Verizon and T-Mobile confirmed that mm wave 5G is only for dense, urban areas, not rural

[captain_to_fire]

Source: Ars Technica [here] [here]

 

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Verizon's early rollout of millimeter-wave 5G is producing high speeds and throughput, but the high-frequency spectrum isn't suitable for widespread coverage, Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg said today.

 

One day after T-Mobile CTO Neville Ray wrote that millimeter-wave spectrum "will never materially scale beyond small pockets of 5G hotspots in dense urban environments," wireless industry analyst Craig Moffett asked Vestberg about Ray's statement during a Verizon earnings call.

Vestberg responded that millimeter-wave spectrum "has lived up to our expectation on performance" and will get better as Verizon improves the software for managing the spectrum. But he added a significant caveat.

 

"We will need to remind ourselves, this is not a coverage spectrum," Vestberg said.

 

Taken together, the T-Mobile and Verizon statements this week indicate that 5G's fastest speeds won't come to rural America and will be limited to certain areas even within big cities.

 

5G networks will use both low and high frequencies, but they're expected to offer their highest speeds on millimeter waves. These high frequencies generally haven't been used in cellular networks because they don't travel far and are easily blocked by walls and other obstacles.

 

T-Mobile and Verizon both have high-frequency spectrum licenses in the 28GHz and 39GHz ranges, which they can use for high speeds in densely populated urban areas. Both carriers used sub-1GHz spectrum to provide nationwide coverage with 4G, and they can use that same low-band spectrum with 5G.

For 5G in rural areas, then, the carriers seem likely to focus on making better use of lower-frequency spectrum instead of deploying millimeter-wave networks to any significant extent.

So basically forget about those promised near gigabit speeds if you're living in rural areas with 5G because it is economically expensive. Even VZ's early 5G test reveal that finding a good 5G signal is a hit or miss as CNET and others have tested.

 

I remember back in 2010 Verizon's ad campaign for 4G LTE was big and deployment was fast because of their 700 MHz LTE which has the advantage of penetrating walls and wider propagation from a single tower.

Even the likes of 1800 MHz or 2100 MHz can be scaled to have a wider coverage. If you ask me, 5G becomes less and less exciting compared when 4G LTE was launched as it was a huge leap forward from 3G HSPA+ (or EVDO if you're network still uses antiquated CDMA while the rest of the world uses GSM). That is why so many tech reviewers disappointed that the iPhone 4s was only a 3G phone while Android phones like the HTC Evo 4G or the Samsung Galaxy S2 is taking advantage of the new LTE networks. It was a shame that Apple's first 4G LTE device was the 3rd gen iPad (and other problems) and not an iPhone.

 

So if this is the case, how can 5G compete with wired internet as promised? I know that the amount of bandwidth for mm wave 5G is a lot compared to existing LTE bands to the point that true unlimited data can be achieve without congestion but if coverage is the problem, I doubt that it will provide unlimited high speed internet to rural areas that is comparable to FTTx internet unless they use spectrum that is less than 28 or 39 GHz. I'm not an engineer but it might be doable with 6 GHZ and houses need to have an antenna receiver installed which is connected to a modem and that could provide internet to people in rural areas. I know Samsung is about to release their 5G Galaxy S10 but if you have to be outside just to experience 5G speeds, I think good old LTE-A (aka true 4G) from the existing Galaxy S10 and other phones is still speedy (unless it's an iPhone with the weak Intel modem).

[LAwLz]

This is not really a surprise. mmWave is meant for high density places, with small cells covering maybe a room in a public building, mall or smaller outdoors areas with high concentration of people (like town squares). For less densely populated, or geographically larger areas, then 5G is basically just a slight upgrade from 4G.

 

Gonna repost my comment from an earlier thread regarding 5G:

Spoiler

On 4/17/2019 at 2:50 PM, LAwLz said:

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OK, forgive me if I'm wrong... but I see it like this:-

 

People that have good/great 4G reception don't care as they get great speed already.

