Confused about 5G? So are we, say carriers

The world of 5G remains confusing – even to the carriers who we've been told are demanding the new standard as quickly as possible, it seems. With 4G penetration standing at just five per cent of the world's connections, a shortage of spectrum available for new standards, professional scepticism and plenty of hype, 5G has …

[Anonymous Coward]

Cart beats horse

Given that we're talking mobile, I'm guessing this will be another one where the marketing weasels will be way ahead of the engineers - they won't actually know what it is, but they'll spend a tedious amount of time persuading us that they do know, the features are amazing and we really really must have it. And naturally that its going to cost more.

As ever, far more heat than light.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Cart beats horse

True that. Once everyone has 4G everywhere, some marketing guy is going to decide that their network should be marketed as 5G.

After all, we haven't even hit _3G_ yet - we'll need LTE-A before we can hit 100 Mb/sec that was the original requirement. The 100 Mbps mobile and 1 Gbps fixed listed here for 5G were part of the original requirement for 4G. We're many years from that! By the time we actually hit true 4G, I expect we'll be on 6G with rumblings about 7G around the corner :)

[William Donelson]

1 - 10 Gbps

At those data rates, what about signal penetration?

[DainB]

Re: 1 - 10 Gbps

Look at WI-FI 802.11n and later range.

[Chris Miller]

What is it for?

Please help, I'm struggling to understand what benefit I would get from 1 Gbps to my mobile device - the ability to stream (multiple simultanous) 4K movies to my 4 inch screen? I realise that there are some areas where a physical line is practically impossible (or, at least, hugely expensive), so a 5G service might be a good alternative to a fixed broadband wired connection. But what I (and I bet I'm not alone) want from mobile data is reasonable speed (a few Mbps) that works everywhere and on the move and (preferably) doesn't flatten my battery after an hour's continuous use. Instead of building out new 5G networks in city centres, let's improve 3G so that it extends to 98% coverage by location (not by population).

[D@v3]

so we'll have a nice incomplete deployment of 4g to add to our incomplete deployment of 3g? I guess that if we give it a few years, we will be able to add to the collection an incomplete deployment of 5g, when 6g gets announced to fix all the problems with 5g (which in turn will be fixing the problems with 4g).

As an aside, i thought the whole thing about 4g was that LTE was Long Term Evolution, and that 5g was unlikely to be a 'thing' for quite some time, because they would be able to work on and improve 4g for the foreseeable future. Or is, (as i expect is the case) the whole 5g thing just marketing bollocks to squeeze more money from us mugs?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Or is, (as i expect is the case) the whole 5g thing just marketing bollocks to squeeze more money from us mugs?"

You and I know the answer already. For reasons of simple economics, geographic coverage will be about the same as the current network. Ditto, the actual 5G versus 4G and other legacy standards (that despite plans to the contrary will probably not be turned off and networks upgraded). Expect crap like 2G, half data rate connections and intermittent connections for the next fifty odd years at least. At least the much delayed and over budget HS2 will eventually run to the same soundtrack as the trains of today: "Hello! HELLO! I'm on the train. I SAID I'M ON THE TRAIN. Look, can't hear you, I'LL CALL YOU BACK LATER".

All the "investment" in 5G will be EE's Kevin Bacon's fees, O2's Sean Bean soundalike fees, and marketing expense (but if you call it "brand" you can capitalise it).

[choleric]

4G take up

When data caps rise proportionally to bandwidth then the networks might see increased 4G take up. Otherwise it just is not worth it. A reasonable 3G signal is plenty for most websites and soshul meeja.

[Anonymous Coward]

What is 5/9?

Available five days or hours out of nine days or hours? Is that an improvement?

Oh for a jargon free pseudo-technical site that does not assume every reader is a specialist in the subject.

[Magnus Ramage]

Re: What is 5/9?

Try googling the phrase that's actually in the article - "five-nines" not "5/9". It refers to 99.999% service reliability, i.e. almost all the time (though not often enough for some purposes). Agreed about the value of jargon-free websites but El Reg is aimed at techies, and the term is in widespread use. And Google is your friend in such cases.

