Another Report Shows U.S. 5G Isn't Living Up To The Hype

from the you-promised-us-a-miracle dept

Despite the relentless hype leading up to the deployment of 5G, and all the lopsided favors regulators gave wireless carriers on behalf of 5G, and all the lobbying and DC rhetoric about how the U.S. was engaged in a "race with China" over 5G -- U.S. 5G continues to be... largely mediocre.

A number of recent studies have already shown that U.S. wireless isn't just the most expensive in the developed world, U.S. 5G is significantly slower than most overseas deployments. That's thanks in large part to our failure to make so-called middle band spectrum available for public use, resulting in a heavy smattering of lower band spectrum (good signal reach but slow speeds) or high-band and millimeter wave spectrum (great speeds, but poor reach and poor reception indoors). The end result is a far cry from what carriers had spent the last three years promising.

Now another Ookla report has emerged showing that while U.S. 5G availability is going well, the actual speeds users are getting rank among the worst in the developed world:

"Ookla placed median 5G download speeds at 93.73 Mbps in the US, far lower than the UK’s 184.2 Mbps median and far lower still than South Korea, which led the pack at 492.48 Mbps. The U.S. placed around the same relative position for upload speeds as well."

To be clear 93 Mbps being delivered to your pocket is certainly nothing to laugh at. 5G delivers some very real latency and speed improvements for wireless networks. But these improvements were always more evolutionary than revolutionary, and even at their maximum potential were never going to live up to much of the ridiculous hype we've seen over the last few years (carriers have already started hyping 6G before 5G has finished disappointing us). But the U.S. isn't even matching the maximum performance seen in most nations around the world.

Ookla's coverage claims should also be taken with a grain of salt. Other reports on 5G show that even when 5G is purportedly "available," users have a hard time accessing it. This OpenSignal report, for example, found that Verizon's ultra-fast 5G variant was only actually available to consumers with 5G-capable phones around 0.8% of the time. A different OpenSignal report also found that availability wasn't all that great, and that U.S. wireless carriers routinely overstate coverage with their marketing maps.

Granted U.S. 4G networks were middle of the pack as well. And this is all before you get to the fact that U.S. wireless prices are some of the highest in the developed world. You'll routinely see most of these organizations never mention price, for fear of upsetting wireless carriers they generally have tight data-sharing business relationships with. They'll also never actually go beyond the purely technical to explain why the U.S. is consistently so mediocre (regulatory capture, increasingly consolidated carriers, feckless and underfunded consumer protection regulators).

Again, U.S. 5G speeds should slowly improve as the country pushes more middle-band spectrum to market. But even then, you can probably expect the United States to ultimately sit somewhere in the middle of the pack, a place it generally rests in most meaningful fixed-line broadband comparisons as well for reasons we've well explored.

Filed Under: 5g, competition, hype

After Hyping 5G For Years, Verizon Advises Users To Turn It Off To Avoid Battery Drain

from the not-the-revolution-we-were-promised dept

If you listen to Verizon marketing, it goes something like this: fifth generation (5G) wireless is going to absolutely transform the world by building the smart cities of tomorrow, revolutionizing medicine, and driving an ocean of innovation.

In reality, US 5G has largely landed with a thud, studies showing how the US version is notably slower than overseas 5G (and in fact often slower than the 4G networks you're used to) because the US didn't do enough to drive middle-band spectrum to market. Contrary to Verizon claims it's not a technology that's likely to revolutionize medicine. Service availability also remains very spotty, and US consumers continue to pay some of the highest prices for mobile data in the developed world, regardless of standard.

Some variations of the technology are also a bit of a battery hog, something Verizon support was begrudgingly forced to acknowledge this week by informing users that if they want better battery life, they're better off turning 5G off:

"Verizon has spent years hyping 5G despite it bringing just a minor speed upgrade outside the limited areas where millimeter-wave spectrum has been deployed, but the carrier's support team advised users yesterday to shut 5G off if their phones are suffering from poor battery life. The tweet from VZWSupport, now deleted, said, "Are you noticing that your battery life is draining faster than normal? One way to help conserve battery life is to turn on LTE. Just go to Cellular > Cellular Data Options > Voice & Data and tap LTE."

