sometimes being faster isn't everything its cracked up to be:-ask your wife/girlfriend

Haha, very true!

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

half hearted rollout, only Three seem to be taking it seriously.

e,g, in my city three has about 80% coverage.

EE has close to 100% 4G coverage but barely 3% 5G coverage, Looks like BT as new owners of EE stopped the previous EE investment on new masts.

That's why we all hate greedy BT bossess. Huge profit, less for customers as a lowest slow speed on 4G/5G from EE.

In reply to a post by techguy:

Having had a bit of an interest since getting my first phone when I was 17 in 1999 it seems an ever repeating cycle of hype which equipment manufacturers are more than happy to profit from.

Network equipment manufacturers need to get operators to spend vast sums so come out with new kit that purports to allow them to do more with less:

More subscribers per cell
more power efficiency etc.
New services
cells that cover a wider area, etc.

Operators think 'ehey this is great' so open their chequebooks

Small testbed established, press and bloggers (some of whom should know better) get invited and all go wow and write puff pieces

Network equipment manufacturers may have divisions that make handsets (or have stakes in companies that do) so they come out with handsets that take advantage of the new kit's capabilties.

Operators buy these by the container load to get customers omto the very expensive network they've just started to build.

Rollout continues over years, early adopters rave until majority of traffic shifts and everything slows.

Yes, it's a marketing con.

You forgot a step: operator looks at shiny new expensive network and says "sh*t, it's not generating us any extra revenue. I know: why don't we sell it as a fixed broadband replacement with unlimited data use?"

What we are being sold as 5G is a con. As far as I know, and certainly in my experience (limited to just one location and three networks) all 5G in the UK is just a wrapper on top of 4G.

However, that's not all bad. EE used to give about 65 to 75 mb/sec downloads and then they rolled out 5G on some of the local masts.

At the time, my only 5G modem was elsewhere, but I saw download speeds immediately rise to about 120 to 130 mb/sec, sometimes peaking at over 160, which amazed me.

I excitedly brought over the 5G unit and tried it. No 5G. I was using a virtual network which didn't offer 5G.

So then I brought over a 5G-enabled EE sim and tried that. Yup, there is 5G, but only NSA 5G.

Predictably, there is as much variance between subsequent tests as there is between 4G and 5G.

Unfortunately, the Three 5G signal is not really good enough to do a fair comparison.

The Vodafone 5G seemed more or less identical to their 4G, but my Voda sim gave me a lot of grief elsewhere, so I no longer have it available to test with.

I don't know what the marketing or technical advantage is in offering 5G, but the advantage to to users is that it seems to encourage the network to provide a little more backhaul. And yes, it does give 100mb/sec and better, even if I only use 4G

In reply to a post by adslmax:

That's why we all hate greedy BT bossess. Huge profit, less for customers as a lowest slow speed on 4G/5G from EE.

Any customer who is unhappy with the service they get and/or the price they pay, still has three different networks they can move to instead.

In reply to a post by ian72:

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.

I did not ask about 5g

In reply to a post by candlerb:

Any customer who is unhappy with the service they get and/or the price they pay, still has three different networks they can move to instead.

That is true, unless they are in a very long contract and paying stupid amounts per month.
I have not had a contract for my phone for a few years now, just monthly rolling sim only thing, one of the better things I have done, buy a chepish phone outright, my Oppo is a good phone and then pay next to nothing per month with smarty.

I will never go for a phone contract again, I wish I could do it with home broadband to be honest and keep it at a decent price, but without a contract, broadband is stupid prices. Need to get rid of contracts.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

half hearted rollout, only Three seem to be taking it seriously.

Not really, the goal posts were moved during deployment with Huawei banned. That's resulted in hardware shortages to complete the core. Additionally, backhauling 5G speeds from masts isn't cheap. From mast to core is mainly still 4G spec.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

EE has close to 100% 4G coverage but barely 3% 5G coverage, Looks like BT as new owners of EE stopped the previous EE investment on new masts.

4G capacity adds & 5G tech-adds are onto existing sites.

EE's 4G & 5G expansion is very far from being stopped.