That said, the list that referred to "five-nines" did feel unusually full of corporate jargon by the standard of El Reg. At a quick glance through the GSMA article, it appears to have been largely pasted from a list in the report - though amusingly enough the original did actually talk about 99.999% reliability...

[Cliff]

Re: What is 5/9?

BTW true 99.999% uptime is usually bollocks.

It's something like 1 hour downtime every decade.

[Cliff]

Re: five nines

It's also a handy shortcut to knowing a project is poorly defined and doomed to failure. If a manager asserts that some dumb departmental intranet app must have 'five nines' availability, you can bet he's not planning on paying for the redundant servers in geographically distinct farms, redundant networks, instant stateful failover handling, 24*7*365 support plus on call fees for support devs, plus all the frequent refresher training, reversion testing, supplier SLA insured contracts, etc., etc., ...

What they mean is 'I want it to work when I use it (but not paddy for that stuff which because I don't understand it must be unnecessary)'. I.e. poorly specified project hence doomed to failure.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: five nines@ Cliff

"It's also a handy shortcut to knowing a project is poorly defined and doomed to failure."

You're on form today, sir!

[TheProf]

5G for Dummies

Here's a quick Tomorrow's World style look at 5G.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04tr348/click-29112014

No technical details so don't expect to be enlightened.

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I've seen of the proposals for 5G (which is likely a long way from what will get delivered) I suspect the world will settle on 5G as the solution for built up areas. It's looking like the transmitters will be fairly small and short ranged so only really suited to high population density areas. Out in the wild I'd guess we'd continue to use a mixture of 3G and 4G for years to come simply because it wouldn't be cost effective to upgrade.

I'm placing my money on 5G in built up areas because 3G isn't fast enough and 4G has taken too long to reach it's current penetration level. If 5G looks like it's only going to be a few years out I can't see the networks investing heavily in 4G infrastructure. Of course you could argue the same for 5G but really once you have the potential for 1Gbps (or more) to the phone what is the driver for upgrade?

[St3n]

Be able to make phone calls?

Don't see that listed...

[Teddy the Bear]

4G market penetration

The 800MHz spectrum for 4G came with a requirement for 98% indoor population overage by 2017. O2 bought this band and have this requirement, and while it's not location based (which would be preferable) it should make a significant difference to the roll-out of 4G in rural areas. Until the investment all the networks have made in 4G is paid off, I doubt there will be appetite in the UK for 5G from the carriers.

[Oninoshiko]

5G is great and all, but

can I get 4G, please?

[JimWin]

3G anyone?

Making calls where I live is just about possible by hanging out of one particular upstairs window in my home and even then reception is fragile. So the mobe is almost solely limited to text messages unless I get out of our valley to a local town.

Love the ideas for 4G and 5G but how's about a decent level of service on plain old 3G?

I was hoping that some good would come from PM Cameron finding out that his mobile was practically useless in the South West. But now he's back at the office, maybe he forgot.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: 3G anyone?

"I was hoping that some good would come from PM Cameron finding out that his mobile was practically useless in the South West."

You are an incorrigible optimist. The problem with your Cameron-logic is that the man's a fucking simpleton, a home counties blue blood inbred. He wouldn't know how to turn a phone on, never mind answer it. And therefore if it doesn't ring (for a flunky to answer on his behalf), it must simply mean that nothing urgent has happened, rather than that it isn't working.

Or maybe at Eton they teach all students to avoid mobile phones and mobile phone coverage. That served fellow old boy bin Laden well for at least ten years. Do you think the USN Seals could be persuaded to renact their raid against Britain's current old-Etonian public enemy number 1?

[DerekCurrie]

*Snore* - We require REAL 4G before bothering with this '5G' marketing rubbish

This is getting old and boring. '4G', as used in the industry today, is merely a marketing term. There is no for-realz 4G available on the planet so far. I'm not going to bother with a lecture on the subject. If you care, you can read about the situation here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4G

http://www.qualcomm.com/solutions/wireless-networks/technologies/lte-advanced

Watch for the term 'LTE Advanced' as a heralding in of real 4G. Meanwhile this "5G" thing is, depending upon who's talking about it, either baloney solely for the purpose of hype, or a wish list for next-decade mobile. Not gonna happen very soon!