5G seems like a pretty marginal improvement over LTE to me. The improved latency is nice, but I'm not sure it's worth the many billions of dollars in hardware alone. The high-frequency stuff would be useful in some situations, but really overlaps with WiFi in most use cases.
It certainly seems like much less of an improvement than 2G->3G or 3G->4G.
Counterintuitively, bandwidth improvements do little to help the vast majority of people. Except on rare occasions, like when installing apps. Even though this has been the selling point for ages.
However, latency is a different story. Many (most?) can "feel" improved latency as better responsiveness, like web page load speed. There's still a lot of "ping-pong" traffic going on, where latency improvements do make a difference.
I agree! The latency improvement is the interesting one, but honestly LTE latency is already pretty good.
I wish there were more efforts behind IOT support, by way of lower-frequency bandwidth and low-energy radios, maybe even restricted to a simple messaging protocol. That would open up so many new applications!
Ever tried residential fiber optic internet? <1 ms latency. Web pages just pop on the screen — at least when the server is geographically near. It's addictive.
Compare it to cable modems with still lowish 5-10 ms latency. Pages load visibly slower. But you don't mind it or even notice, if you haven't previously gotten used with the faster option.
So I think I'll always take all of the latency improvements available. The difference can be substantial even when the starting point is already "pretty good".
How do you even find sites that load fast enough for this difference to matter? I only know of maybe 1-2 websites that load instantly like that [1]. Everything else seems bottlenecked on the server side (and sometimes the client).
>but I'm not sure it's worth the many billions of dollars in hardware alone.
Fatter Pipes, as stated in the article. There are still lots of people on 3G Network, and we expect once the all of them moves to LTE , the total amount of Data will again double. 5G is designed around capacity, the higher the total capacity, the more Data they can sell you. In reality you will likely be paying the same prices but getting much more Data from your plan. Surely this is a good enough reason for them to spend money right?
It certainly seems like much less of an improvement than 2G->3G or 3G->4G.