Ready for 5G ?

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Dreamsend

Dreamsend

Well-known member
Joined
Aug 16, 2016
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614
It's coming. I understand the equipment is about the size of a public supply electric power transformer -- doesn't need more huge towers. 

Article below just verifies it's existence but doesn't explain much.
http://www.indystar.com/story/news/2017/02/03/indianapolis-test-market-ts-new-5g-network/97398376/

And gee, I just bought my VERY FIRST smart phone last week on Verizon 4G LTE.  Samsung Galaxy S7.  Found out upon researching yesterday  that Samsung abandoned HDMI cable to TV with the S6 model.  I'm so confused about how my communications and entertainment are gonna work in the RV, I can't even form intelligent questions to ask. :-[
 
Dreamsend said:
And gee, I just bought my VERY FIRST smart phone last week on Verizon 4G LTE.  Samsung Galaxy S7.  Found out upon researching yesterday  that Samsung abandoned HDMI cable to TV with the S6 model.  I'm so confused about how my communications and entertainment are gonna work in the RV, I can't even form intelligent questions to ask. :-[
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Your S7 has Miracast built in and so do many smart TVs.  Miracast was designed to mirror smartphone and PC displays onto a TV.  On your S7 Miracast is called Smart View and the button for it is on the "notification shade" that pulls down from the top of the screen when you drag your finger down it.
 
In spite of all the hype, there is not yet a complete, finalized 5G standard, from all I see in the tech world. And there are no 5G phones. So, unless I'm totally misunderstanding all the stuff on the tech sites out there, AT&T's 5G is really just them starting to put in some equipment that will be needed when 5G rolls out for real. For example, read this IndyStar article from early February and this NetworkWorld article from mid-April.
 
In addition, most of that spectrum T-Mobile won at auction that they plan to use for 5G will take several years for the affected TV stations to transition away from it or shut down.
 
I'll be surprised if we see wide spread 5g in less than five years. We probably won't notice much difference anyway. The primary advantage of 5g is that it uses that valuable sprectrum mor efficiently.

Ernie
 
My 4G LTE streams perfectly when I have good Verizon coverage. Unfortunately their unlimited data plan drops to 3G after 10GB of data usage. Makes streaming Netflix a little problematic. May go back to my 24GB plan.
 
First... Why do Cell companies put their antennas at the top of tall things?

BECAUSE HEIGHT IS MIGHT

5G, 6G, 210 G, won't change that.. You eithe put up a relatively few TALL towers which can see for miles and miles.. Or a whole lot (Relatively) short "towers" that can see perhaps one  city block if you are lucky.

Second. HDMI to TV..  Samsung did not abandoned it with the S-6 they just chanced how you do it.. Chrome Cast.
 
Bill and Debbie said:
My 4G LTE streams perfectly when I have good Verizon coverage. Unfortunately their unlimited data plan drops to 3G after 10GB of data usage. Makes streaming Netflix a little problematic. May go back to my 24GB plan.
Click to expand...

I'm currently about 2/3 through a movie I'm streaming from Amazon. As a test, I'm streaming it on my unlimited 3g only flashed Verizon Jetpack, with zero buffering so far...

 
I stream Netflix on 3G with a Novatel USB modem usually every night. But John is correct. The single biggest improvement to my streaming in the RV was when I added a push up antenna to my cell antenna. Just getting up above  the noise from all the other rigs in a park made a huge difference. 

I saw where T Mobile purchased about 60% of the new 600 mhz bandwidth recently. They plan to roll out 5G on it, but it is going to take a while. 
 
I might add on my Height is Might comment.. IN some big cities with lots of high rise buildings (Say NYC) you'd need to be in orbit to get decent range.. So they put up hundreds of what they call "Micro-cells"  And yes, these are good for about a city block, or one side of it..

Hotels often have Microcells inside the building as well.

T-Moblie (And I assume others) Sell microcells, about 100 bucks.. Plug 'em in to your Wi-Fi (Cable or Fiber-optic) Router and you get 4-G coverage for just a couple hundred feet
 
Icolan said:
From my point of view, this is one of the best technologies nowadays
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I don't see how the 24.25 to 52.6 GHz band can be very reliable after even a rather short distance. That's a lot of wavelengths in a very short distance.

I don't expect 5G to be all that useful to me.

-Don- Reno, NV
 
UTTransplant said:
I will be more interested when 5G comes to rural areas.
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I don't ever expect that to happen. Range will be very limited on 5G and there is little they can do about that. In the cities, it should be fine at most locations. A few miles out, I doubt you will get a 5G signal at all.

