Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
Cable is losing customers by the million and looking to make up the lost revenue from internet service. Just as 5G wireless and low latency satellite is starting to come online.
|
But 5G is Niche, not broadband. It's mainly for stadiums, race courses or to monetise public WiFi for mobile operators. Mobile / Cellular can never ever deliver broadband unless every other lamp post is a mast.
The only way to have reliable streaming, never mind more than one user in the home or HD or 4K is Fibre or HFC (Cable broadband where the cable goes to a fibre fed street cabinet). To an extent VDSL can deliver streaming, but at 1km you are down to about 20 Mbps or less depending on line quality and crosstalk.
ONE cable Fibre to the Cabinet and coax or twisted pair an average european street has more capacity than satellite for an entire region.
I worked as comms engineer for years and in an ISP's R&D. Mobile no matter what "G" nor satellite can ever compete with 15 year old fibre to the kerb or Cable company HFC, never mind fibre to the premises/home. Basic physics.
The 5G is actually more about allowing seamless switching of VOIP and data between 2G / 3G / 4G masts and also WiFi, rather the RF. The existing bands can only go faster by tripling the mast density (look up how cellular works). The bands below 900MHz are only low capacity and mostly rural, at 700MHz the cells get too big and hard to control size. Above the current 2.1G (Europe 3G and 4G) the bands are larger to allow more speed, but 4G vs 5G makes no difference to speed per MHz. A lightly loaded 3G HSPA is as fast as 4G or 5G per 5MHz. The higher bands are progressively more line of sight and short range.
More speed needs either fewer people on a mast, or more handset power, shorter distance or a wider band. See Shannon-Nyquist information theory and laws.
Satellite is very cheap for DTH broadcast. It's massively expensive and limited in speed per user, if the service is popular. Lower orbit Satellites only solve the latency issue. Two way satellite is brilliant for emergencies or wilderness. It's pointless even in most of Africa, which already is getting the complementary Mobile and Fibre (Cities).