies and re-analyses it to tailor a best compromise for transmission within the boat, beaming a composite signal from its own internal aerial for use by all the devices within.
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. 5thGen (5GNR) is 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 the most basic use and my needs were very basic most of the time back then. THREE LEDs showed up quite often, meaning I could actually work with my laptop. Downloading on three 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 eight accounts. FIVE LEDs would 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 to a place where the cut was wide and there was a better skyview for the solars. When I powered up the Teltonica it showed FIVE LEDs. Hello? I have never seen FIVE LEDs. FIVE means the boat must be receiving next year's WiFi this year.
Entirely by coincidence the Poynting had sniffed out a 5G node and my system had locked into it. If a boat is properly wired for 5G and senses a node it locks in without any intervention. Something like how induction loops sensing water boil it for you. 5G may be in the future but it is in use here on my boat in 2025. I have seen it download a measured 500mb in five seconds. That is 100mb per second. (Land houses get maybe 27 or 28mb)
When 5G kicked in that first day on the Grand Union I was listening on a very old mobile to Paul Brady singing 'The Island' when I realized the clarity was superb. I could hear his fingers hitting the strings and his intake of breath as he sang. This is what I used to experience at live acoustic gigs in smokey Dublin 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 as I dabble along the ditches of England in August 2025.
