5G Phones Will Be Bigger & More Expensive With Crappy Battery Life. Excited Yet?

from the ill-communication 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 has repeatedly hyped early non-standard launches that, when reviewers actually got to take a look, were found to be barely available.

That's before we even get to actual 5G phone support, which is fairly paltry so far. Some carriers have gone so far as to offer up extensive and clunky battery mods for existing phones, which few are going to want to actually pay for. And the handsets that are available tend to be bigger, more expensive, and with worse battery life than existing phones.

Case in point: Qualcomm was so eager to hype 5G and sell more hardware, the company removed the integrated 4G LTE chipset in its 2020 Snapdragon 865 system on a chip (SOC). But one of the impacts of removing integrated LTE is that 5G support now requires more battery life and more space, driving up overall costs for the end user:

"This means nearly every flagship Android phone will be a 5G phone in 2020, and putting the 5G and 4G on a giant extra chip means smartphones are going to use way more power, no matter which cell network you're connected to. When 5G networks are only going to be in their infancy in 2020, this sounds like an across-the-board downgrade to me."

Keep in mind: US consumers -- who already pay some of the highest prices in the world -- are also going to be paying notably more just to connect to these 5G networks, making 5G in the short term an expensive proposition. The repeal of net neutrality is likely to result in carriers finding new, creative ways to nickel-and-dime you, and the looming merger between Sprint and T-Mobile is likely to reduce competition, driving up consumer costs as well. As such, 5G's added price proposition isn't likely to appeal to most users anytime soon.

This is before you get to simple aesthetics and design, and the fact that 5G phones are going to be bigger and clunkier than ever:

"So far, the industry's response to 5G's bigger space requirements has been to make smartphones even larger. Consider the Galaxy S10 as a data point: you can get 4G versions like the 6.1-inch Galaxy S10 and the 6.4-inch Galaxy S10+, but if you want 5G, you will have to pick up the ultra-huge 6.7-inch Galaxy S10 5G, which is basically a new S10++ sku. For the Galaxy S11's 2020 release (which, remember, has to have 5G in every model), rumors point to across-the-board size increases for every model."

Apple has taken some heat for "lagging" behind on a 5G phone, but it's fairly clear if you're paying attention that there's no actual rush. The folks framing 5G as some kind of "race" are largely network gear makers and carriers looking to spike network hardware and smartphone sales (or hey, scare regulators into blind obedience). In reality, 5G will ultimately provide faster, better, and more resilient mobile networks, but it's going to take years for networks to reach critical mass and prices to come down. For now, there's no shame -- and likely some notable savings -- when it comes to lagging behind on 5G.

Filed Under: 5g, battery life, overhype
Companies: qualcomm

T-Mobile's 'Nationwide' 5G Isn't Nationwide, Only Slightly Faster Than 4G

from the ill-communication dept

We've noted for a while now how mobile carriers don't seem particularly aware that they're associating 5G in the minds of American consumers with hype and bullshit. AT&T's efforts to use bogus phone icons to pretend 4G is 5G; Verizon's tendency to dramatically overstate availability; scant handset support and annoying surcharges; overly ambitious marketing means that consumers' first contact with 5G is generally one of disappointment.

That's not to say that 5G won't be a solid improvement when it arrives at scale, just that carriers were abundantly eager to overstate what 5G can do and where it's available, and didn't stop to think that they were doing the technology a disservice.

The latest case in point: T-Mobile this week proudly proclaimed it had launched "America's first nationwide 5G network." But a closer look at actual availability finds that by "nationwide," T-Mobile means about 60% of the US. When pressed for clarification, the company that professes to be the "no bullshit" alternative to AT&T and Verizon wouldn't really answer the question:

"The US Census Bureau estimates the population to be more than 330 million people. T-Mobile hasn't actually forgotten about the other 130 million people in the US, as a sentence halfway through the carrier's press release notes that "T-Mobile's network covers more than 60 percent of the population." At 1 million square miles, the carrier's 5G network also covers about 28% of the country's 3.53 million square miles, and it's far short of the geographical reach already provided by T-Mobile's 4G network.

We asked T-Mobile to explain why it defines "nationwide" as "60 percent of the population." T-Mobile did not answer that question."

