Wireless Carriers Are Training Consumers To Equate "5G" With Bluster And Empty Promises

from the bluster-and-bullshit dept

Buried beneath the unrelenting marketing for fifth-generation (5G) wireless is a quiet reality: the technology is being over-hyped, and early incarnations were rushed to market in a way that prioritized marketing over substance. That's not to say that 5G won't be a good thing when it arrives at scale several years from now, but early offerings have been almost comical in their shortcomings. AT&T has repeatedly lied about 5G availability by pretending its 4G network is 5G. Verizon has repeatedly hyped early non-standard launches that, when reviewers actually got to take a look, were found to be barely available.

In many areas, a "launched" 5G market consists of just a few city blocks. Most phones also don't support the standard yet, and those that do are expensive and have worse battery life because existing 5G antennas are a battery drain. You'll also likely have to pay extra to use 5G, making it not really worth it for those already happy with 4G speeds (most of us).

The wireless industry seems oblivious to the fact that by misrepresenting what 5G is, what it can do, and where it's available, it's only associating 5G with hype and bluster in the minds of US consumers.

The latest case in point: early tests of the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra are showing that phones from AT&T and T-Mobile are displaying "5G" icons when the phones aren't actually using 5G networks to transfer data. While 5G is generally seen as one thing in the minds of most people, the three variants of the technology leaning on low band, mid-band, and high-band spectrum all deliver decidedly different experiences.

"On AT&T and T-Mobile, the small Galaxy S20 will only have low-band and mid-band 5G. The Galaxy S20+ and Galaxy S20 Ultra have all three kinds. But AT&T and T-Mobile appear to be feeding their low-band phones a "5G" icon if the cell they're attached to is capable of 5G, even if the network and phone use only 4G technologies for the time. You can be on a low-band 5G cell and have the network decide you should use 4G for several reasons. Right now, low-band 5G can't combine with low-band LTE or high-band Licensed Assisted Access (LAA) LTE, so if a network decides that one of those will give you better performance, you'll be on 4G but see "5G."

In addition to being decidedly different experiences and speeds, these options will all have decidedly different availability depending where you live. Low-band 5G, for example, isn't offering connectivity that's much different from the 4G networks you're used to. And yet you'll be asked to pay even more money for the honor from many carriers, despite the fact that US consumers already pay some of the highest prices in the developed world for mobile data. And that's likely to get worse in the wake of the FCC rubber stamping competition-eroding megamergers and obliterating its consumer protection authority at lobbyist behest.

It's all a confusing mess that was largely rushed to market, and it's all being compounded by wireless carriers that were so excited to spike lagging smartphone sales that they made clarity and consumer education an afterthought. Instead of acknowledging that 5G is an evolutionary advancement, wireless carriers have spent the last three years insisting it's revolutionary and transformative -- even insisting it will help cure cancer (not likely, as hospitals are unlikely to even use it).

Again, 5G really will be a hugely beneficial technology when it's deployed more widely a few years from now. It's faster, more resilient, has lower latency, and many of the associated technologies it's bundled with (like virtualization) make networks easier to manage in a litany of ways. But by consistently misleading consumers (or just failing to educate them on the tech's reality), most wireless carriers are training consumers to see 5G as little more than fluff and nonsense.

Filed Under: 5g, hype, lies, overhype, service quality, wireless
Companies: at&t, verizon

The 'Race To 5G' Is A Giant Pile Of Lobbyist Nonsense

from the ill-communication dept

We've noted for a while that the "race to 5G" is largely just the byproduct of telecom lobbyists hoping to spike lagging smartphone and network hardware sales. Yes, 5G is important in that it will provide faster, more resilient networks when it's finally deployed at scale years from now. But the society-altering impacts of the technology are extremely over-hyped, international efforts to deploy the faster wireless standard aren't really a race, and even if it were, our broadband maps are so terrible (by design) it would be impossible to actually determine who won.

The idea that we're "racing China to 5G," and need to mindlessly pander to U.S. telecom giants to win said race, has also become a mainstay in tech policy circles and tech coverage for two or three years now. We're at the point where 5G (like the blockchain or AI) now exists as a sort of policy pixie dust to be sprinkled around generously by lobbyists and K Street beggars looking to wow luddite lawmakers, even if the underlying arguments often make no coherent sense. When 5G is fused with overheated national security concerns, it becomes even more incoherent.