The Tweet was deleted once it began getting attention from users and journalists amused by the disconnect given two straight years of marketing that claimed the technology was near-miraculous. Granted, companies like Apple have adapted to this reality by unveiling a "Smart Data mode" that shifts each phone from 5G to LTE when 5G speeds aren't necessary, conserving battery life. Samsung, Huawei, and other handset manufacturers have issued similar warnings about how the wireless industry's shiny new standard is a bit of an energy hog.

Again, that's not to say 5G isn't going to offer meaningful improvements, eventually. The standard ideally delivers significant improvements in speed, latency, and reliability (assuming it's actually available to you). But these improvements are more evolutionary than revolutionary. The problem: as wireless carriers looked to use the standard to justify higher and higher rates, they've over-promised what it's capable of. That, in turn, is creating a consumer brand impression that associates 5G not with reliability, but hype and bluster; the exact opposite of what marketing departments were hoping for.

Filed Under: 5g, battery life, hype
Companies: verizon

6G Hype Is Already Getting Stupid, When 5G Hype Hasn't Even Finished Disappointing Us Yet

from the maybe-just-stop-talking-for-a-bit dept

We've noted repeatedly how fifth-generation wireless (5G) was painfully overhyped. To spike lagging smartphone and network hardware sales, carriers, equipment makers, and the lawmakers paid to love them spent years insisting that 5G would change the world, ushering forth amazing new cancer cures and the revolutionary smart cities of tomorrow. But while 5G is an important evolutionary step toward faster, more resilient networks, it's not some magical revolution, and US 5G speeds so far have proven to be much slower than overseas counterparts, and in many instances actually slower than 4G.

You'd think industry and experts would view this as a sort of cautionary tale about hype. You'd think pundits and industry would understand that by over-promising what 5G is capable of, they've associated the branding with empty hype and bluster in the eyes of the public. You'd be wrong.

Some wireless industry executives have already started insisting that 6G will be a lot like The Matrix (it won't). And this week, telecom trade magazine Light Reading cited a few companies and experts who are already arguing that 6G will somehow enable Star Trek-esque transporters and the ability to taste and smell things over the internet. Seriously:

"But what if future virtual reality systems allowed their users to taste, touch and smell as well as to see and hear? Seated in their New York or London homes, executives could effectively teleport themselves to Barcelona's gothic district for the full gastronomic accompaniment to their deal-making banter."

To be clear, 6G isn't even a thing yet. It's a future standard that hasn't been developed yet. And the technology to taste or smell things over the internet doesn't exist either, though the idea has long been tinkered with. The idea that 6G will be akin to magic appears to have come from a few academics, tasked with trying to imagine futuristic ways companies can monetize future network standards:

"Tafazolli and his colleagues are determined to break this pattern. In their view, the setting of hard targets for connectivity speed has brought little payoff for operators while lumbering them with multi-billion-dollar bills for the rollout of more advanced networks. By simply cranking up the bitrate or cutting latency, each successive generation looks even less like a breakthrough and more like a mere evolution of mobile technology.

"They give users something to play with, but they don't really generate more money," said Hendon. "We are trying to do things in a completely different way." A businessman who does not have to fly around the world to wine and dine his clients might be willing to spend quite a bit more on his mobile service, he said."

In many countries (Canada, America), consumers already pay some of the highest prices in the world for mobile data. Carriers are mad that they weren't able to charge customers even more money for 5G. Verizon tried to charge consumers $10 extra per month just to connect to 5G networks, but then had to back off the ambition after consumers (quite correctly) failed to see the value proposition. Especially given US 5G speeds (so far) are a flimsy disappointment.

With net neutrality dead (for now), and US carriers already discovering creative new ways to nickel-and-dime consumers (like charging you extra for HD, or charging you extra to have your games and music throttled), there's really not much doubt that providers would love to charge you extra to enjoy simulated scents and smells over your wireless connection. But at this juncture, fresh off 5G hype, it's just kind of silly to take seriously.

The whole premise appears to be little more than a thought exercise by a few academics working in concert with industry on ways to justify higher rates, though it's obviously dressed up as something more noble and intellectual than all that:

"This is not just a university having a bright idea," said Hendon. "Vodafone and BT and Telefónica have all signed up to this – they understand it as well as we do, and we are responding to what they say." Putting the operators' commercial interests and pressing need for a growth story ahead of the technology considerations could help this particular initiative to stand out."

