What is 5G, and why is it currently bad?

After an introduction by Gary Shapiro, president of the Consumer Technology Association, Hans Vestberg, CEO of Verizon, takes the stage. He wears a simple black T-shirt with an unmistakable red check and begins his speech. The topic in question is 5G, which Vestberg is enthusiastically talking about. The main reason covers the eight “currencies” of 5G, features a professional athlete and highlights how 5G will transform the drone industry.

It was CES 2019. It was also CES 2021. Verizon did not power the 5G hype machine; AT&T and T-Mobile have been talking to their 5G networks for years. Now it’s show time. With large flagship phones and many more budget devices supporting it, this is the year in which a critical mass of phone buyers will finally see for themselves what all this talk is about.

This is the bad news: if they had listened to the hype, they would have been disappointed. We are promised a fourth industrial revolution with fantastic things like remote surgery and driverless cars. Instead, what we have now is widespread 5G that has more or less the same speed as (or even slower than) 4G and super-fast mmWave 5G. some parts of some large cities with a very limited scope. So, where is this 5G future we were promised? The truth is that it is coming together, but that it will materialize more slowly and in less obvious ways than we believe.

Spectrum Wars

To now understand the complicated 5G situation in the US, you must first know that there are low, medium and high band frequencies that carriers can use. Low band is slower but offers widespread coverage. High-band, often called mmWave, is very fast but very limited. Mid-band sits in a lovely spot between the two, with good range and better than LTE speeds.

If you were building a 5G network from scratch, you would probably want a bunch of mid-range spectrum, right? The problem is that spectrum is a limited source. Sascha Segan, Chief Mobile Analyst at PCMag and a wealth of 5G knowledge, sums up part of the spectrum problem.

“Our government has not made the right channels available to the carriers,” he says. ‘Verizon and AT&T basically just use the remaining chances and ends of their 4G spectrum … and put the 5G coding on these remaining bits so they can make a 5G icon appear on the screen. And the performance is meaningless. ”

The technology that Verizon and AT&T use to get nationwide 5G coverage is called Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS), which allows 4G and 5G to exist on the same spectrum. It helps carriers to make the transition from one technology to another, but it comes at a cost. Michael Thelander, president and founder of the Signals Research Group wireless industry research firm, sums it up as follows: ‘It’s like having that super fast sports car and you’m stuck on the Santa Monica freeway. You can not experience the full capabilities. ”

T-Mobile, on the other hand, does not have to rely as much on spectrum sharing as the other two, thanks to the acquisition of Sprint and its mid-range spectrum. This has given him an edge so far in his 5G offerings.

By early 2022, however, we are likely to see Verizon and AT&T catch up. At the end of 2020, a series of mid-band spectrum, known as C-band, auctioned off. And while we do not know which companies won which spectrum blocks, we do know that two suppliers in particular spent large sums of money; offers more than $ 80 billion.

What happens next?

The networks may not be shooting on all cylinders yet, but more and more mobile devices are ready for it. At the end of the year, it may be harder to find a non-5G phone than one that supports the technology. Apple and Samsung’s flagship phones not only support 5G in their lineup, but it’s also gaining more midrange and budget devices thanks to new 5G-ready low-end processors like the Qualcomm Snapdragon 480.

More people than ever will buy a 5G phone this year – probably not because they really wanted 5G, but because the phone they are going to get anyway supports it. The good news is that it’s actually not a disadvantage to buy a 5G phone when it’s time to upgrade. The ‘5G tax’ that has put a higher price on 5G phones over the past few years is apparently disappearing, and we have yet to notice any other disadvantages like an excessive battery in the test.

So, how is the reaction so far from someone who bought an iPhone 12 – not for 5G, but because it’s the new iPhone? “They are frustrated and angry,” Segan said. “With Verizon and AT&T, because of what I would call technical problems, their nationwide 5G is often slower than their 4G. So people get these iPhones and they find that they often work worse than they had before 5G. The ‘technical problems’ he refers to include DSS in the case of Verizon and the limitations of the narrow 5MHz band that AT&T often uses for its 5G.

This is not great. But a few factors will make a difference next year. First, the C-band spectrum will go online by the end of the year. If you’re one of the frustrated owners of an iPhone 12 or Galaxy S21, there’s good news: your phone is already approved for C-band use, so if you’ve used Verizon or AT&T, you’ll see speed improvements if that happens. .

However, not all 5G phones support C-band. Those who do not need it need a software update to use it, and there is no guarantee that the manufacturer of your phone will offer one. Particularly cheap 5G models may not see a C-band update, even if they have the hardware to support it. Telephone manufacturers will have to apply for approval from the Federal Communications Commission to make this possible, and they are likely to have less trouble with the cost of this step for phones with a shorter lifespan.

The other factor is something that is likely to happen sooner if C-band is available: big events. That’s when Segan thinks Verizon’s Ultra Wideband can really shine. “If we’ve all been vaccinated, I think people’re going to be desperate … for all these dense, busy, common experiences that we’ll be missing for a year and a half. And that’s why Verizon now needs to work on applications and experiences like the thing they did at the Super Bowl, or what they did at Disney World, that you can only do on Ultra Wideband. ”

Again, this will depend on your 5G phone that supports the right friendly of 5G – not every 5G phone supports mmWave. The above iPhone and Samsung flagships do this, and other supported Verizon models are referred to as ‘UW’.

Where are our jetpacks?

And what about the stuff of CES keywords like remote surgery and self-driving cars? It’s on its way too, but it’s going to take longer. Thelander explains: “The first focus of 5G was really a feature called ‘enhanced mobile broadband’ and it’s just to get fast data speeds for the consumer on their smartphone. Things like factory automation and the functionality behind it, which were really developed afterwards, so it depends, from a standardization perspective. ”

Sorting out the technology piece is only half the equation. “After defining a certain function or functionality in a standard, an entrepreneur now has to build the function, then you have to test it, and then the industry has to apply it,” says Thelander. ‘The technology can be there, the standard can be there, it can work well, but it needs to be implemented and rolled out. And you have to have the case for it. How do you make money from it? All that stuff … it just takes time. ”

Despite networks constantly waving their 5G Mission Accomplished banners in TV commercials over the past year, 5G is still a work in progress. It’s going to get better, but how fast it’s happening to you depends on many factors: what phone you have and what tires it supports, what network you are on, where you are and what you’re doing. It now becomes clear that there has never really been a “Race to 5G” – just technological advances as usual, which are often slow, confusing and uneven. It’s a little harder to sell in a lead speech or in an ad.