Enter former Representative Mike Rogers, who last week announced he was heading a new 501(c)4 group dubbed 5G Action Now. 5G Action Now frames itself as an objective third party outfit that is just apparently really excited about 5G, insisting its goal is to "educate members of Congress and the American people" to better understand the "race to 5G":

"5G Action Now was founded to establish the United States as the worldwide leader in 5G. Our goal is to elevate the conversation regarding American national security and the economic benefits of winning the 5G innovation and deployment battle against China. 5G will spur economic growth in rural America, create an environment for technological expansion, and put the U.S. on strong national security footing for generations to come."

Mike's bio around the internet usually reveals how he's also a "security advisor" for AT&T, though oddly his bio over at the 5G Action Now website excludes this fact. The ambiguous venture appears to have numerous telecom backers, including a coalition of European and Canadian satellite companies looking for all the usual fare: weakened regulatory oversight, more subsidies, and a bigger slice of the publicly-owned airwaves to make a profit off of. It's more of a "race to government protection" or a "race to fatter revenues" than any kind of race to meaningful 5G domination or consumer benefit.

The group's website is filled with rhetoric about how the US is in a battle with China for 5G domination, hinting at some immense unforeseeable calamity should the Chinese government deploy 5G quickly to human beings you'll never meet, half a world away:

Press outlets that buy into this rhetoric usually "forget" to mention that while the US technically "won" the race to 4G (by being first to deploy it) that didn't wind up mattering much. U.S. consumers pay some of the highest prices for wireless service in the developed world, for 4G services that are routinely ranked as some of the slowest in the OECD. Thanks to regulatory capture, corruption, and mindless M&A mania (like the looming Sprint T-Mobile merger), it's a problem that's not going away anytime soon. 5G is not, contrary to what you'll be told by industry and stenographing journalists and evangelists, some mystical panacea.

There's a reason AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile are fighting efforts to adequately map 5G, and have routinely over-inflated 5G availability claims overall. The "race" rhetoric is largely an illusion created by companies eager to do the bare minimum in exchange for as many subsidies, regulatory favors and tax breaks they can grab. This mindless regulatory capture has resulted in a US Telecom sector that routinely ranks in the middle of the pack in every metric that matters. While 5G will be a good thing when deployed at scale, it's foolish to think the new wireless technical standard will address the deeper rot that plagues the sector.

We didn't win the race to 4G, and we're unlikely to win the "race to 5G," either. Why? Because U.S. telecom policy involves effectively pandering to the every whim of mono/duopolists, then standing around with a dumb look on our faces as prices soar, coverage lags, and Kafka-esque customer service headlines become the norm. Yes, 5G will be fast. It's also going to be hugely expensive and filled with arbitrary nickel and diming restrictions courtesy of the Trump FCC's decision to effectively give up on all consumer protection.

The "race" rhetoric serves one larger purpose: it ensures that nobody pauses to think about policy considerations like prices, open networks, consumer rights, or even coverage to lower income and rural areas. It results in a country that can't apparently repair its bridges or feed the public, but can easily throw another $1.5 billion at telecom giants that are in absolutely no need of subsidization or more tax breaks. At some point, you'd think we'd learn to stop throwing billions of unaccountable dollars at companies with a thirty-year track record of failing repeatedly to live up to their end of the bargain.

Filed Under: 5g, hype, mike rogers, race to 5g
Companies: at&t, verizon

There's A Recurring Theme With 5G, And It's Disappointment

from the not-all-that dept

Buried beneath the unrelenting hype surrounding fifth-generation (5G) wireless is a quiet but growing consensus: the technology is being over-hyped, and early incarnations were rushed to market in a way that prioritized marketing over substance. That's not to say that 5G won't be a good thing when it arrives at scale several years from now, but early offerings have been almost comical in their shortcomings. AT&T has repeatedly lied about 5G availability by pretending its 4G network is 5G. Verizon has repeatedly hyped early non-standard launches that, when reviewers actually got to take a look, were found to be barely available.

As carriers ramp up their marketing hype and promote 5G "launches" that aren't really full launches, that theme is only continuing. One ZDNet reporter recently wandered around Miami -- a "launched" T-Mobile 5G market -- only to find coverage was nonexistent and phone support was even worse. He ultimately concluded that T-mobile's definition of "nationwide 5G" most definitely leaves something to be desired:

"...this early hype -- on the part of carriers and phone manufacturers -- may, as so often happens, create a greater excitement than is currently warranted. Yes, T-Mobile wants to claim it has the first nationwide 5G. In the way that nationwide doesn't include the Bay Area. (Well, there are a lot of separatists here.) But when it's all switched on, will we be startled by the difference? We can but hype."

