Is 5g a con?

When 5g was announced and then rolled out we were told we would have lightning fast speeds of 100mbps+ and would open up the potential for unrestricted video calls which would help many businesses.

In reality thats not happened. Im on o2 so maybe that speaks more about their network. But ive done speedtests where i live, and in a few major cities in the UK like Leeds & Manchester. At best i got 20mbps down and similar up. At peak times that drops to 9mbps down. Its often faster to go on 4g

Its not the speeds we were told. So what happened?

5G you have to be nearest by the 5G mast! End of! Just like G.fast, you have to be nearest by the G.fast pod.

I can only speak from personal experience, but in Camberley town centre, my work iPhone 13 can record about 450 download on speedtests to the local 5G service.

Telford Town Park it getting speed of 1,200Meg down and 140Meg up. (with three network)

In reply to a post by bobble_bob:

Its not the speeds we were told. So what happened?

Contention - it's a shared service - unless you're on there alone, you're sharing.

I think your problem is O2. I can pull 150Mbps through a weak Vodafone 5G connection that according to them shouldn't be available indoors, strong Vodafone 4G from a rural mast can get 160Mbps. I get over 100Mbps from my not brilliant iPhone on the train with EE.

5G here is mainly useless, the few people i know that have 5G on their phone say it is useless if you go in between buildings or in buildings. Saying that, I know a few people in different parts of the country and some say it is great and others say it is useless, most of the problems seems to be when you are in between building, more so high rise buildings in larger cites. So it seems it is the luck of the draw, I feel that the technology is a bit iffy, and we are being led up the garden path that 5G is great and it is not.

Some of the issue with building penetration will depend on which frequencies the mobile operator is using in a particular area - the higher the frequency the less it will work in buildings. I must admit O2 have never seemed particularly impressive for speeds, other networks have potentially better coverage and speeds. 5G will improve as the older technologies get turned off and the frequencies are reused for 5G coverage.

In reply to a post by ian72:

Some of the issue with building penetration will depend on which frequencies the mobile operator is using in a particular area - the higher the frequency the less it will work in buildings. I must admit O2 have never seemed particularly impressive for speeds, other networks have potentially better coverage and speeds. 5G will improve as the older technologies get turned off and the frequencies are reused for 5G coverage.

i know about higher frequencies, because the wave lengths are shorter they bounce off the buildings. Used to have the same problem with 934 Mhz CB radio and if we have problems down there, then these higher frequencies will have more of a problem, using more power is not going to make any difference.
As scotty used to say, you can't change the laws of physics.

We will see if things get better, it will be a long time before I bother with 5G, I am going to keep my phone as long as I can. No desire to buy a 5G phone, when i go for a new phone if the one I choose to have 5G then fine, but I am not going to buy a phone for 5G, not worth it here anyway.

Why did you ask about 5G then if you already know the answers? And after asking about 5G what is the point in then posting to tell us you aren't going to get it? You raised the questions but seems you already know enough about the technology to know the answers.