On the one hand, there's nothing wrong with creative thought exercises that try to envision the technologies of tomorrow. But fresh off of consumer disappointment with 5G, caused directly by three straight years of bullshit and hype about what the standard is actually capable of, you'd think folks would be a little more careful about tempering expectations moving forward.

Filed Under: 5g, 6g, hype

We're Already Hyping 6G When 5G Hasn't Even Finished Disappointing Us Yet

from the this-one-goes-to-11 dept

It was the technology that was supposed to change the world. According to carriers, not only was fifth-generation wireless (5G) supposed to bring about the "fourth industrial revolution," it was supposed to revolutionize everything from smart cities to cancer treatment. According to conspiracy theorists and internet imbeciles, 5G is responsible for everything from COVID-19 to your migraines.

Unfortunately for both sets of folks, data continues to indicate that 5G is nowhere near that interesting.

A number of recent studies have already shown that U.S. 5G is notably slower than most overseas deployments (thanks in part to government's failure to make more mid-band spectrum available for public use). Several other studies have shown that initial deployments in many cases are actually slower than existing 4G networks. That's before you get to the fact that U.S. consumers already pay more for wireless than a long list of developed nations, something likely to get worse in the wake of mindless industry consolidation.

While 5G is important, and will improve over time, it's pretty clear that the technology is more of a modest evolution than a revolution, and 5G hype overkill (largely driven by a desperate desire to rekindle lagging smartphone sales) is a far cry from reality.

That's not stopping us from already hyping 6G, though. As carriers begin the fairly mundane process of building the standards framework for the next next-generation standard, the familiar promises of near-magical capabilities are already starting to emerge. Just ask Mazin Gilbert, AT&T's VP of network analytics and automation, who appears to have learned absolutely nothing the last few years, and is already equating 6G to The Matrix:

"Gilbert added that 6G might even support science fiction-type services, specifically calling out the 1999 movie "The Matrix," where the character Trinity learned how to fly a helicopter in minutes. "This is what we see our lives going to be like," he said.

It's worth noting that several of these kinds of use cases have long been touted for 5G, and now appear to be migrating into the 6G discussion as well."

At the same standards meeting, Karri Kuoppamaki, VP of technology development and strategy for T-Mobile US, at least tried to temper enthusiasm, urging his industry colleagues to avoid over-hyping 6G in the same way 5G was:

Kuoppamaki made one clear plea to the thousands of registrants to the event: "It's OK to get excited about 6G, but we have to get excited the right way," he said, warning that the industry should not fall victim to the "shiny objects syndrome." On 6G, "we should focus on getting it right," he said, rather than rushing a new technology to market that doesn't necessarily provide any clear benefits or new or improved use cases.

What carriers like AT&T didn't quite seem to realize, is that while they thought they were just sparking a new wave of handset upgrades by over-hyping 5G, misrepresenting what the standard can do and where it's available (remember, AT&T still uses fake phone icons to pretend 4G is 5G), only creates unrealistic expectations for consumers. As a result, the end user winds up associating what really are useful (if sometimes modest) improvements and standards with bluster and bullshit, the exact opposite of what they were going for.

Filed Under: 5g, 6g, hype, overhype, wireless
Companies: at&t

Half Of Smartphone Users Incorrectly Think They Already Have 5G

from the don't-believe-the-hype dept

With smartphone sales plateauing the last few years, handset vendors and wireless carriers have worked overtime trying to make 5G seem like it's something utterly revolutionary in the hopes of driving more phone upgrades. The problem: U.S. 5G is more evolutionary than revolutionary. And researchers who've been running U.S. 5G networks through their paces have made it clear that U.S. 5G is much slower than most overseas 5G networks (largely due to a lack of fiber, regulatory incompetence, and not enough mid-band spectrum).

Despite all the dumb lobbyist hype about the need to win the "race to 5G," we're nowhere close to doing so. One recent OpenSignal study showed how the U.S. ranked last in a study comparing 5G speeds in a list of 13 developed nations:

Not only is U.S. 5G slower than a long list of countries, researchers from both PC Magazine and the Washington Post have found that U.S. 5G deployments are, in many locations, slower than 4G. More specifically, PC Magazine found that AT&T's mobile 5G network was actually slower than the company's 4G network in 21 out of 22 cities tested. That's assuming 5G can be found at all, a tricky proposition given wireless carriers have been actively misrepresenting where 5G is available by using fake phone icons or simply, much like they did with 3G and 4G, lying about coverage without government penalty.