That same story is playing out in Chicago, where consumers are bombarded with endless ads for 5G, but show little real interest in paying a premium for faster speeds, when many haven't even fully utilized 4G's available bandwidth:

“Right now, I’d say 5G is in the hype cycle. Deployment is going to be slower than people think,” said Mohan Sawhney, a professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Business. “Yeah, you’ll get faster Internet, but that’s not a breakthrough. ... I’d stay tuned beyond 2020."

It's not just America. In South Korea, users similarly say that while the added speed is nice, they're not all that impressed with the value proposition, especially if it involves overpaying for an even bigger phone with worse battery life (5G is currently quite the battery hog), or paying carriers even more for mobile data. For users already paying an arm and a leg for 4G speeds upwards of 30 Mbps, there's really not a whole lot of motivation to make the jump -- at least not right now. That's before you even get to patchy availability (let's just say there's a reason carriers are trying to obscure where 5G is actually available).

This is, of course, all a far cry from carrier 5G marketing, which routinely insists 5G is already largely everywhere (it's not), and will revolutionize everything from cancer treatment (not really) to the four day work week (nope).

Again, 5G is a good thing in that faster, more resilient, and easily managed networks are always good. And in five years from now, when phone development and 5G coverage has improved, there will certainly be ample benefits to the upgrade. But carriers continue to ignore the fact that over-marketing the standard prematurely may have the opposite impact they intended; associating 5G in the minds of many consumers with hype, empty promises, added costs, and little to actually show for it.

Filed Under: 5g, hype, overhype, wireless
Companies: at&t, t-mobile, verizon

Like The Rest Of Its 5G Footprint, Verizon 5G Sports Venue Availability Is Being Overhyped

from the ill-communication dept

Have we mentioned lately that 5G is being over-hyped? While it's an important evolutionary step in wireless connectivity, it's far from the revolution hardware vendors and cellular carriers are promising. Verizon, for example, insists that 5G is the "fourth industrial revolution" that will almost miraculously spur the smart cities and smarter cars of tomorrow. While 5G is important (in that faster, more resilient networks are always important), the idea that 5G will fundamentally transform the world tends to overshoot the mark.

Carriers haven't quite learned yet that over-hyping the standard (or flat out lying about it) only serves to associate it with disappointment in the minds of consumers. Verizon, for example, has crowed widely about the company's early 5G launches, but when reporters and users actually try to use these networks, they routinely find they're barely available.

To hype the standard further, Verizon has been deploying it to select parts of a handful of major sports venues, insisting in its press releases that these early deployments are "fundamentally changing the way we live, work and play." But when reporters actually press the company on where it's available, they quickly discover it's, well, not. While Verizon has been hyping 5G availability in NFL stadiums, deeper inquiries have shown that the service is available in only a few areas because the millimeter wave spectrum Verizon is using for these early efforts has a hard time with range and penetrating walls.

The same thing is now playing out in other major sporting venues. While Verizon has claimed in press statements that it will soon be offering 5G in more than 10 major sports venues, Jon Brodkin at Ars Technica pressed them for additional detail and came away notably unimpressed:

"...When contacted by Ars, Verizon said the 5G network doesn't cover the whole arena for any of these NBA facilities. "Just certain seating areas" in the NBA arenas have access to 5G, a Verizon spokesperson told us.

This isn't surprising, given that Verizon's early 5G rollout relies heavily on millimeter-wave signals that don't travel far and are easily blocked by walls and other obstacles. But while NFL stadiums typically seat between 60,000 and 80,000 people, the seating capacity in NBA arenas is generally 17,000 to 21,000. Despite the big difference in size, Verizon's 5G network isn't yet capable of covering all the seating areas in any one of these facilities.

Yes, the transformative, revolutionary power of being able to get 1 Gbps connectivity you probably won't use in "a few seating areas."

Again, 5G will be a good thing, in that faster, lower latency, tougher networks are certainly good. But the empty hype carriers are using to promote what the standard can actually do (no it can't cure cancer) and where it's available (Cisco predicts 5G will still only account for around 10% of all mobile connections three years from now) is only sowing distrust among consumers.