People that don't have good reception, would actually benefit from 5G because 2 bars on 5G beats 2 bars on 4G for internet speed? 

It depends.

 

Quote

If you are going to get a a low 5G signal, there is close to zero chance of you not getting a better 4G signal, at least in the way which carriers are deploying their networks. Have you ever come across an issue, where you get 4G, but not 3G? 

 

From physics standpoint, the higher the G, the higher frequency waves are being used, which also inherently means it would have lower range. So multiple 5G antennas would be required to fully cover an area with 4G served by 1 tower. That's the reason why 5G antennas have been proposed to be put into street lamps every corner, rather than dedicating towers for it 

You're somewhat right, but somewhat wrong.

 

4G operates between 450MHz and 5900 MHz (depending on band). In Sweden it's mostly band 20 (800MHz), band 8 (900MHz) and band 3 (1800MHz) that are used.

 

3G operates between 699MHz and 3590MHz (again, depending on band).

 

AT&T uses 850MHz for their EDGE network, which means that my 4G connection here in Sweden is often at the same or lower frequency than Edge (2.5G) for AT&T customers.

 

 

The reason why you often get a better 3G signal than 4G signal is because the newer generations often use more granular modulation, which in turn requires a cleaner signal. The higher the speed, the more prone to interference the signal is. So it drops the modulation precision (and thus speed) until the tolerances are big enough to support the noise on the signal.

So even if you were to use 3G and 4G at the same frequency, in order for 4G speeds you would need a cleaner signal than for 3G.

 

 

 

5G has two parts to it.

One is called RF1, which uses frequencies below 6GHz to send data. This will work the same way as current 4G implementations, but with slightly higher speeds.

 

The second one, which is the really interesting one, is called RF2 (also known as mmWave or EHF which stands for extremely high frequency). It uses 24GHz to 52GHz frequency (which is, as the name suggests, extremely high). The drawback of these high frequencies is that they are terrible at penetrating objects. It most likely won't be able to go through a wall.

The benefit is that these high frequencies is that they are terrible at penetrating objects! Which means that the radiowaves from one carrier or tower will not be able to interference with the signals from another carrier or tower. This in turn means that once you do get a signal, it will be extremely clean, allowing for very precise modulation, with very large channels and thus very high speeds.

 

Basically, right now we have a problem where there are so many 2G, 3G and 4G signals everywhere (at least in the cities) that the signals are really unclean and hard for our phones to decipher. mmWave fixes this by making the signals have terrible reach, but once you're in reach they are excellent. The new problem (terrible reach) will be overcome by installing small, low power mmWave 5G antennas everywhere.

 

mmWave will be especially useful for areas with large crowds (like concerts, town squares, etc).

For the most part when you're out and about, you will probably be connected to RF1 (sub 6GHz) frequency though, and at that point 5G is just a slightly improved 4G variant.

 

[williamcll]

Over here they are planning to just use whatever's left of 3G/4G bands and put 5G there.

[Ithanul]

9 hours ago, captain_to_fire said:

I'm not an engineer but it might be doable with 6 GHZ and houses need to have an antenna receiver installed which is connected to a modem and that could provide internet to people in rural areas.

Folks have already done such with 4G suite and cable across microwave shots or repeaters or antennas hooked to SIM card capable modems (like the Mofi Network ones), but seems the companies don't bother to offer such to rural consumers or just don't see profit in doing such.  Probably could be regulatory issues with the FCC as well (they oversee frequency usage within the States).

[PlayStation 2]

Almost as if that's how phone coverage is always rolled out.

We know that these companies don't give a shit about those in rural areas: they're gonna be the last to get them.

[captain_to_fire]

46 minutes ago, handymanshandle said:

Almost as if that's how phone coverage is always rolled out.

We know that these companies don't give a shit about those in rural areas: they're gonna be the last to get them.

