5G

Greetings. I hope you are all safe and well?

Mods: please move if in the wrong forum.

Just thinking out loud about 5G Mobile internet, do you think it will replace fixed line internet anytime soon (or 6G in the future)?

It's not in my area yet, but is it suitable for a small family consumption (assuming price is acceptable)?

Thoughts anyone . . . .?

In reply to a post by astanden:

Greetings. I hope you are all safe and well?

Mods: please move if in the wrong forum.

Just thinking out loud about 5G Mobile internet, do you think it will replace fixed line internet anytime soon (or 6G in the future)?

It's not in my area yet, but is it suitable for a small family consumption (assuming price is acceptable)?

Thoughts anyone . . . .?

i can not see it replacing fixed line broadband, fibre is more reliable and much faster. For people where getting fixed line broadband would be expensive, if they are in the sticks, then yes 5G may work for them
At the moment 5G is unreliable and not the super-duper system that it have been made out to be, sometimes 4G is faster.


The other thing is, keeping the masts safe from people that wants to destroy them

Maybe your personal experience with 5G is unreliable.

Personally I find 5G to be perfectly reliable and often its a cheaper alternative to fixed line broadband.

I doubt you could find 250mbps fibre for less that £20 a month.

Radio is fundamentally a shared medium. Every 5G user will be sharing a mast locally with other users in their area.

For an example during the first lockdown the 4G speeds in my neighbourhood on EE collapsed from 100 Mbps down to 4 Mbps. Primarily due to everyone being at home 24x7 for 3 months, not something that had been included in the planning.

Today 5G is not a dense network, outside of large cities (e.g. national capitals). For example in my town there are around 18 masts for EE running 2G/3G/4G. I suspect when 5G arrives it will be added to the super tall ones for the best coverage, so maybe 3 of that 18.

I can't see the price or performance keeping pace with demand

Fast 4G/5G could be a big help to rural communities if invested in, Spain have expanded 5G coverage in several large cities and its working/coping well so its a doable option if pushed.

I don't think it will replace fixed line services like FTTP but from what I've seen of it on Vodafone, it's pretty fast.

I've seen speeds of 600mbps but in areas with fixed line fiber services easily available.

It'll be a revelation in villages and rural areas before fiber gets there.

In reply to a post by neo_wales:

Fast 4G/5G could be a big help to rural communities if invested in, Spain have expanded 5G coverage in several large cities and its working/coping well so its a doable option if pushed.

I agree, if low density population, as in rural, and one or two masts, then it should be quite useful.

Only problems could be getting signal far enough as many rural communities are quite spread out.

In reply to a post by andaroo79:

Maybe your personal experience with 5G is unreliable.

Personally I find 5G to be perfectly reliable and often its a cheaper alternative to fixed line broadband.

I doubt you could find 250mbps fibre for less that £20 a month.

I have had no experience with 5G, we don't have it here, I doubt we will get it here for years, as far as I know the only company that was going to put 5G here was refused the permission by our council.
But I can read, and I do know of people who have 5G and none of them are that impressed, go pass a building and 5G is blocked, or go inside and again 5G is blocked. Speed wise is hit-and-miss by all accounts, I was chatting to someone last week on discord and they were using 5G, and they were saying that the bandwidth was not there to even send a file over without interfering with voice.

Maybe you are close to the masts or have them on your doorstep, which is the only way to get 5G to be reliable, multiple masts, and I am not one of these people who think 5G is dangerous, I really would not want them on my doorstep.


You are correct, I doubt it is possible to get 250Mp/s fibre, for £20, but for that £20 do you get that speed all the time? The other thing is, once/if 5G is country wide, how long will they keep that 250Mb/s for £20 and is it unlimited?

the fibre service that is coming here, offers 100Mb/s for £30, but at least you can be pretty sure you will get that speed unless there is congestion.

I do think 5G will help people that will never be able to get a decent fixed line broadband service, but I certainly don't think it will replace fixed line, otherwise, why would a company spend millions here to put in fibre?

I used a wireless broadband service for 2 years, not 5G and the speed was only 10Mb/s, but still faster than what I could get at the time, I liked the service, it worked well, until the very end when they could not cope with the amount of people using it, I still have the mast on my roof as they did not come to take it down, it is a good conversation piece . I went onto plusnet as by then we had FTTC and have stayed with them since.

If we had 5G here and the price was right then I would think about using it for home use if it was reliable and that is the thing, reliability. I am more interested in reliability than super-duper speed.

When Fibre is rolled out here, i will see what plusnet can offer me price wise, if they do a good deal I will stay with them, but if the price is close to what fibre will be then I will go with fibre.
My problem with fibre is the hassle in having it installed and the fibre can be damaged.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

I have had no experience with 5G, we don't have it here, I doubt we will get it here for years, as far as I know the only company that was going to put 5G here was refused the permission by our council.

Do you have 2G, 3G or 4G today that you can get indoors? If you do, then in a few years you will have 5G that replaces those, or the networks will shrink the capacity of 4G and add 5G, to cope with the constant increasing in demand for data.