Only later did T-Mobile attempt to defend its head fake by claiming that the National Advertising Division of the Better Business Bureau declares anything over 200 million to be "nationwide." But NAD is a largely toothless self-regulatory apparatus designed to help the industry forestall any meaningful government punishment for false advertising. Its definition of "nationwide" is meaningless to the broader public and factual reality. Either you're actually deploying 5G to everybody, or you aren't.

One plus side of T-Mobile's 5G launch: at least it's not charging consumers extra to access the network, though you can probably expect that to change post merger when sector competition is weakened. Though there's another issue with T-Mobile's claims that its 5G network is somehow revolutionary: the company's initial implementation of 5G isn't really all that much faster than its existing 4G network, given this initial launch largely relies on the same 600Mhz spectrum it uses for 4G. Not the millimeter wave spectrum that offers lesser range but notably faster speeds:

"The 5G service T-Mobile announced today isn't much faster than T-Mobile's 4G service. That's because the "nationwide" 5G covering 60% of the population uses the same 600MHz spectrum that T-Mobile already uses for 4G. The big speed increases on 5G are expected to come from millimeter-wave spectrum, but those higher frequencies don't travel as far and are being used primarily in densely populated urban areas."

Again, faster, more reliable networks are always good. But they're not magic. And 5G isn't going to magically fix everything wrong with US telecom, be it high prices, regulatory capture or a refusal to upgrade most of the nation despite billions in subsidies. But since "just ok" doesn't sell new handsets or make for sexy headlines, carriers have resorted to dramatically overstating what the standard can do, in turn associating 5G in the minds of many with bluster and bullshit.

Filed Under: 4g, 5g, competition, coverage, nationwide, truth in advertising
Companies: t-mobile

The Washington Post And AT&T Team Up To Over-hype 5G

from the hype-it-up dept

Buried underneath the blistering hype surrounding fifth-generation (5G) wireless is a quiet but unpopular reality: the technology is being over-hyped to spike lagging cell phone and network gear sales, and early incarnations were rushed to market in a way that prioritized marketing over substance. That's not to say that faster 5G networks won't be a good thing when they arrive at scale several years from now, but early offerings have been almost comical in their shortcomings to the point where, at least in tech policy circles, 5G has become a sort of magic pixie dust, capable of fixing anything.

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. And both companies have worked overtime to suggest 5G will revolutionize things like brain surgery, when a closer look past the press release usually reveals such claims to be little more than silly bunk.

Whereas normally it would be journalism's role to point these falsehoods out and deflate marketing hype, apparently major papers have decided to join the fun. The Washington Post and AT&T this week announced a new partnership that both sides claim in press materials will somehow revolutionize journalism. Says AT&T of the new effort:

"AT&T and The Washington Post are working together on the future of digital storytelling. Teams at both companies will experiment with new formats and see what immersive journalism can do better as the world is increasingly connected to 5G. What could this look like? Think about using virtual or augmented reality to put you in the middle of a congressional hearing or giving you a front row seat at a campaign rally. Or perhaps you could see the effects of climate change by taking a virtual tour of a glacier with a digital expert by your side."

The problem with these claims is that there's nothing inherent in 5G that will help "revolutionize journalism" that wasn't possible via existing telecom technology. Outlets like the Post already have access to ultra-fast gigabit WiFi and gigabit Ethernet, not to mention 30 Mbps+ 4G networks. Sure, 5G will be faster and more reliable when it's deployed at scale five years from now, but much like the sector's claim that 5G will revolutionize surgery (nobody's going to use a wireless connection when a fiber to Ethernet hardline is available), these pie in the sky claims tend to be lacking in the supporting evidence department.

I mean maybe something genuinely interesting comes out of such a partnership, but the Washington Post blog about this partnership reads like a damn advertisement (because it is one):

"The Post has focused heavily on the reader experience, and an important part of that is our ability to create an immersive, engaging experience along with our reporting and to deliver that with the best site and app performance readers expect from us,” said Scot Gillespie, Chief Technology Officer at The Post. “With AT&T’s 5G technology, we will not only be able to deliver news more quickly, but we will also be able to deliver it in completely new and compelling ways that are enabled by leveraging the capabilities of 5G."

That's indistinguishable from a press release. It's worth noting that the New York Times struck a similar partnership with Verizon earlier this year, though neither paper has detailed the underlying financial details of these partnerships. It's pretty telling of the era that nobody at either paper thought such a partnership could potentially represent a possible conflict of interest as they cover one of the most heavily hyped tech shifts in telecom history.