There's a reason AT&T and Verizon are trying to hide 5G mapping data, and it's not because they're excited about its revolutionary capacity for change. They're using the modestly-important standard to not only justify charging consumers higher rates, but as a lynchpin to deregulate industry; as in: we don't need any consumer protections because 5G will soon be available everywhere as a sort of a competitive panacea. You're not supposed to know that claim isn't actually true. Telecom remains a fundamentally broken sector, with regulatory capture and mindless merger mania the fashion of the age. 5G isn't going to fix any of this.

Filed Under: 5g, hype, overselling, sports venues
Companies: verizon

Verizon Can't Stop Over-hyping 5G; This Time In NFL Stadiums

from the unrealistic-expectations dept

We've noted for a while that 5G is being aggressively over-hyped. While it's an important evolutionary step in wireless connectivity, it's far from the revolution hardware vendors and cellular carriers are promising. Verizon, for example, insists that 5G is the "fourth industrial revolution" that will almost miraculously spur the smart cities and smarter cars of tomorrow. While 5G is important (in that faster, more resilient networks are always important), the idea that 5G will fundamentally transform the world tends to overshoot the mark.

Carriers haven't quite learned yet that over-hyping the standard only serves to associate it with disappointment in the minds of consumers. Verizon, for example, has crowed widely about the company's early 5G launches, but when reporters and users actually try to use these networks, they routinely find they're barely available. Lately, Verizon's marketing department has been heavily hyping the company's launch of 5G in around 13 NFL stadiums, once again insisting this is going to be a paradigm shift that changes the woooooooorld:

"Today’s announcement is a key moment in our partnership with the NFL. We’re proud to work with such an iconic organization to bring Verizon 5G Ultra Wideband service to fans across the country. Verizon 5G is fundamentally changing the way we live, work and play, and we expect the impact on the sports entertainment industry to be massive - it promises to revolutionize the entire game-day experience for fans."

But once again, reporters who dug just beneath the service again found that the launch was nowhere as impressive as what the company has promised:

"Verizon isn't promising any 5G coverage outside the seating areas, and the seating-area coverage will only be available in some sections. When contacted by Ars, Verizon said that its 5G coverage "varies by stadium" but provided no specifics on how widespread the coverage is in each facility. At least some of the 13 stadiums don't have any 5G coverage available outside the seating areas, Verizon also acknowledged."

Part of the problem is Verizon is leaning heavily on millimeter-wave signals to fuel most of its 5G deployments, but such signals don't travel very far and are easily blocked by walls, weather, and other obstacles. The other problem: there are few if any phones that actually support the standard yet, since the industry has yet to really hammer out the battery issues caused by the higher power consumption (one of several reasons Apple isn't expected to launch a 5G iphone until the second half of 2020, if not later).

In other words, most of the hype you've seen about 5G is talking about networks that are barely available, and have little to no widespread device support. Wireless carriers are eager to over-hype 5G for two reasons: it allows them to justify sky high prices for mobile data (US consumers pay some of the highest prices in the world for 4G, something that's only getting worse with 5G), and it will eventually help spur the sales of significantly more mobile handsets, a metric that has stalled out in recent years as smartphone innovation has plateaued.

Superficially, those seem like sensible reasons for wireless carriers to hype a new network standard that will genuinely bring about some important (albeit not really revolutionary) improvements. But by associating 5G with failed promises in the minds of consumers, companies like Verizon are actually sending the message to most of those users that it's not actually going to be worth their time to make the switch, defeating the entire point of the marketing hype.

Filed Under: 5g, hype
Companies: verizon

5G's Latest Problem: Summer Temps Are Causing 5G Phones To Overheat

from the this-is-all-going-really-well dept

Buried underneath the blistering hype surrounding fifth-generation (5G) wireless is a quiet but growing consensus: the technology is being over-hyped, and early incarnations were rushed to market in a way that prioritized marketing over substance. That's not to say that 5G won't be a good thing when it arrives at scale several years from now, but early offerings have been almost comical in their shortcomings. AT&T has repeatedly lied about 5G availability by pretending its 4G network is 5G. Verizon's falsely telling everyone 5G will help cure cancer, but its actual deployments have been spotty and expensive.

5G device support barely exists. Apple is in no rush to get its first phones to market. The promise of 5G as a competitive and rural coverage panacea has been vastly overstated. And most surveys suggest US consumers (who already pay some of the highest data prices in the developed world) are more interested in lower bills than faster speeds. All of which is to say that 5G isn't quite the Earth-shattering revolution it has been heralded as by carriers and network vendors eager to sell more cell phones and network hardware.

