5G Networks are Performing Worse. What's Going On?
upstart writes:
Millimeter-wave fizzles and regulatory hurdles plague progress:
By now, the cellular industry's rollout of 5G networks is three or four years old. And while the industry is still hunting for that killer use case that will cement 5G's place in the highest echelons of cellular technology, the generation is doing, at its core, what it was supposed to do-sort of.
5G networks are continuing to deliver better and faster service than 4G in general. Compared to 5G service from a year ago, however, the networks' upload and download times have generally declined around the world, according to speed test data from network diagnostics company Ookla. Even the most robust 5G networks are currently barely cracking 1 gigabit per second, well short of the International Telecommunication Union's stated ideal download speed of 20 Gbps.
Part of the problem is the same problem had by every cellular generation. There are the normal growing pains as more customers buy new phones and other devices that can tap into these networks. [...]
[...] Outside of cities, different problems are taking root. A big selling-point for 5G is the ability to tap into new bands of spectrum, most notably the millimeter wave band (24 gigahertz to 40 GHz), which can support lower latencies and greater data rates. [...]
Millimeter wave has also seen barely any uptake outside of a handful of countries, including the United States, and even there it's been limited. Companies like Verizon-initially bullish on millimeter wave-have instead pivoted to other newly-available bands, most notably the C-band (4 to 8 GHz).
[...] It's too early to say whether or how 6G development will be impacted by 5G's early stumbles, but there are a handful of possible impacts. It's conceivable, for example, given the lackluster debut of millimeter wave, that the industry devotes less time in terahertz wave research and instead considers how cellular and Wi-Fi technologies could be merged in areas requiring dense coverage.
"I think it's revealing the disconnect between the vision for these Gs and what's actually on the ground," Giles says. "I think that's what this degradation is really highlighting."
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