I live in a major city with cable internet everywhere along with fiber in some areas (unfortunately not mine), but I’ve had multiple instances of carriers’ salespeople knock on my door selling 5G home internet service.
The reason this doesn’t make sense to me is 5G will always have a much higher latency than any wired alternative — it really only makes sense to sell this stuff in rural areas without the infrastructure. What’s more is the most recent carrier has a reputation for extraordinary coverage but their network is CDMA so their network speed is one of the worst in the city.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to sell this stuff elsewhere?
Not true. Really crappy wired solutions (because the provider’s network is poorly maintained, or poorly designed) can easily be worse than a wireless solution. However for the sake of argument, lets assume that both the wired and wireless provider both have well designed and maintained systems.
A wired solution can absolutely have lower latency, but what latency are you okay with and are you willing to pay for much lower latency that you don’t need? Consider the following scenario:
Assuming equal bandwidth would it be worth it to you to pay $65 extra dollars per month for 10ms less latency? How many consumers do you think care that much that are only streaming netflix, checking email, playing phone based mobile games? Those are real example costs from my area. If you are a Verizon cell phone customer can get from 100Mbs to 300Mbs at about 40ms latency for $35/month.
— it really only makes sense to sell this stuff in rural areas without the infrastructure. What’s more is the most recent carrier has a reputation for extraordinary coverage but their network is CDMA so their network speed is one of the worst in the city.
We’re talking 5g here. It would be a really bad solution for rural areas. 5g is fast, but because of the broadcast frequencies the signal doesn’t travel very far. Thats why you see so many more smaller 5g towers than tall 4g. A single 5g tower in a dense urban area can serve hundreds of customers, where that same tower in rural may serve 10 or less because the distance to customers is so much larger.
Nope, cities are the perfect market for 5g home internet. Zero wiring costs in high density urban residential spaces especially where incumbent wired providers have been abusing their customers for decades means customers are open to alternatives, especially at lower prices with better customer service.
Yeah, if it’s cheaper it definitely makes sense. And in the US it might be the only way to get some competition in that market.
Yeah I have Verizon’s 5G Home Internet. It costs roughly the same as the local cable company’s service with similar latency and far better speeds and reliability. I’ve had one total outage over the last four years that lasted a few hours, and they gave me the month for free as compensation.
I don’t see a reason to switch back to the cable company (my apartment isn’t equipped for fiber so the local ISP offering fiber isn’t an option).
I was getting 20ms latency on starlink in the Rockies last week while my coworker in Utah on fiber was getting 50ms. So yeah the provider really really matters lol.