You'd hope that as they cement these relationships both papers will point out things like the fact that wireless carriers are actively trying to make it harder to know where 5G really is. Or the fact that AT&T has routinely used bogus phone icons to pretend modified 4G networks are actually 5G. Or that thanks to monopoly domination of the sector, Americans are going to pay an arm and a leg for 5G service. Or how thanks to the industry's refusal to deploy fiber to more rural and less affluent parts of America (despite billions in tax breaks and subsidies), 5G will have scattered availability to the regions that need it most.

Again while it's possible something marginally interesting could come out of these experiments, the lion's share of promises and claims related to 5G have by and large been over-hyped bunk. Hopefully both papers remember it's their jobs to debunk this kind of nonsense, not amplify it.

Filed Under: 5g, media, overhype
Companies: at&t, washington post

States Are Being Conned By Lobbyists Into Backing Off The T-Mobile Merger Lawsuit

from the empty-promises dept

While the DOJ (run by former Verizon lawyer William Barr) and the FCC (run by former Verizon lawyer Ajit Pai) are really excited to rubber stamp Sprint's $26 billion competition-eroding merger with T-Mobile, a bipartisan coalition of states are all that stand in the way in the deal. What began as a coalition of ten states had been slowly expanding over the last few months to include states like Texas. Collectively, state AGs have made it very clear that every meaningful economic metric indicates the deal will erode competition, raise rates, and result in thousands of layoffs as redundant employees are inevitably eliminated.

But in recent months, T-Mobile lobbyists have had some success peeling states off from the lawsuit by making all manner of promises that history suggests aren't likely to be followed through on. Last month, for example, Colorado's AG pulled the state from the lawsuit after T-Mobile promised some additional jobs and 5G coverage to the state. In a press announcement, the Colorado AG says Dish Network (whose involvement we explain here) promised the state 2,000 additional jobs and broader 5G deployment to rural parts of the state if they back off the suit:

"Dish Network will locate its new wireless headquarters with at least 2,000 full-time employees in Colorado and T-Mobile will significantly build out a statewide 5G network, particularly in rural areas, under agreements the Colorado Attorney General’s office announced today. The companies agree to pay up to a total of $100 million if they fail to meet these commitments."

The problem is that US Telecom history is filled with examples of companies making promises just like this one that magically evaporate at a later date. And more often than not, when it comes time for government to hold telecom giants accountable for failed promises of this type, any type of enforcement magically disappears. This isn't just a one off; it has happened from state to state across the union for the better part of the last twenty to thirty years, and is a major reason we still have overpriced, middling broadband networks.

The other problem is that many experts doubt that Dish will ever even properly build a 5G network. After admitting the merger would reduce competition and raise rates (as data shows 4-3 telecom consolidation almost always does around the globe), the DOJ proposed a "solution": force T-Mobile and Sprint to offload some spectrum and the Boost prepaid brand to Dish Network, which will, over a period of 7 years, try and cobble together a fourth replacement carrier. For the better part of the next decade however Dish will be little more than a glorified T-Mobile MVNO or reseller, which won't offset any of the deals real harms.

Another problem: even T-Mobile has criticized Dish Network for spectrum squatting and a long history of empty wireless promises, and the proposal itself has been ridiculed for resulting in far less 5G coverage than the companies are promising. And those thinking they can actually confirm where 5G will be available should know T-Mobile and other wireless carriers are trying to prevent transparent public access to 5G mapping data.

For the Dish plan to actually succeed, the government will have to nanny T-Mobile and Dish to make sure they live up to their end of the bargain, and prevent AT&T and Verizon (which, you'll notice, have been dead quiet and don't oppose deal because it will reduce overall competition) from undermining the effort at every turn. Who's going to do that: industry BFF Ajit Pai? Bill Barr's DOJ? Most economists I've spoken to think this ends with Dish simply selling its spectrum to AT&T and Verizon after several years of what's going to amount to little more than theater. It's easier and more profitable.

When it comes to pre-merger promises, the US telecom industry burned through any benefit of the doubt decades ago. And yet the feds, states, and numerous press outlets still act as if these companies are trustworthy when it comes to said promises. In reality, pre-merger promises are meaningless, and endless telecom sector consolidation is good for just two sets of folks: investors and executives (and even then the proposition is sometimes iffy if you recall fiascoes like Sprint Nextel). Reducing sector competition by 25% will reduce raise rates and stifle innovative incentives. It's just simple economics, as the remaining three companies are obligated to shareholders to take full advantage of the new reality.