There's another wrinkle being noticed by some of the folks putting these networks through their paces. Qualcomm's first generation 5G modem chipsets appear prone to overheating in summer temps, something oddly missing from the industry's marketing hype. It's a problem that's plaguing numerous carriers, according to Sascha Segan and PCMag:

"On a hot Las Vegas morning, my two Galaxy S10 5G phones kept overheating and dropping to 4G. This behavior is happening with all of the millimeter-wave, first-generation, Qualcomm X50-based phones when temperatures hit or exceed 85 degrees. We saw it with T-Mobile in New York, with Verizon in Providence, and now with AT&T in Las Vegas. It's happened on Samsung and LG phones, with Samsung, Ericsson, and Nokia network hardware."

Current 4G LTE smartphones integrate everything into one chip. Early 5G chipsets require numerous chips including a chip for the 5G mmWave modem and the mmWave antenna modules. As a result, current 5G chipsets take up a lot more room and generate notably more heat than their 4G equivalent. And while better chips are expected to arrive in time, it's another example of how early 5G adoption isn't really worth it, especially given this connectivity is being priced at a steep premium over already costly 4G LTE plans.

Again, faster, more reliable networks are always a good thing, and in time 5G will be an important natural evolution, whenever it's fully cooked and widely available. But the absurd hype we've been subjected to up to this point (5G will cure cancer! 5G will result in four day work weeks!) is actually undermining the technology. Instead of showing consumers why 5G is important, carriers and hardware vendors rushed 5G tech to market, overstated what it can do, and misrepresented where it's available, leaving consumers with the distinct impression 5G is largely just undercooked bullshit.

Filed Under: 5g, hype, overheating

The Press Needs An Intervention When It Comes To Over-Hyping 5G

from the words-are-but-wind dept

By now we've made it very clear that while fifth generation wireless (5G) is good, it's being painfully over-hyped. Yes, better faster networks with lower latency are always a good thing. And, in time, these networks will power a lot of nifty things. But if you read press coverage of the technology, you'd walk away thinking that 5G is akin to some kind of mystical panacea; something you just sprinkle around on the sidewalk anytime you want innovation and magic to spring forth from between the cracks. It will somehow result in four-day workweeks, we're told. It will revolutionize cancer treatment, companies insist.

Wireless carriers facing slumping smartphone sales would certainly like you to think 5G is more revolutionary than it actually is. So would network hardware vendors eager to sell upgraded gear to those wireless carriers. But again, while faster networks are good, they're not magic, and it's the press' job to make it clear 5G is more evolution than revolution.

It's a hard lesson to learn, apparently. For example, this Tom's Hardware piece documenting five ways "5G will change your life" is rife with examples that will do nothing of the sort. Like this claim that 5G will somehow revolutionize the classroom:

"The faster speeds and lower latency that 5G will deliver will make AR and virtual reality transformative for kids in classrooms.

Toby Redshaw, Verizon's senior vice president of 5G innovation, offered a scenario in which 5G could make education more accessible: "You have a child that sits in a class for four hours. There's a presentation about China: a PowerPoint. It's a good environment. But there's another child in the class. [The teacher:] 'Put on that headset and we'll drop you into a 360-degree video so you can be [in China] without being there.' [The kid:] 'I'm flying over the Great Wall! That is unbelievable!' The second child had an experience. A whole chunk of his brain lit up. That immersive environment is between three and eight times more effective."

But guess what? Classrooms already have gigabit+ connectivity in the form of cheaper, more reliable WiFi. Why would said classrooms suddenly decided to pay Verizon for 5G to fuel their VR goggles, assuming VR is being used at all, when their existing connections can already easily power these technologies for less money? Another of the five examples in the piece, hospital diagnostics, suffers from the same logical problem:

"Just as 5G could make it easier for kids to experience subjects that most of us have only read about in books, next-gen speeds combined with augmented reality could also make it easier for doctors to learn and perfect procedures."

But as we just noted, no hospital is going to use 5G for next-gen VR and AR diagnostics when the kind of bandwidth 5G provides is already available over the hospital's existing WiFi or Ethernet connections. And no medical professional worth their salt is going to trust a sensitive medical procedure to a frequently capped and throttled cellular network. Especially when we're talking about Verizon, a company recently under fire for throttling and upselling firefighters as they attempted to fight one of the biggest fires in California history.