This reality is a far cry from carrier claims that 5G will create the smart cities of tomorrow, cure cancer, or otherwise completely revolutionize communications. Meanwhile, surveys suggest that convincing consumers they need to upgrade to 5G right now will be an uphill climb. One survey this week found that nearly 50% of smartphone owners think they already have 5G. The general consensus among consumers so far is one of confusion, probably not helped by AT&T's longstanding decision to pretend 4G is 5G:

"Nearly half (49%) of U.S. consumers (across all major carriers) believe their current iPhone is capable of accessing 5G, despite the fact that the first Apple 5G phone is not yet available – according to a recently released Global Wireless Solutions (GWS) survey of 5,000 U.S. smartphone users. More broadly, 29% of all consumers with smartphones are unsure if their current device is 5G capable, while 38% of consumers do not know if their wireless carrier provides 5G coverage where they live."

Yes, 5G will provide faster, lower latency, more reliable networks over the next decade. And speeds will improve when (if?) the U.S. drives more mid-band spectrum for public use, addresses (or even acknowledges) regulatory capture, and we more broadly deploy fiber (needed for 5G tower backhaul) to the parts of the nation carriers have spent years trying to ignore. But most studies show that U.S. consumers are far more interested in a lower bill than they are 5G. And with the industry rushing toward Canadian style consolidation and less competition, that's likely going to be the last thing on the menu.

Filed Under: 5g, hype, lies, truth in advertising
Companies: at&t, verizon

Verizon's New 'Nationwide' 5G Isn't Nationwide, Barely Faster Than 4G

from the that-word,-it-does-not-mean-what-you-think-it-means dept

While unveiling its shiny new 5G-enabled iPhones this week, Apple brought Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg to the stage to declare that Verizon had launched an updated, "nationwide" 5G network that shores up the company's 5G coverage. Until now, Verizon has largely embraced "high band" or millimeter wave 5G, which provides amazing speeds if you're near an antenna, but suffers from terrible range and building wall penetration issues. As a result, the company has been routinely criticized for comically overstating not only what 5G is capable of, but where 5G is available.

To attack this credibility problem, and drive some hype for the new iPhones, Verizon announced that it was dramatically expanding its 5G network to 200 million more people.* To do so, Verizon's using "dynamic spectrum sharing" (DSS) that helps utilize some existing 4G channels to offer 5G. The problem: Vestberg wouldn't state what speeds this new "5G" service operates at, because it's not likely to be much faster than existing 4G. It will however make the "5G" icon on your phone light up, which is helpful for marketing purposes:

"As there's going to be no additional airwaves in use, you shouldn't expect much better speeds than on 4G. 5G shines when it has big, broad lanes to itself. On the other hand, this lets Verizon manage a transition from 4G to 5G smoothly, and lets it light up a 5G icon on many people's phones for marketing reasons."

In time, 5G will provide faster, more reliable, lower-latency networks. But Verizon has repeatedly tried to advertise 5G as less evolutionary and more revolutionary, claiming (falsely) that it's akin to the "fourth industrial revolution," will revolutionize cancer treatment (something doctors I've talked to have laughed at), and will result in amazing next-generation smart cities of tomorrow. In reality it's an incremental upgrade that's good but not game changing, especially given a recent study showed Verizon 5G was available just 0.4% of the time in the real world.

Several problems: one, a self-regulatory oversight system constructed by the telecom sector to pre-empt real regulatory action declares it fine to abuse the word "nationwide," (something T-Mobile is doing as well). *And the FCC, for decades, has done a piss poor job verifying the chasm between marketing hype, ISP claims, and actual availability. Regulatory capture also means industry sees little meaningful penalty for lying about coverage, so they, you know, keep doing it.

In wireless carrier and handset vendor PR land, 5G is an incredible, revolutionary upgrade that changes everything. With smartphone innovation flailing and overall sales lagging, they're eager to drive mass upgrades by portraying 5G as something more substantive than it is.