Except with <1GHz LTE, the nationwide roll out in the US was fast including rural areas. That's why mm wave 5G is something people in dense cities can only enjoy.

[xtroria]

While gigabit connection on your mobile phone is cool and all, I feel that it won't be such a crazy jump in the end.

 

Most of the network will be saturated in the end and I doubt we'll see speed more than 100 Mbps. Not to mention that even with LTE, most of the time the speed is limited due to the infrastructure bottleneck from the operator and not the protocol bottleneck of LTE itself.

 

I'm just really skeptical with how 5G can be transmitted given the plan to use really high frequency transmission. Heck, even 5Ghz wifi is almost impossible to get once there are 2 walls between you and the router.

[Jito463]

Is this really surprising to anyone?  All one needs to do is look at how the technology works (requiring multiple points within a small coverage area), and you can easily deduce that it's not feasible outside of dense urban zones.

[mr moose]

18 hours ago, xtroria said:

I'm just really skeptical with how 5G can be transmitted given the plan to use really high frequency transmission. Heck, even 5Ghz wifi is almost impossible to get once there are 2 walls between you and the router.

we shall know by the end of this year.  Telstra have rolled out 5g in most Australian capital cities and are supposedly starting to sell 5g modems.  I think by the end of the year we'll have a better idea how well it's going to work in the field.

[Donut417]

On 4/24/2019 at 7:16 PM, Dan Castellaneta said:

Almost as if that's how phone coverage is always rolled out.

We know that these companies don't give a shit about those in rural areas: they're gonna be the last to get them.

You also have to look at the fact of population density. The reason why rural areas rarely have cable or fiber providers is that the population is not close enough to each other to make it profitable. Same thing with 5G, to do it right, they need Fiber to the tower. If the infrastructure is not that, or if they have to build more towers for low population density, it frankly is not worth it.  Its not that they dont care, its that a businesses job is to make money. 

 

If you want good cellular service/ Internet service......Live in the city. If you want vast open areas and lots of land, then you live out in BFE. 

[FunkmastaFlex]

Still waiting for 4g in rural areas

[Eaglerino]

3 hours ago, Donut417 said:

You also have to look at the fact of population density. The reason why rural areas rarely have cable or fiber providers is that the population is not close enough to each other to make it profitable. Same thing with 5G, to do it right, they need Fiber to the tower. If the infrastructure is not that, or if they have to build more towers for low population density, it frankly is not worth it.  Its not that they dont care, its that a businesses job is to make money. 

 

If you want good cellular service/ Internet service......Live in the city. If you want vast open areas and lots of land, then you live out in BFE. 

Rural areas, which are usually in small towns, are sometimes the worst administrative wise. Two towns I've lived in had a city council of members who had been in charge since they were in their 20s, and refused to let any new ISP move in because they would utterly demolish the locally owned, family operated, absolute garbage ISP that still uses Adobe Flash for their graphics on their website. raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaage

 

eventually both of these towns complained enough the council caved and let in whatever bigger ISP wanted to take over but I had moved by then

[ScratchCat]

On 4/24/2019 at 2:07 PM, captain_to_fire said:

 

"Can you just open the window?"

"Yeah sure, you need some fresh air?"

"Nah, I want to connect to the fast 5G"

 

It's quite abysmal that it isn't even proper line of sight. Even WiFi would probably be a better choice, offering similar speeds with established and so cheaper products.

[Donut417]

7 hours ago, FunkmastaFlex said:

Still waiting for 4g in rural areas

Good luck with that. 

[suits]

Saw this coming from a mile away. This is why I don't get all the hype people seem to have about 5G. 

[Donut417]

1 hour ago, suits said:

Saw this coming from a mile away. This is why I don't get all the hype people seem to have about 5G. 

Also AT&T confirms that they intended to charge more and have 5G capped. So 5G is no better than my capped Comcast connection.