-Don- Reno, NV
 
UTTransplant said:
This sounds like more of a marketing message than anything else. Many of us RV in places where 4G is still a luxury. I will be more interested when 5G comes to rural areas.
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With all due respect, the kind of 5G that is spreading rapidly in the US is very different from the 5G that has been marketed at us for the past several years. The 5G we have been hearing about for years is based on the use of millimeter wavelength broadcasts which are very short-range in nature and best suited for use in densely populated areas. That's the 5G that most of us will never see.

What's spreading throughout the US right now is what is known as DSS 5G which stands for Distributed Shared Spectrum in which parts of the 4G frequency spectrum are repurposed for a form of 5G. The result isn't as fast as the millimeter wave 5G but it is usually faster than 4G. The real "action" in DSS 5G is in what is often called the <6 GHz part of the spectrum. Those frequencies penetrate buildings and go through wooded areas nearly as well as do conventional 4G signals. In addition, T-Mobile has allocated part of Band 71 for low frequency 5G.
 
That's why Verizon is strongly encouraging CDMA users to convert to 4G and "HD Voice" - VOIP over 4G or now, 5G. They want to use the existing CDMA and 3G spectrum for long distance 5G.

Visible was launched as a pilot program to test moving users off the CDMA network. In return for converting your phone to use VOIP on 4G instead of CMDA for voice calls, you'd get an incredibly cheap monthly rate with unlimited everything ... voice, text and high speed data. The first trial was was limited to certain iPhone models and worked well, they downloaded a software patch when you signed up for Visible service. But they ran into problems when they tried expanding to other iPhones and the vast array of Android phones. They soon gave up trying to convert existing phones and concentrated on selling new phones already configured for VOIP.

Shutting down Verizon's 3G and CDMA network has been delayed three times, the original date was at the end of 2018, then at the end of 2019 and finally at the end of 2020. The current plan is not to shut down 3G and CMDA all at once, but to phase them out while phasing in 5G on those frequencies starting at the end of 2021.

Verizon delaying shutdown of its 3G wireless network
 
docj said:
That's the 5G that most of us will never see.
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Somebody must have overheard me say that wasn't such a great idea. ;)That was what I said when I first heard about (the older) 5G.
Lou Schneider said:
Shutting down Verizon's 3G and CDMA network has been delayed three times,
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As is expected. I cannot think of any major radio change that wasn't delayed a few times. Reminds of many years ago when the phone company gave us a date to give up all of our DC lines that were being used to key up some old base transmitters for the C&C of SF. Delay after delay but I forgot how many years after their final date it actually became true. In fact, I am still not 100% sure it ever happened. Perhaps you can tell me, since you used to install base transmitters (BTW, for whom?).

I was an Emergency Radio Systems Technician for CCSF (35 years, until I retired). IIRC, you also worked in the SF Bay Area.

-Don- Reno, NV
 
DonTom said:
As is expected. I cannot think of any major radio change that wasn't delayed a few times. Reminds of many years ago when the phone company gave us a date to give up all of our DC lines that were being used to key up some old base transmitters for the C&C of SF. Delay after delay but I forgot how many years after their final date it actually became true. In fact, I am still not 100% sure it ever happened. Perhaps you can tell me, since you used to install base transmitters (BTW, for whom?).
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I was a broadcast technician and worked for several smaller radio stations in Santa Rosa and the North Bay before graduating to KCBS and later Bonneville (KOIT/KDFC). I built studios and installed and maintained the broadcast transmitters, not two way stuff. We moved away from DC control lines to tone control in the early 1960s well before the phone company began pushing to eliminate the DC lines.

Now the Telcos are pretty much out of the point to point dedicated circuit business, everyone has converted to the Internet for voice and data lines.
 
Lou Schneider said:
Now the Telcos are pretty much out of the point to point dedicated circuit business, everyone has converted to the Internet for voice and data lines.
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Most of our stuff was redundant in various ways. For one example, MW or landline, one or the other, two possible base stations per channel. Even DC on MW (kinda). If the base required DC keying it still had to get its DC even when on MW, to key with the DC remote stations.

But by far, it was mostly tone control even back in those days.

But for many years before I retired, it's all been trunking, simulcast on MW, with other types of failure modes such as Site Trunking and Failsoft. All the repeaters key at the same time, all exactly on frequency to the hertz or so, all with the exact same amount of FM. It used the GPS time signal.

No more need for any landlines at all. Now the CC&SF stays with the latest technology. But I have been working there since the late 1970's, so I saw a lot of changes.

-Don- Reno, NV
 
One thing to remembrer,, (This not a comment on 5G but on thinking)
There is 5G meaning generation 5
And 5 G meaning 5 GHz
The later is wi-fi
The former cellular
 
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