But I can read, and I do know of people who have 5G and none of them are that impressed, go pass a building and 5G is blocked, or go inside and again 5G is blocked.

Those problems are caused by the frequency, in the UK currently only 3.4GHz to 3.8GHz is used. (In the US things are vastly different). Lower frequencies have just been auctioned by Ofcom, and the existing frequencies the mobile networks use can also be used for 5G (or 4G).

Speed wise is hit-and-miss by all accounts, I was chatting to someone last week on discord and they were using 5G, and they were saying that the bandwidth was not there to even send a file over without interfering with voice.

This is because our mobile phone networks are generally lying to us with the 5G indicator on the phone. It is quite likely to get the 5G indicator but still only have a 4G signal, only because the area you are in has 5G. For more on that read this.

Maybe you are close to the masts or have them on your doorstep, which is the only way to get 5G to be reliable, multiple masts, and I am not one of these people who think 5G is dangerous, I really would not want them on my doorstep

If you get 4G today, you will get 5G in the future, as the same transmission frequency will be moved to the new protocol.

My problem with fibre is the hassle in having it installed and the fibre can be damaged.

This is where I think we want large companies looking after the installation, the likes of Openreach and Virgin Media whom have proved they have a workable business. I worry about some of the smaller alternate networks.

Edited by jchamier (Sun 21-Mar-21 13:55:13)

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Do you have 2G, 3G or 4G today that you can get indoors? If you do, then in a few years you will have 5G that replaces those, or the networks will shrink the capacity of 4G and add 5G, to cope with the constant increasing in demand for data.

4G is pretty good here, depending on who is providing the service, Vodafone is awful, I use smarty, and they use the three network, and it is good.
3G is ok as well, I switched 4G off on my phone for over a week to see if I could manage with 3G and to be honest it made no difference, mainly because I use my Wi-fi here and if I go to friends, I use their Wi-fi. so it was only in town or when going for walks that I really used the mobile network.
I feel there is little need for 5G on mobile phones, I may have to get a new phone soon, but it won't have 5G on, not worth paying the extra for something I will never use.
By the time 5G do come here, I expect I would be replacing that phone again, I normally keep my phones for 4 years or more.

We were told that 2G would be switched off and yet it is not, granted three have switched it off as I know, but my old Nokia 3310 will still work with a Vodafone sim in.

Those problems are caused by the frequency, in the UK currently only 3.4GHz to 3.8GHz is used. (In the US things are vastly different). Lower frequencies have just been auctioned by Ofcom, and the existing frequencies the mobile networks use can also be used for 5G (or 4G).

Maybe, but the main reason 5G gets the faster speed is because of the higher frequencies. We also still need backwards compatibility, people still have equipment that uses 3G only.
Someone at work use a normal non-smart phone, it uses 3G and there are a lot of people that still only use a normal phone.

This is because our mobile phone networks are generally lying to us with the 5G indicator on the phone. It is quite likely to get the 5G indicator but still only have a 4G signal, only because the area you are in has 5G. For more on that read this.

But that is the U.S, or is it the same here?

If you get 4G today, you will get 5G in the future, as the same transmission frequency will be moved to the new protocol.

So what was all this, we will need masts in lamppost about when we first heard about 5G? Surly putting 5G in lower frequencies is going to lower the speed?
I admit I have not read up much about 5g for a while, as there is not really any point, I doubt we will see 5G here for a few years and even if we do, I will not be buying a 5G phone.

This is where I think we want large companies looking after the installation, the likes of Openreach and Virgin Media whom have proved they have a workable business. I worry about some of the smaller alternate networks.

I agree, but I hate openreach as a company, as there is no way to contact them if there is a problem, and you have to rely on your provider and no doubt that will be the same for openreach fibre as well. i do like the idea of one network and being able to choose different providers, but we need to be able to contact the company in charge of the network.

The company that laying fibre here is pretty small, in fact very small, they have only done one other town, but the bloke behind it, Matthew Hare, started up gigaclear and to be honest that bothers me, he seems to be the sort of person to start something up, grow bored with it and flog it for as much as he can get. Then the network end up with some other company I may not want to deal with, like Talk Talk.

As I have said in other threads, I have until at least January to make up my mind as I in contract with plusnet until then, that will give me time to see how reliable Zzoomm is, get peoples opinion on it here and how much hassle it is to install and see if Matthew Hare flogs it.

We will see what happens, in both 5G and the fixed line broadband services, I really have no use for 5G, so even if it was available here i would not go out to buy a phone that handles 5G and I certainly would not pay any more for one.
I have been having a gander at the Oppo range of phones the A72 is around £220, there is a OPPO Reno4 Z with 5G for £250, but I doubt I would go that high.
To be honest as I have said in another thread I dislike all the phones on the market, but my little p10 lite, now take over 8 hours to charge from 50 %, I have it on charge now.

fibre, again not interested in super-duper fast speed, as long as I can do what I need to do, watch stuff on netlfix, Disney or what ever then that is fine for me. I can wait a few more seconds or a couple more minutes for a file to download.

Price is what i care about.