Other examples in the story are equally thin. Autonomous and smart cars, for example, can already use 4G networks. 5G might be faster and more reliable, but it's not going to just start crapping out autonomous cars in and of itself. Similarly, given what's likely to be high cost and spotty availability, 5G isn't really going to be a panacea when it comes to broadband competition either. In other words, four of the article's five "life changing" examples either aren't real or are being over-hyped. And like most of these reports, it ignores that thanks to regulatory capture, the biggest impact 5G is likely to have on most of us is going to be higher prices.

Filed Under: 5g, education, hype, journalism, wireless

Another Study Finds Verizon's 5G Is Barely Available, Not Scaleable

from the big-old-hype-parade dept

We've talked a lot about how while fifth-generation (5G) wireless is a good thing (in that faster, more reliable networks are always good), it's been comically over-hyped by cellular carriers and network hardware vendors looking to justify high prices and sell network gear and handsets. It has also been accompanied by what appears to be a race between cellular carriers to broadly misrepresent what 5G is capable of, and where and when it will actually be available.

At the heart of a lot of this hype has been Verizon, which routinely insists 5G is the "fourth industrial revolution," and will almost mystically result in a universe of smart cities and smarter supporting technologies. Ironically, while saying all of this, Verizon executives publicly warn about carriers over-hyping 5G. For example here's a Verizon blog post from last January:

"The potential for 5G is awesome, but the potential to over-hype and under-deliver on the 5G promise is a temptation that the wireless industry must resist. If network providers, equipment manufacturers, handset makers, app developers and others in the wireless ecosystem engage in behavior designed to purposefully confuse consumers, public officials and the investment community about what 5G really is, we risk alienating the very people we want most to join in developing and harnessing this exciting new technology."

And that's a good point. Carriers desperately want consumers to be excited about 5G, but by over-hyping the technology (or misrepresenting it completely as AT&T did when it pretended its 4G network was 5G) the companies risk associating 5G with hype and bullshit.

That said, Verizon hasn't listened to its own advice. Analysts and reporters keep finding that Verizon's 5G network "launches" so far are largely fluff and nonsense. One analyst recently noted how Verizon's 5G "launch" in Sacramento was, in reality, barely a launch. And absolutely not something Verizon could quickly replicate at any real scale:

"This is not what I expected," Lum said.

Instead of a city covered with 5G signals, and a network geared for mobile services, Lum said he instead found select locations in Sacramento where Verizon built a network that seems exclusively designed to offer fixed wireless services to a handful of potential customers.

Basically, Lum's big takeaway from his work is that, if Verizon wants to cover all of Sacramento with mobile 5G at 28GHz, "you're talking about a crapload of poles."

"I don't think there's enough people in the industry to deploy these," Lum added, noting that antennas would need to be installed every 1,000 feet or so, and each would need the requisite permits, power, backhaul and technicians capable of doing the work. And that labor would have to be replicated at each street corner across Sacramento and, ultimately, across every major and minor city in the country. "I think there's a long way to go," Lum concluded, estimating a ten-year buildout timeline for such an endeavor."

5G will rely heavily on small cells or micro-cellular towers positioned on city lamp posts. Another more recent piece of analysis by telecom analyst Craig Moffett found that just 6% of Sacremento could actually get Verizon 5G in the city, again suggesting the company not only dramatically over-hyped availability, but again questioning how easy it will be for Verizon to duplicate these efforts at national scale. He also ironically found that 5G deployment costs are comparable to what it will cost to deploy fiber, which is generally seen as more efficient and more reliable:

"To us, the most interesting statistic isn't so much the low take rate as it is the relatively low coverage, as it illustrates the enormity of the challenge of scaling a small network, in neighborhood after neighborhood, across the United States," Moffett wrote...The report notes that the cost of the drop for fixed wireless broadband (it could dip to about $200) is lower than it is for an FTTP network (about $700), but the "passing cost" is about the same. The difference maker, Moffett said, is the number of homes that are eligible for service and the ultimate take rate. The low penetration rate Verizon has seen thus far for 5G Home in Sacramento isn't nearly enough to achieve economics that are better than a typical FTTP network example, the report found.

