Technology

I haven't even bought a 5G phone yet. My carrier keeps threatening to cut 4G coverage in various areas, and has already axed 3G entirely, rendering large swathes of otherwise perfectly functional devices useless. So far my 4G Moto Z still works. For now.

At this point my conspiracy opinion that the constant "generation" changes are mostly to just force people to buy/lease new phones and devices. Even pokey old 4G has always been more than fast enough for all of my mobile internet activities. Hell, even 3G was.

I have no less than four otherwise flawlessly functional phones in a desk drawer that just won't work with my cell carrier because they've either turned off 3G or discontinued the specific 4G bands those devices need.

4G, 5G and now 6G are worthless if cell providers don't provide enough bandwidth to the towers. The range also keeps decreasing as the generations increase, so now there are these big gaps that 3G used to cover.

In my area, 5G is slower than 4G and both have lower signal and slower speeds than 3G used to have. I need a dual SIM phone and to constantly switch my phone between AT&T and T-Mobile, and both are crap. I only use about 1GB in total too, and I'm lucky if I can pull more than 1 megabit on either service. I miss 3G speeds, coverage, and competition.

Worst of all, AT&T is forcing home users to switch to a 5G hotspot from DSL. It's probably a big part of why the cell towers are always overloaded too. Imagine running your home internet on 1 megabit with constant drops...

"This is an important research question because we can see mobile traffic going up over the next decade by a factor of 10 or even a factor of 20. "

Wtf are they going to do with that? Always-on video from wireless devices everywhere? Holographic movies on every web page? It sounds terrible. I remember having to make phone calls for basic communication. These days you send a text or email, except now and then you want the higher bandwidth of a voice call. That is, we have been moving toward LESS bandwidth rather than more.

Whatever is imagined being done with all the new bandwidth can't be good.

Most want ubiquitous and affordable/cheap mobile internet without the hassle of signing contracts. Moving tech tiers past 4G isn't relevant for consumers as of now.

Said the Phone/ISPs top earning guys while looking at their bank accounts extracts.

Why don't we just skip 6G and just go straight to 7G

If 5g makes the frog gay would 6g negate it?

With 4G covering all my needs flawlessly, idk if I'd need a new gen. With a laptop, probably, but a smartphone, or even tablet? Ping across the globe is a bigger offender than speeds. Having a 2-3 sec delay when calling anyone, even though having a smooth detailed picture, is more annoying than having a 480p and an instant response. Cloud gaming suffers from it too. But that's on ISPs, international lines, and that's harder to change than introducing the 6G in phones and local towers.

Silicon Valley really wants to make XR a thing.

Current tech does not need 5G and the shit that they think will need 6G is just needless XR systems that will be steaming an unjustifiable amount of data from the "cloud".

The enshittification continues. Happy 2024 folks

If the carriers keep offering 10GB per month or "unlimited" plans, why I would want to spend the whole big amount in 5 seconds?

I didn't see the point there.

From my humble POV they just want to advertise and marketing about they being the first ones in having 6G while the thing they should do it's INCREASE THE FUCKING DATA AMOUNT, PEOPLE(ME) NEED MORE DATA NOT SPEED TO SPEND THEIR DATA IN 5 SECONDS. DUMB MFS.

We Moroccans don't even have 5G countrywide yet, and yet you guys are already prepping for 6G? At least wait for everyone to catch up.

I can hear the conspiracies already!

I have no 5G where I live. Maybe it's time to wait??

Does this mean we can do proper voice over 4G already? Last time I heard it was just for the selected phone models with specific software.

WE DIDN'T NEED 5G

I’m still waiting for 5G to revolutionize everything like every carrier promised it would.

Qualcomm is erect

Just skip to 10G already.

it would be difficult to make it good

The fact that she's wearing a yellow shirt in the article thumbnail makes this just 👌

https://youtube.com/watch?v=RKc4QhMSFG8

I think I might be the person who benefitted most from 5G. I live in mid-size city that gets overrun with tourists a few times a year. The speed upgrade hasn’t mattered much but it’s been awhile since I couldn’t get on the network because of capacity problems. It used to happen half the time I was in a crowd. LTE basically never worked well at big sporting events and concerts.

That might not be because of 5G tech, though. Maybe carriers just got better at deploying extra capacity for major events?