Colorado was recently joined by Mississippi in backing off from the lawsuit after some T-Mobile promises. Still, the thirteen states involved in the suit are three more than they started with. The trial is set to begin December 9.

Filed Under: 5g, colorado, competition, fcc, jobs, lobbying, merger, wireless
Companies: dish, sprint, t-mobile

5G Is Not A 'Race,' And We're Incapable Of Determining Winners Even If It Was

from the more-like-a-hamster-wheel dept

By now you've probably been informed that the next-generation of wireless broadband technology is going to revolutionize everything. Much like they did with 3G and 4G, wireless carriers have repeatedly hyped the fifth-generation (5G) wireless standard, insisting that the technology will somehow usher forth a "societal transformation" that's going to have a magical, cascading impact on everything, and everyone.

Reality looks, well, different. Look under the hood at any of the growing 5G "launch" markets, and you'll find service is usually barely available. Hardware support is barely existent and clunky. And while 5G networks are faster and more reliable, they're going to come at a premium, lessening the appeal to US consumers who already pay some of the highest prices in the developed world. Even Vint Cerf is underwhelmed.

Undaunted, industry has used 5G as some kind of mystical tech policy pixie dust. As in, they've been telling lawmakers around the world that unless industry gets whatever the hell it wants (less oversight, a fat new tax cut, merger approval), your country will lose the "race to 5G." China is routinely presented as our arch nemesis in this endeavor, with framing that indicates that if China wins said "race to 5G," something apparently quite terrible will happen. The frequency of this narrative is fairly intense:

And it's usually driven by hardware vendors looking to convince the public, press, and regulators that if a country loses said "race," some immense, horrific, techo-calamity will occur:

Oh no! Don't be left behind! The US technically "won" the "race to 4G," but over time (thanks in no small part to regulatory capture), US 4G LTE networks are not only far more expensive than a long list of countries, our 4G LTE networks are currently some of the slowest anywhere. How'd winning that race turn out?

Here in reality, even if 5G was a race, we're incapable of measuring who's winning. US government broadband mapping efforts have long been a shitshow. Here in the US, wireless carriers are actively trying to exclude 5G from efforts to improve said maps. Why? They know that contrary to their claims, 5G, like 4G and 3G before it, is going to have highly spotty availability. In large part because 5G (especially millimeter wave) needs a lot of fiber. You remember fiber? The technology AT&T and Verizon received billions in taxpayer subsidies to deploy and then refused to finish around halfway through?

Meanwhile, who do you trust to tell you China is actually winning the race to 5G? The Chinese government? Companies like Huawei, whose only interest is in portraying immeasurable success? Similarly, who do we trust in the States to inform us of our noble victory? The Ajit Pai FCC, which routinely simply makes things up at industry behest? The carriers themselves, who've already taken to using bogus phone icons to falsely suggest 5G is far more widely available than it actually is?

5G is absolutely an important evolution, creating faster, better, more resilient networks. But it's not a race. It's a massive, often cumbersome effort that will take the better part of the next decade. And it's not a panacea; many of the same problems we have now (high prices, stifled fiber deployment, mindless merger mania causing eroded competition, corruption) will all be very present as we stumble our way forward, stifling the technology's full potential.

There's a reason why industry wants 5G portrayed as a race, and it has nothing to do with winning, and everything to do with creating an environment where regulators and companies rush head first into deploying a new technology on industry's terms, without thinking much about things that aren't important to industry, like affordability, open and fair networks, and uniform availability.

Filed Under: 5g, competition, wireless

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

Wireless Industry Is Trying To Hide Where 5G Is Actually Available

from the ill-communication 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 has repeatedly hyped early non-standard launches that, when reviewers actually got to take a look, were found to be barely available.

There's a solid chasm between where carriers say they offer 5G, and where 5G is actually available. And there's every indication that mobile carriers are working overtime to make sure that chasm isn't obvious to consumers.

As the FCC finally buckles to pressure to fix the US's comically inaccurate broadband availability maps, both AT&T and Verizon are trying to ensure that 5G is excluded from these efforts. The FCC has been widely ridiculed for blindly relying on overly-generous ISP data indicating where wireless and wired broadband exists. The FCC has long declared that an entire census tract is technically "served" with broadband if just one home in that tract has service. After massive bipartisan political pressure, the FCC recently announced it would at least take a look at using more accurate geospatial data to pinpoint broadband availability.