"Our analysis suggests that costs will likely be much higher (that is, cell radii appear smaller) and penetration rates lower than initially expected," the report explained. "If those patterns are indicative of what is to come in a broader rollout, it would mean a much higher cost per connected home, and therefore much lower returns on capital, than what might have been expected from Verizon's advance billing."

Verizon has taken a lot of heat for effectively letting its aging DSL lines rot on the vine as executives shifted its focus from fiber to wireless. And while Verizon would have you believe 5G is a perfectly symmetrical alternative to fiber, that's just not true. Neither is the idea that 5G is going to come in and magically bring oodles of new competition to these neglected markets, something both AT&T and Verizon are quietly making obvious.

Again, the faster, lower-latency connections 5G will deliver will be a good thing -- provided it's actually available in your neighborhood anytime soon and you can afford the premium Verizon intends to charge for it. But over-hyping what 5G can do and where it's available is only going to bite the industry on the ass as it generates distrust among consumers who otherwise might be genuinely excited about the tech. It's a bit of dysfunction Verizon would be smart to heed its own advice on.

Filed Under: 5g, hype, marketing, scalability
Companies: verizon

5G Has Become The Magic Pixie Dust Of Tech Policy Conversations

from the hype-parade dept

Fifth generation wireless (5G) has quickly become a sort of magical carrot on a stick in tech and telecom policy circles. Telecom lobbyists and the Ajit Pai FCC have spent the better part of the last two years trying to claim that unless we gut consumer protections like net neutrality, America will somehow fall behind in the "race" to 5G. U.S. companies have also convinced the government that if America doesn't want to lose said race (whatever that means), we most assuredly should ban cheaper Chinese networking gear from the country (the protectionism angle of this is entirely coincidental, they'll insist).

More recently, Sprint and T-Mobile have been telling anybody who'll listen that their competition and job eroding merger is the only way to ensure that America doesn't fall behind on 5G. Despite the fact that both companies are on record clearly stating they both could have easily deployed 5G independently, that same argument popped up again this week during merger hearings on Capitol Hill. As did the well-weathered claim that the merger is essential if America wants to beat China in the rush to 5G and avoid being laughed at by the other kids on the 5G playground:

"In prepared remarks, T-Mobile CEO John Legere ties the proposed merger to “American innovation and national security,” and specifically argues that the merger will be necessary to make the United States a leader on next-generation 5G network technology. “The stakes are high — nothing less than preserving our edge in innovation and maintaining our security,” he plans to say.

The CEO plans to say that the US is “falling behind” China on 5G, which he says “has taken a global lead in the race.” He says in the remarks that only a newly merged T-Mobile will be able to compete.

Of course this is all bullshit. As we've noted previously, the "race to 5G" rhetoric is largely nonsense crafted by hardware vendors looking to sell more network hardware and wireless carriers looking to justify high US mobile data prices and spur lagging phone and tablet sales. It's not a race, there's no way to measure a winner (especially given our broadband maps are hot garbage due to regulatory capture), and the only folks likely to win this particular game are the companies selling the hype and related products.

5G is important, but it's not paradigm-rattling important.

5G will be a very useful evolution in wireless in that it will provide faster, lower latency networks that are more easily managed (in large part due to virtualization technology). But 5G is not some mystical fucking panacea. It can't, for example, magically compensate for the reduction in competition in the wake of the T-Mobile deal, a bit of mathematics that never ends well for consumers (go ask a Canadian or the Irish). It won't miraculously compensate for regulatory capture at the Ajit Pai FCC. Given these and other broken market realities, it's unlikely to result in what consumers really want: lower prices.

In tech policy circles, 5G has become the equivalent of lobbying and policy mysticism, entirely untethered from factual reality. You just sprinkle a little bit on your argument and you can use it to justify pretty much anything. Blake Reid, a Professor at Colorado Law, probably put it best:

Again, it's perfectly fine if you're realistically enthusiastic about the modest but important improvements 5G networks are going to bring. But carriers have been trying to pass the technology off as the next industrial revolution and some kind of deus ex machina. Not just because they want to sell product, but because they're using it as a regulatory carrot on a stick, claiming that unless you give big telecom "X" (X=less oversight, more subsidies, merger approval, the death of net neutrality), America will somehow fall behind an arbitrary measurement they've entirely pulled out of their collective ass.

If we follow down the rabbit hole hyping 5G without addressing the massive problems in both the fixed and wireless US broadband markets, this race ends with all of us crying and nursing a pulled hamstring.

Filed Under: 5g, hype, overhype, wireless