5G Was An Over-Hyped Dud. Prepare For Nobody To Learn Absolutely Anything From The Experience
from the it-only-gets-dumber-from-here dept
We’ve noted for several years how the “race to 5G” was largely just hype by telecoms and hardware vendors eager to sell more gear and justify high U.S. mobile data prices. While 5G does provide faster, more resilient, and lower latency networks, it’s more of an evolution than a revolution.
But that’s not what telecom giants like Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T promised. Both routinely promised that 5G would change the way we live and work, usher forth the smart cities of tomorrow, and even revolutionize the way we treat cancer. None of those things wound up being true (I enjoyed talking to one medical professional who basically laughed in my face about the cancer claim).
When 5G did arrive, it didn’t even live up to its basic promise, really. U.S. implementations were decidedly slower, spottier, and more expensive than many overseas networks, thanks to the usual industry consolidation and U.S. regulatory fecklessness. The end result: wireless carriers associated a promising but not world-changing technological improvement with hype and bluster in the mind of consumers.
In a bit of a retrospective, Washington Post tech columnist Shira Ovide looks back at the 5G hype and hopes that maybe, just maybe, somebody in industry will “learn their lesson” from the experience:
We and companies that make technology must acknowledge that not every new technology changes our lives — at least not in a way that makes for a compelling science fiction movie…5G was an incremental technical improvement that companies tried to tell us was a revolutionary leap. It wasn’t.
The sentiment of the piece is absolutely correct. Industry claims should be grounded in reality to ensure consumers, markets, investors, and the public have a realistic, fact-based understanding of a technology’s potential.
But in case you hadn’t noticed with NFT, crypto, AI, and every other technology hype cycle that rolls through, there’s no financial incentive for measured introspection of this type in the attention economy we’ve created. You don’t get the kind of headlines and attention companies and VC’s crave by explaining what a technology actually does, you increasingly get it by being monumentally full of shit.
That’s particularly true with a technology like 5G, that wasn’t a revolution so much as an evolution of existing tech. Not to say 5G doesn’t bring value, but faster, lower latency networks that are easier to maintain simply isn’t sexy, and to keep boosting marketing and investment returns in this increasingly unhinged attention economy, companies are routinely motivated to embrace the preposterous.
Filed Under: 5g, broadband, hype, networks, telecom, wireless
Comments on “5G Was An Over-Hyped Dud. Prepare For Nobody To Learn Absolutely Anything From The Experience”
The real problem is that politics is not about the truth, but rather about telling whatever story will get the result that you want.
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“Facts are stupid things.” – Ronald Reagan
5G is so last decade
Here in Africa we’re busy developing 6G, along with China and India. China already has satellites in orbit that use 6G. It’s going to be really great once China has finished building its permanent base on the moon!
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The United States needs to regain the global lead in communications, so I say we should skip 6G and go straight to 7G. Tachyon network here we come!
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Screw that! Let’s jump to 10G, it’s way better.
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But this one goes to 11.
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6G hasn’t been defined or ratified, so whatever tech China is championing is only a potential option for 6G standards. They publish these things each decade, so we’ll know about the fundamental 6G architectures in 2027 or 2028. Unless they’re just making up generations now and not talking about standards.
Re: Screw Latancy
Lets hit 10g, and place the Sats in High orbit(as they already did with Hughes)
Lets blast the Planet with frequencies that will alter Sci fi.
hold on...
not exactly a dud…it did cause Corona
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Please tell me the /s is missing
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The beer? The outermost layer of a star’s atmosphere?
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5G caused a mediocre beer?
Just in case the lack of an /s was intentional, there’s a lot of corona viruses, COVID-19 was notable because it was newly introduced into human populations without any pre-existing protection, but we knew about corona viruses in general, which was why vaccines were fast tracked with relative safety. We knew how to fight them, we just waived the usual speed bumps.
6G will be the greatest thing evar!
6G will be the greatest thing evar!
The new 6G has been in development for quite some time by the marketing department.
How about this...
I live less than 3 miles from Washington D.C., and I work less than 10 miles from D.C.
For the last 12 years, all I have wanted is the ability to receive calls, or possibly make a call or two during my commute.
I have a 5G phone with T-Mobile service, and yet with all of these technological advancements, I still don’t receive some calls, and dialed calls often take upwards of thirty seconds of 5g to 4g to Volte or 2g logo switching at the top of the screen before a call is either dropped or poorly connected.
I don’t give a fuck how many G’s there are, how about they just put some effort into making the fucking thing work!
Re: what you want
IS for the corps to finish what they started. THEN Match what other nations already have, with 3g/4g.
WONT happen. The builders are GONE, only the bill collectors are still at their desks, looking for NEW ways to Charge you more.
It's all about the money
In the end what’s important to the telecom giants is money. If they can make their money’s worth off the hype, they will keep doing it. The only way they will learn is if they take a loss in their wallet.
In this case they mostly seemed to be OK with the profits. So the over-hype duds will continue. (Surprising nobody whatsoever.)
Re: As much as I hate to say it...
…but let’s put the blame where it really belongs: on the shareholders and investors/investment firms who pressure the telecoms into doing these things.
