What is 5G and why is it really bad right now?

After an introduction from the president of the Consumer Technology Association, Gary Shapiro, Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg takes the stage. He wears a simple black T-shirt with an incomparable red check and begins to deliver his opening speech. The topic is 5G, which Vestberg talks about with enthusiasm. The talk focuses on 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 wasn’t the only one powering the hype 5G machine; AT&T and T-Mobile have been talking about their 5G networks for years. Now it’s show time. With the major flagship phones and many more budget devices supporting it, this is the year when a critical mass of phone buyers will finally see for themselves what it’s all about.

Here’s the bad news: if they’ve listened to the hype, they’re going to be disappointed. We were promised a fourth industrial revolution with fantastic things like remote surgery and driverless cars. Instead, what we have now is the prevalent 5G which is more or less the same speed (if not slower) than 4G and super-fast 5G mmWave in a few parts of a few large cities with very limited reach. So where is this 5G future that has been promised to us? The truth is, it does happen, but it will materialize more slowly and in a less obvious way than we have been led to believe.

Specter wars

To understand the complex 5G situation in the United States today, you first need to know that there are low, medium, and high frequencies that operators can use. The low band is slower but provides extended coverage. The high band, often referred to as mmWave, is very fast but extremely limited in range. The middle band sits in a sweet spot between the two, with good range and higher speeds than LTE.

If you were building a 5G network from scratch, you’d probably want a bunch of mid-band spectrum, right? The problem is that spectrum is a finite resource. Sascha Segan, Senior 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 carriers,” he says. “Verizon and AT&T basically just used the remaining odds and ends of their 4G spectrum … putting 5G encoding on those remaining bits and bobs so they can display a 5G icon on the screen. And the performance doesn’t make sense.

The technology Verizon and AT&T are using to achieve nationwide 5G coverage is called Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS), which allows 4G and 5G to coexist on the same spectrum. It helps carriers switch between technologies, but it comes at a cost. Michael Thelander, president and founder of wireless industry research firm Signals Research Group, sums it up: “It’s kind of like having that super fast sports car and you’re stuck on the freeway in Santa Monica. . You cannot take advantage of all the features. “

T-Mobile, on the other hand, doesn’t need to rely on spectrum sharing as much as the other two, thanks to its acquisition of Sprint and its mid-band spectrum. This has given it an edge in its 5G offerings so far.

However, in early 2022, we’ll likely see Verizon and AT&T catch up. A mid-band spectrum band known as the C-band was auctioned at the end of 2020. And while we don’t know which companies won which spectrum blocks, we do know that these two carriers, in particular, spent a lot; the auctions have exceeded 80 billion dollars.

What happens next?

Networks may not be pulling all cylinders yet, but more and more mobile devices are ready for them. In fact, by the end of the year it might be harder to find a non-5G phone than one that supports the tech. Not only do Apple’s and Samsung’s flagship phones support 5G in their lineup, it’s also making its way into more mid-range and budget devices, thanks to new low-end processors ready for the market. 5G like the Qualcomm Snapdragon 480.

More people than ever will be buying a 5G phone this year – probably not because they really wanted 5G, but because the phone they were going to get supports it anyway. The good news is that there’s really no downside to buying a 5G phone now if it’s time to upgrade. The “5G tax” that has put a higher price tag on 5G phones over the past two years seems to be going away, and we didn’t notice any other downsides like battery over-discharge in our testing.

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

It’s not great. But there are a few factors that will make the difference over the next year. First, this C-band spectrum will start coming online towards 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 to use the C-band, so if you’re on Verizon or AT&T you should see speed improvements when this happens. .

However, not all 5G phones support C-band. Those who don’t need a software update to use it, and there’s no guarantee that your phone manufacturer will offer one. Inexpensive 5G models, in particular, may not see a C-band update, even if they have the hardware to support it. Phone makers must seek Federal Communications Commission approval to activate it and may be less likely to worry about the cost of this step for phones with a shorter lifespan.

The other factor is something that will likely happen sooner than C-Band becomes available: large gatherings. That’s when Segan thinks Verizon’s Ultra Wideband could really shine. “When we are all vaccinated, I think people are going to be desperate … for all of these dense, crowded community experiences that we will miss for a year and a half. And so Verizon should be working on apps and experiences right now like what they did at the Super Bowl, or what they said they did at Disney World, which you can only do on Ultra Wideband.

Again, it will depend on your 5G phone supporting the correct one. kind 5G – not all 5G phones support mmWave. The iPhone and Samsung flagships mentioned above do, and other supported Verizon models are referred to as “UW”.

Where are our jetpacks?

And what about CES keynotes like remote surgery and self-driving cars? It’s on its way too, but it will take longer. Thelander explains, “The first goal of 5G was actually a feature called ‘enhanced mobile broadband’, which only gets fast data speeds for the consumer on their smartphone. Things like factory automation and the functionality behind it, which was really developed afterwards, so it’s lagging behind, from a standardization perspective.

Sorting out the technology is only half the equation. “Once you’ve defined a certain feature or functionality in a standard, now a vendor has to go out and create that feature, then you have to test it, and then you have to get it adopted by industry,” says Thelander. “The technology can be there, the standard can be there, it can work well, but it has to be implemented and deployed. And you have to have a business case for it. How do you profit from it? All of these types of things… it just takes time.

Although the networks have consistently waved their “5G Mission Accomplished” banners in TV commercials over the past year, 5G is still a work in progress. It will get better, but how quickly it gets to you depends on many factors: what phone you own and what bands it supports, what network you are on, where you are and what you do. It now seems clear that there has never really been a “5G race” – just technological advancement as usual, which is often slow, confusing and uneven. It’s a little harder to sell in a keynote or commercial.