But in letters to the FCC, the wireless industry declares that 5G should be excluded from these mapping improvements because it might reveal ambiguously "sensitive" information:

"It would be premature for the Commission to require wireless providers to submit coverage maps for 5G service at this time," AT&T said, stating that "requiring 5G coverage maps in this early stage of 5G deployment could reveal sensitive information about cell site locations and even customer locations."

The CTIA, the wireless industry’s top lobbying organization, mirrored those claims in its own filing, insisting that while the organization “supports efforts to monitor 5G deployment,” it is “premature to propose standardized service requirements” for mapping 5G availability.

The broadband industry has historically lobbied against any real effort to improve broadband mapping. Why? Better public data would only more clearly highlight the country's broadband availability gaps and lack of competition, and might result in somebody, you know, actually trying to do something about it. In this case, the industry isn't keen on having its rosy 5G availability promises exposed as a marketing farce:

"Right now, 5G is the technological equivalent of the emperor's new clothes,” she said. “It's the finest new technology, but no one can see it. Without maps that clarify where 5G service is offered at particular service standards, carriers have few checks on their claims about 5G's current reach and capabilities.”

The Trump FCC has used the promise of looming 5G availability as partial justification for obliterating countless consumer protections (read: you don't need oversight of a historically predatory industry because 5G competition will drive amazing innovation!). But there's every indication that, like 4G, 5G will be spotty in areas where the industry has skimped on deploying fiber because it's not profitable enough, quickly enough, for Wall Street. As such, knowing where the emerging standard is actually available is going to be kind of important.

Filed Under: 5g, competition, fcc, map, sensitive information
Companies: at&t, ctia, 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

Early 5G Plans Show Cell Carriers Haven't Learned Much About Misleading 'Unlimited' Plans

from the ill-communication dept

A little more than 12 years ago, Verizon was forced to strike an agreement with the New York State Attorney General for marketing data plans as "unlimited" when the plans had very clear limits. Carriers have received numerous subsequent wrist slaps for the practice in the decade since, but none of these lessons appear to have gotten through.

Case in point: Verizon recently launched its first ever 5G hotspot for use on the company's barely available 5G network. To use it, you'll need to pony up $650, which is three to four times higher than the cost most pay for a comparable 4G hotspot. From there, you'll need to pay Verizon $85 per month for an "unlimited" 5G data plan, which is roughly $10 more per month than a comparable 4G plan. And of course, this being Verizon, the company's "unlimited" data plan is not really unlimited:

"Verizon said hotspot-only plans "start at $85 a month (plus taxes and fees)." Verizon describes the $85-per-month hotspot plan as "unlimited" when you go through the online checkout process. But the fine print states that customers get 50GB of high-speed 5G data, and 5G speeds are reduced to 3Mbps after that. The plan treats 5G and 4G data separately; it provides 15GB of high-speed 4G data and slows users down to 600kbps after that. Verizon allows 4K video streaming on 5G, while limiting video on the 4G network to 720p."

Oh yeah, that's not confusing at all. And speeds of 600 kbps and 3 Mbps are a pretty far cry from what anybody would consider "next-generation" (technically they don't even meet the FCC's 25 Mbps standard definition of broadband).

Carriers tap dance around criticism by suggesting that the data plan is technically unlimited because your data line will always work -- albeit at reduced speeds. But that long list of caveats is still very clearly "limits" by any modern understanding of the word. Carriers should have simply stopped using the word years ago, but because there was no real penalty outside of a wrist slap for misleading customers as to the limits on these connections, the behavior simply never stopped. Consumers like the simplicity of "unlimited" data. Cell carriers like to pretend they're providing it.

With the erosion of FCC authority and elimination of net neutrality protections, it's likely all of this is going to only get dumber should this looming lawsuit against the FCC go the industry's way (a ruling there is expected pretty much any day now). There's now no real penalty if an ISP wants to dramatically mislead consumers as to restrictions placed on a consumer's line, just as long as they bury a complicated explanation somewhere deep in their TOS. And more than a decade after carriers were first criticized for marketing "unlimited" data plans with very real limits, we appear to have made little to no real progress.

Filed Under: 5g, exaggerations, throttling, unlimited
Companies: verizon