On 30/Dec/19 09:12, Christopher Morrow wrote:
Huh, you mean since you have to deploy a tower/unit every ~100 meters to get 5g to actually work at reasonable speeds (with nothing in the line of sight) you're going to need a bunch more people to put up these new things-ma-bobs?
In my neighborhood, I've been noticing scanty investment in expanding 4G from my mobile provider in the last 2 years or, ever since they launched VoWiFi. Even though I live in a reasonably well-to-do suburb, anytime I am off the wi-fi at home, but in the hood, 4G performance is not that great, and I sometimes get downgraded to 3G or even EDGE, depending on which side of the house I am. Performance is significantly better if I am around commercial buildings/neighborhoods, though. My theory is that due to the growth of FTTH in the last 2 - 3 years in major South African cities, mobile carriers (well, mine, anyway) are relying on VoWiFi to deliver their (voice and SMS) services to you in their home, where they are using your FTTH service for the workload, getting you to push data off their network, and spending more of their cash elsewhere (or not at all). You should see what happens when the neighborhood has a power outage. You still get 75% - 100% radio quality with 4G, but 80% packet loss when you try to connect to the Internet. At least in residential areas, I think my mobile provider is offloading their costs to home owners' FTTH services, while still milking us of decent wedge. This does not give me any hope of them spending real time and effort on 5G. To be fair, I wouldn't blame them either. Mark.