5G Problems :: Is it all it's cut out to be ❓

Just a recent news story. I have noticed quite a few complaints about 5G albeit most on the continent.

This is not Fairphone or carrier specific

I set my phone to prefer 4G… Signal strength is much better, and more than likely uses less battery.

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I read this article this morning as well.
In my locality we don’t have much 5G at all. 1 mast on my network in the next town over.
When I’m connected to it however, the speed and data rate are phenomenal! Over 200Mbps which is 2.5x my home broadband speed. I can provide out a hotspot to my family to play Pokemon Go and none of them suffer lag or delays. I am aware that I’m not in an urban environment so maybe I’m not suffering from contention. The article does state that urban environments can suffer reduced service.

To be honest, 5G provision was part of the reason I went with an FP4. So far it hasn’t let me down.

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I haven’t seen those that much. I’ve seen other issues discussed more. Is there is a big 5G thread I missed? Works fine for me by the way. At least, call quality is the same as on 4G. Which is still an issue and in part also due to the noise cancellation on the FP4 which distorts everything.

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From my brief experience working on 5G, I learned that most of the advantage of 5G is for the provider – not the phone-using customer. There are new higher-bandwidth sections of the spectrum that can be used by 5G, but those are power hungry and short distance only. The main part of the 5G bands are just the 4G bands with an updated protocol, so they’ll have roughly the same speed.

Also, since 4G has to coexist with 5G, neither technology can use 100% of the bands they could, which prevents them from reaching maximum bandwidth.

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Considering the fact that all recent cellphone data transmission technologies use digital transmission, you would find no change in call quality.

Tue biggest issue with 5G is that it’s very susceptible to transmission range, especially when there is lots of moisture in the air.

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But it does trigger different code, code that isn’t optimal on FP. It’s likely a codec issue and noise cancellation though, which is still code.

What you mention about reception is only for the mmWave technology. Higher frequencies are easier susceptible for line of sight issues.

Well that can be true but the drop off is down to frequency and much of 5G uses the same as 4G. However this will change when the higher frequencies come on line.

Currently the max freq of 5G, in the UK, is 4Ghz (less than Wi-Fi 5Ghz)
With 60Ghz and up to 300Ghz things will change as they will be absorbed by objects 5mm to 1mm, rain drops etc.

It is also worth noting the ground attenuation which is also relatve to frequency, similar to gravitational pull on photons.

For a basic guide see

Range can be calculated on this basis at high UHF and microwave frequencies when high-gain antennas are used, located many wavelengths above the ground.
RF Basics: Radio Wave (RF) Propagation - EETimes

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