BT promises 5G Standalone for 99% of the UK by 2030 BT wants to have 5G Standalone (5G SA) mobile service available to 99 percent of the local population by the end of the decade, but it isn't the only telco with lofty ambitions. The former state-owned telecoms monopoly reckons it can reach 99 percent of the population with 5G SA network coverage years ahead of rivals, and is …
What 1%? 5G+ will be damn near perfect. But if that's not good enough for you, summon a bit of patience and wait for 6G which will provide 5 bars with 10gbps bandwidth anywhere within the orbit of Neptune.
After 3+ decades of wading through this stuff, I find it hard to believe that any entity with an IQ higher than that of the average turnip thinks IT/Telecom marketing promises have any credibility.
I don't understand what this means. I can be in the centre of London with 5 bars of 5G and yet still need minutes to open a Google map of my location because there's not enough bandwidth. There's a huge difference between having a good 5G signal and having enough bandwidth to make use of it.
So does the article mean that BT is offering to have more 5G but the same bandwidth so a similar service as today or will this standalone service add extra data?
The 'other version' is 5G NSA for Non-StandAlone (terribly original naming). "5G NSA" means using the 5G radio base stations for connections to mobile equipment, giving higher call density and bandwidth etc. All of that traffic is still routing back to the operator's existing 4G core network. Which then means no reserved network slices or other promised 5G goodies, just "4G with more connections".
5G SA (Standalone) is what was meant to be 5G; 5G+ is just marketing...
If you are using an MVNO (company that resells someone else's service) it is probably on a lower priority. Some companies have different priorities within their own customers, reserving higher priority for the more expensive set of plans.
In the US for example Verizon's MVNOs are all on a lower priority than Verizon's postpaid customers. Their prepaid plan (Visible) is on a lower priority also if you have the entry level one. The higher levels are at the same priority as the postpaid customers. When I first signed up for Visible I took the entry plan since it was cheaper and I figured I'd find out whether the priority mattered. Turns out it doesn't 99% of the time where I live, but in certain places at certain times I'd have 5 bars but no data at all. I stepped up to the next plan and that never happens.
Curious to see how well this article will age.
I simply don't believe this metric at all.
More than happy for history to prove me wrong.
Previous form:
R100 in Scotland - originally due to have completed by end 2021 - now planned to be done by March 2028 (some delays caused by a challenged procurement process for one of the three region lots), with public funding increasing from £600m to some £640m for 'enhanced coverage'.
In short, I am not holding my breath...
And fortunately people only use their mobiles at home. Never on the train, or the motorway, or out in the countryside. I mean what reason could you possibly have for wanting to contact someone from a remote place? A genuinely pointless metric for the utility of the network.
There are 4G cell sites relatively close but the terrain means we don't get service in the house, even on the 700-800Mhz band. Even if they put a cell in the village centre it wouldn't cover some outlying parts, again because of terrain, so the numbers won't add up for any of the networks to put a small cell here. WiFi calling is a poor substitute for the 3G femtocell we had in the house for years.
"At the same time, another Brit telco, Virgin Media O2 (VMO2), is also rolling out massive MIMO support"
Since O2 merged with VM, their support function has disappeared down the toilet. A shame, because it was genuinely quite good 10 years ago...
So they can rollout whatever they like now - They'll never drag me back.
grumble mutter grumble...
Last time we did an update we stuck with half-measures, but promised you full service. Now we are rolling out the proper service we can't use the proper name, because we already lied about that one. So we'll use an even better name for an even better service, which is really only the service you thought you were getting last time, but it's better, so we'll charge more.
I travelled to Malaysia over the summer and the difference between that and the UK as regards phone coverage and functionality is night and day.
Even in middle of the thickest rock formation, the Batu Caves you get some reception and levels of service you'd get in the UK. That's barely 1 bar and about a megabit of download.
The rest of the country is bathed in 4 and 5G, which you can get a decent connection down, anything from a few hundred megabits out in the suburbs to gigabit everywhere in the city centre.
They also seem to have a lot of in-building coverage (shopping malls have no coverage issues inside), whether this is down to the DAS at work, a large amount of antennae, great spectrum planning or just a combination of the above they do know a thing or two about how to get the mobile network to work, and not charge the earth for it.
Contrast this when I'm at the office in Canary Wharf for a large bank and I get a call, wander away from the window and the reception cuts out, the person can't hear me.
99% “coverage”.
1% “bandwidth”
Mobile phone services are a complete scam. They tell the regulator how wonderful their service is with their 99% coverage map.
Let’s see the data download statistics?
Yes you might get 4 bars of “signal” on your phone but zero ability to transfer any data.
There’s whole counties in the UK where data transfer is slower than dial up.
Where I live, they are turning off 3G to areas where there is no 4G or even plans for 5G. I very much doubt the 5G+benefits will be felt here.
Is there a reason I need 10Gbps on my phone?
If they do roll out a "new network", then presumably it won't support IPv4 - if we're improving things rather than migrating, lets got IPv6 for sure!
Maybe these telcos should complete the rollout of one technology before they start the next - that's what I get told about projects I start at home!