I honestly think businesses and even major corporations would be much better off in the long run if they didn’t have to meet the unrealistic demands of continuous growth.
Same with LTE back in the day...
I remember the hype around LTE and 4G/LTE back when it was new. AT&T was so desperate they created the pseudo-4G and called it “LTE” but it wasn’t really. The promises were similar to the 5G hype, and the reality was similarly disappointing.
Biggest dud since...
The Segway! Remember how that was going to shape cities and change the world? Thanks, Dean, for making mall cops even lazier.
What do you mean it was a dud? It caused covid and the effects are still going on. I’m wondering what the 6G pandemic will be.
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i hope you’re joking
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Assuming you’re not joking, how does it feel to be in constant fear of fiction? For the rest of us, the natural mutation of a type of virus that had caused previous pandemics was enough to be concerned about, why do you need to introduce a new fear?
idk about 5G.
I got the vaccine some time ago and have not yet been able to connect to my wifi! How do I enter the password, do I just think of the password and it connects?
/s jic
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You also have to point your finger at the router – the signal is directional.
A comment 7 years too soon
When we get to 2030 and start looking at 6G deployments, 5G will have made a broader impact. 5G is predominantly a business focused technology, not consumers. Its capabilities target reliability, low latency, high-density, and (of course) more RF bands and flexible deployments. Most of that isn’t something the new iPhone is going to show-off. Also, 5G is still in its ‘early years’ being a 2020 technology. Like LTE, it is going to take several years for people to take full advantage. If you feel the same in 2030, I’ll listen. In 2023 you are being too quick to judge.
I never saw the need for 1 Gb bandwidth into a tiny device such as a cellphone. 4G is more than enough.
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When and where of the fixed wire network has been abandoned, and there is no cable, mobile can be the only, expensive and capped, service available to some communities, other that Starling or other satellite service. As a fixed line substitute, 1Gb is allowing US phone companies give up the POTs network, rather than upgrade it.
from what i understand, it’s only an ‘over-hyped dud’ here, in the USA and that’s only because the industry giants dont wanna spend any of the millions they get in subsidies to upgrade their equipment and lines! nowhere else is having the problems that we’re getting, so what does that tell you??
Re: Of course!
Capital Expenditure projects like infrastructure upgrades have 10+year ROIs. The major shareholders can’t wait 10 years to be able to buy their next yacht!
Welcome to the influence of the Wall Street Mentality
The financial markets’ need for infinite quarterly growth is why this happens. Companies have to position new products as revolutionary and world-changing in order to get customers to abandon their perfectly-acceptable and not-really-that-much-different older products so that the profits can keep going up.
We have to change the way financial markets think before this will ever get better.
Know what would be good?
If I didn’t have to drive 82 miles for true 5g in texas…. thats right I said it … and it doesn’t matter of the network .
I barely get good 5G in Redmond (I don’t live near Microsoft, a fact for which both of us are thankful). Around MS Campus the towers are saturated and there’s the construction of the new Transit Center so I assume they’ll build out new towers or micro-cells in the new buildings themselves … not like they aren’t laying back-haul bandwidth right now anyway.
Downtown Redmond doesn’t have enough towers, and those are saturated.
Where I used to live at the South tip of town, they took a tower out for the Light Rail construction, and my old neighbor and friend (Azure Microsoftie) is complaining about congestion ~17:00 to 20:00h, which tracks. (Again, I’m certain deals for a new tower are in motion.)
But Redmond always amuses me at how backward and Surburban it is here (it’s currently marketing itself as “Urban” trying to get the Hip kids to move from Seattle … City Hall uses Microsoft’s Marketing tactics because most of Council are retired Microsofties).
But I digress.
* 4G-LTE is actually what 4G should have been.
* 5G is 4G-LTE (incremental upgrade).
* 6G isn’t a standard so screw it in the kidneys with a brick.
But wait, my fellow bandwidth whores …
I saw this on the side of a Bus the other day and I literally had to stop and Face Palm. I ignored it for my sanity, but now I had to look it up and yeah…
https://www.xfinity.com/10g
So like Windows, MacOS, and MySQL/MariaDB we’re just going to jump to #10.
“Because Ten Sounds Important!” – George Carlin
As someone who just last night saw an ad for 10G service I think it’s fairly safe to assume they haven’t learned or changed their tactics even after the 5G faceplant.
The packet core is an improvement!
The 5G packet core in its pure form is a big improvement: diameter is all but gone! It’s all HTTP, and that means a lot of mature, fast, transparent, non-proprietary libraries. It also is vastly more flexible for specialized use cases. In reality, we’re not done with diameter yet in most providers’ environments, but it’s a good start.
I don’t have an opinion on the RAN: that’s something I never deal with directly.
Well, you clearly don’t live in a location with 5Guc
Those of use that have it, it’s a game changer. In time it will reach you. And you, too, will experience the major benefits of the new technology.
It’s not honest, to pout on something simply because you don’t yet have access to it.
The only place a 5g signal on my cell phone seemed to actually do what was promised was inside AT&T Stadium in Arlington, TX. Of course I paid a small fortune to attend an event there.