• krakenx@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    4G, 5G and now 6G are worthless if cell providers don’t provide enough bandwidth to the towers. The range also keeps decreasing as the generations increase, so now there are these big gaps that 3G used to cover.

    In my area, 5G is slower than 4G and both have lower signal and slower speeds than 3G used to have. I need a dual SIM phone and to constantly switch my phone between AT&T and T-Mobile, and both are crap. I only use about 1GB in total too, and I’m lucky if I can pull more than 1 megabit on either service. I miss 3G speeds, coverage, and competition.

    Worst of all, AT&T is forcing home users to switch to a 5G hotspot from DSL. It’s probably a big part of why the cell towers are always overloaded too. Imagine running your home internet on 1 megabit with constant drops…

    • XTornado@lemmy.ml
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      9 months ago

      Yeah but eventually they upgrade plus lots of them want to remove copper if they haven’t yet and switch towers to fiber so I feel eventually it improves but yeah slower than expected.

    • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      8 months ago

      slower speeds than 3g

      wtf that’s not even possible where even country how

      • atrielienz@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        The infrastructure is newer, more people are switching to 5G out of necessity, and the influx of newer users is straining that infrastructure which is not prepared for it.

        5G is supposed to have taken over the network frequencies of 3G (15MHz to 20MHz) from 800 MHz, 850 MHz, 900 MHz, 1,700 MHz, 1,900 MHz and 2,100 MHz bands. The problem with that is the higher the frequency used, the farther it travels through unimpeded space, but the lower it penetrates in impeeded space. 5G (1GHz to 6GHz) on the same frequency bands won’t penetrate as far in dense urban population centers with large buildings.

        So yes, 5G can send more data at a faster rate. But don’t confuse bandwidth with signal clarity or penetration. Because higher frequency doesn’t always mean better operation or even better transmission. The receiver also figures into what is being transmitted. You can have the biggest array with the highest UHF and if the receiver isn’t in a place with optimal reception, or it’s not built for that input it will mean nothing. That’s the difference between Bandwidth and Frequency. https://www.pcmag.com/news/5g-is-here-but-how-it-performs-varies-widely-depending-on-where-you-live

    • u/lukmly013 💾 (lemmy.sdf.org)@lemmy.sdf.org
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      9 months ago

      That thing with 3G sounds right. I usually switch to 3G when I want faster speeds than 4G, which gets me only around 1-3Mbps during the day in my location*. If I do want even faster speeds, I have to use the internet between 1-4am when I can reach pretty nice 40Mbps.

      Unfortunately, when connected to 3G of Orange in national roaming, I can only use 20GB as stated in the FUP (my carrier doesn’t offer 3G). However the carrier has confirmed they unofficially allow up to 40GB for some reason.
      But that’s not enough for me. I use around 80GB per month on mobile data, but sometimes I reach up to 150GB.

      *In some areas with lower population (typically small villages), I get almost the maximum theoretical speeds of 75Mbps.

  • casual_turtle_stew_enjoyer@sh.itjust.works
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    9 months ago

    Silicon Valley really wants to make XR a thing.

    Current tech does not need 5G and the shit that they think will need 6G is just needless XR systems that will be steaming an unjustifiable amount of data from the “cloud”.

    The enshittification continues. Happy 2024 folks

    • Flat Pluto Society@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      When I had a Pixel 6, there was a bug that caused awful battery drain when on 5G, so I changed the preferred network setting to LTE for like a month while waiting for them to fix the issue.

      It had NO effect on my regular use at all. Running speed tests showed that my max download speed was significantly slower while using LTE, but that’s obviously not indicative of real world usage. If there was any difference between LTE and 5G in terms of page loading, media streaming, etc during regular daily activities, it wasn’t perceptible.

  • andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works
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    9 months ago

    With 4G covering all my needs flawlessly, idk if I’d need a new gen. With a laptop, probably, but a smartphone, or even tablet? Ping across the globe is a bigger offender than speeds. Having a 2-3 sec delay when calling anyone, even though having a smooth detailed picture, is more annoying than having a 480p and an instant response. Cloud gaming suffers from it too. But that’s on ISPs, international lines, and that’s harder to change than introducing the 6G in phones and local towers.

  • XTornado@lemmy.ml
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    9 months ago

    Said the Phone/ISPs top earning guys while looking at their bank accounts extracts.

    • Paranomaly@sh.itjust.works
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      9 months ago

      They’ll skip 9 as that seems to be Kryptonite to tech. Both Microsoft and Apple decided to skip straight from 8 to 10 with Windows and iPhone respectively.

  • rar@discuss.online
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    9 months ago

    Most want ubiquitous and affordable/cheap mobile internet without the hassle of signing contracts. Moving tech tiers past 4G isn’t relevant for consumers as of now.

  • If the carriers keep offering 10GB per month or “unlimited” plans, why I would want to spend the whole big amount in 5 seconds?

    I didn’t see the point there.

    From my humble POV they just want to advertise and marketing about they being the first ones in having 6G while the thing they should do it’s INCREASE THE FUCKING DATA AMOUNT, PEOPLE(ME) NEED MORE DATA NOT SPEED TO SPEND THEIR DATA IN 5 SECONDS. DUMB MFS.

    • Aux@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Every generation boosts capacity. Speed increase is just a side effect which is easy to market. 5G didn’t bring enough capacity as its roll out was too late. 6G is too late now as well. We need something like 10G and we need it yesterday.

  • Critical_Insight@feddit.uk
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    9 months ago

    I’m barely getting a decent 4G connection. My phone does support 5G but I haven’t even considered paying for it as I see no point. Even 3G is fast enough for my needs.