Here in reality, U.S. 5G continues to be far slower than a long list of overseas networks because we've done a poor job making mid-band spectrum available for public use and driving fiber to lower ROI areas (despite billions upon billions in subsidization). And numerous studies have found that current 5G is in some instances slower than 4G. In a few years as more mid-band spectrum is pushed to market this will steadily improve. But right now, consumers (correctly) don't really see 5G as worth it, which is a major reason why Verizon had to back off plans to charge a $10 monthly premium just to access it.

Filed Under: 5g, exaggeration, hype, truth in advertising
Companies: verizon

Study Shows US 5G Is An Over-hyped Disappointment

from the we're-not-#1 dept

We've noted for a while that the "race to 5G" is largely just the byproduct of telecom marketing departments and lobbyists hoping to spur lagging smartphone sales and scare lawmakers into obedience. Yes, fifth-generation wireless (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, availability has been dramatically overstated, and even if it was a "race," our broadband maps are so terrible (by industry design) it would be impossible to actually determine who won.

Even if you still want to view 5G as a race, there's very little indication we're actually winning it.

A new study by OpenSignal looked at crowdsourced 5G network performance data around the world, and included this telling chart comparing US 5G speeds to the rest of the world:

Sure, doubling 4G speeds isn't nothing. But it's sure as hell not the society-transforming technology we've been repeatedly promised. And in stark contrast to a lot of rhetoric about US 5G supremacy coming from the telecom sector and its BFFs at the Trump FCC, the data so far is aggressively disappointing.

Why is the US lagging behind other nations? One, because while 5G is wireless, you still need fiber fueling towers and providing backhaul country wide. But like so many aspects of US broadband, the companies that feed cell towers enjoy a very comfortable monopoly in most markets. A monopoly protected and propped up by the captured Trump FCC. Thanks to monopoly power and regulatory capture, the incentive just isn't there to deploy fiber anywhere it doesn't make the most immediate sense from an ROI perspective. Limited competition, spotty fiber, captured regulators, slower speeds.

The other problem, as the study explains, is US spectrum policy failure. Whereas many foreign countries have worked overtime to free up valuable, faster mid-band spectrum for public use, the US has lagged well behind on this front. The biggest holders of said spectrum are the Department of Defense and a handful of corporations, neither of which the FCC has had the courage to meaningfully pressure. It was something FCC Commissioners like Jessica Rosenworcel complained about just last year.

Instead, we've relied heavily on low spectrum bands (decent at providing service at range but not much faster than 4G), or high-band, millimeter wave (mmWave) spectrum (which offers very fast speeds in select urban areas, but suffers from distance and wall penetration issues). The result is 5G networks that are offering a fraction of the speeds seen elsewhere around the world, Open Signal notes:

"Now, we find 5G is faster than Wifi in seven out of eight leading 5G countries but 4G is faster than Wifi in only two of these countries, Australia and Saudi Arabia. The U.S. is the exception, where Wifi continues to offer a small edge over 5G because of the large number of U.S. 5G users connecting on widely available, but relatively slow, 5G networks that are deployed using low spectrum bands...Cellular connectivity will not replace Wifi anytime soon."

The study, in one swipe, puts to bed claims that 5G is a "race" that the US is somehow winning through sheer ingenuity and industry coddling deregulation, and that 5G will be some sort of competitive panacea (high prices also hamstring it in this area). OpenSignal has a whole separate study on why 5G won't be supplanting WiFi anytime soon. All of this runs, again, in pretty stark contrast to claims by companies like Verizon that 5G is some widely available, near mystical technology that will revolutionize everything from smart vehicles to modern medicine.

This is all before you get to the fact that carriers are aggressively overstating where 5G is actually available, and trying to prevent the government from accurately mapping availability. Or the fact that most 5G headsets are (for now) expensive, fatter battery hogs the majority of consumers aren't interested in. Or the fact that carriers like Verizon are trying to charge extra for 5G, when US consumers already pay some of the highest prices for mobile data in the developed world.

So on one side, we have captured regulators and wireless marketing departments falsely claiming that US 5G is going to revolutionize everything, including cancer treatment (it's not). On the other hand we have conspiracy theorists insisting that 5G is some cancer-causing Godzilla. But the reality is 5G simply isn't that interesting, powerful, or dangerous. It's a modest evolution, not a revolution. And while it will certainly be a good thing many years from now when it's fully deployed, mindless hype has been its most notable attribute thus far.

Filed Under: 5g, broadband, competition, fcc, hype, race to 5g, us