Is 5G a hoax?

[bdunham7]

I recently acquired new phones, finally upgrading our excellent but ancient Samsung S10Es to 5G.  I also am trying a 5G backup internet system, Internet Air from AT&T.  I'm really underwhelmed by the "progress" over 4G LTE.  Essentially from what I've seen so far in my built-up but sprawling suburban area is that 5G is just 4G LTE made slightly worse.

To start, I simply don't get any usable signal at all in the house--4G or 5G or anything else--except for one corner of one room where the All-Fi Hub seemed to connect and give me from 1 to 3 (out of 4) bars of reception.  For some reason, AT&T swapped that unit out for the football-shaped hub (CGW450-400) that just shows me a clock, not bars.  However, this setup quickly became unusable as the system kicked me off repeatedly and when it was working it was in fits and starts.

I then got a 4G/5G booster setup with an outdoor mini-Yagi and indoor plate antennas.  Then I went on CellMapper and started aiming at towers and was able to get decent signals from several of them.  By decent I mean -86 to -96dBm.  However, I found that my speeds were generally pretty crappy and in the mid-to-low end of 4G performance.  So I started reading up on cellular phone signals and found that in many cases 5G is just 4G with a rotten cherry on top.

I'm currently aimed at a tower that is 2km away.  I have the mini-Yagi on a pole about 20 feet off the ground, 5 feet higher than the peak of my roof.  I cannot visually see the tower (actually antennas on a large electrical power tower) but there's no big buildings or anything in the way.  I'm getting a "5G NR NSA" signal on Band 2 with an RSRP (strength) of -91 to -96dBm, an RSRQ (quality, not sure exactly how this is measured) of -18 to -20 and a SINR (signal/noise) of 22 to 24dB.  The first is OK, the last is great, the RSRQ is terrible.  I'm getting speeds of 2.5 to 10mbps down and 8 to 25M up.  Ping time is 50-200ms and latency is 200-1000ms.  These vary and are occasionally much worse (getting down to DSL or even dial-up numbers!) but I'm commonly seeing better up than down.  I had another tower as strong as -86dBm but that turned out to be 4G LTE only.

The 5G NR NSA means a non-standalone system that uses a 4G "core" for establishing and controlling the signal as well as uploads.  The entire signal is on an established 4G band (~1.9GHz in this case for b2).  I'm getting 5G indications on my phones as well (different carrier--Verizon) but still not seeing any high speeds.  I'm aware that I'm not going to get mmWave 24GHz service (my new phones don't even support it) but I'm not even seeing any C-band (n77) service in my area.

Just one final test, I went to LAX yesterday and presumably they have the latest spiffy service in the terminals.  I had 5 bars of 5G but my speeds were 24M up and down, again simply not really better than an excellent 4G LTE signal.

So the upshot is that I'd prefer a stable, low latency 10mbps signal to an erratic 5G service with dropouts no matter how fast it's "peak" speeds might be.  AI/Google/etc say that the low RSRQ is likely do to tower congestion but it seems to be pretty consistent across several days and several towers.  A bit of internet reading reveals that I'm not alone in finding 5G internet to be less than desirable.  Is anyone here happy with theirs?  I need a backup internet provider and it looks like Starlink may be the only option.

[Red Squirrel]

I work for a telco, although not directly involved with 5G.  From what I've been told most of what they are deploying is what they call "5G ready" and is not true 5G.  Although they have also been deploying 5G as I sometimes see it show up on my phone depending where I am. The thing with 5G though is that it's very short range and easily blocked by obstructions. Personally I really feel they should have just stuck with LTE, put the money towards improving land based internet services instead. There's lot of people who only have access to basic DSL or dialup. Roll out fibre to those areas.  I don't really care how fast the internet on my phone is especially considering the data caps. That's not where I'm downloading or streaming anything, I do that stuff on the computer.   

I have a property way out in the bush that I plan to eventually move to, so I am kind of hoping they keep LTE around as it reaches that far but I doubt 5G will.  At that point I'll probably get Starlink though, but be nice to still also get regular cell service for standard texts and calls.

[Bud]

I am sitting in a mall North of Toronto, my phone shows 5G with a decent signal strength.

[Haenk]

Just one final test, I went to LAX yesterday and presumably they have the latest spiffy service in the terminals.  I had 5 bars of 5G but my speeds were 24M up and down, again simply not really better than an excellent 4G LTE signal.

The bandwidth is shared, so while 5G might be faster overall, it is usually not faster when more people are in the same cell.
And: 5G needs more cells to work as intended, i.e. more towers/antennas near you. Of course providers don't like to invest into a lot of new towers, so areas with sparse population will be upgraded last.

One thing to consider: Maybe they just *can't* upgrade as fast as they want to. At least in Germany, that was a huge problem, there simply was not enough hardware to upgrade and install thousands of towers.

My house is located in a kind of shielded area, a bit lower than the houses surrounding me. 5G receiption is low most of the time. However a bit better than 4G/3G before, I guess they installed a new antenna somewhere near.

[bdunham7]

I am sitting in a mall North of Toronto, my phone shows 5G with a decent signal strength.

Even if your phone is just connected via 4G LTE to a 4G tower that supports 5G NSA without actually seeing the 5G NR radio the phone can still display the 5G signal. 

https://www.transatel.com/news-and-insights/blog/the-4g-vs-5g-scam-your-phones-cellular-connectivity-icon-has-been-lying-to-you-for-years/

[elevendroids]

It depends on the country. E.g in Ireland most (if not all) 5G deployments are still in the "non-standalone" mode (NSA) - which means that they run over the existing 4G infrastructure (only the radio part is 5G).

On the other hand, two years ago in Singapore I got 900mbps down (and wimpy ~50mbps up) on a phone (Pixel 8 Pro) while standing in a middle of a gigantic housing estate (I think it was Punggol) - see attachment.
I've also noticed small base stations (without any fencing!) deployed around there: https://maps.app.goo.gl/bKPV1cGxi5qAJ68K7 - presumably for the 26/28GHz bands?

[bdunham7]

presumably for the 26/28GHz bands?

900mbps is apparently acheivable with just C-band in the best case with a strong signal.  If they just installed C-band on my nearest tower I might be OK even though my booster won't work on n77.  But there's no C-band on any tower I can find in my locale.

[amyk]

The speeds are always "up to". As an aside, using a mobile network for a stationary home connection doesn't seem like a good idea, a wired connection will always be more reliable and not subject to interference/noise which could be what you're experiencing. Besides, lots of stationary users are going to take capacity that could've been used by the fewer actually-mobile users.

[ipman]

Focus only on the radio part won't solve anything.
Equally important is the uplink to the mobile core (between sites) and also their (IP) link to your destination.
Yes, we see huge speeds achieved in the labs, but these are more like marketing figures because they are made in ideal conditions which are not achievable in real world.
On top of that, even if we are looking for perfection, there is also the cost into play.
One more thing: 5 SA vs NSA does not change anything for your case. This is just about what the core does, not about radio speed.

[Psi]

Sadly, there is immense pressure/lobbying on the standards bodies to categories things so cell providers can comply with the most basic of a standard, without any of the cool fast fancy stuff, while still calling it the new name everyone wants.

Your phone saying 5G doesnt really tell you much

[tszaboo]

Looking at the module side, there is new technology in it. And the licensing fees for 5G is less than 4G, which is a welcomed change. That might be one of the reason why it's being pushed, it's about 2.5% cheaper on the Qualcomm licenses compared to 4G.
But that doesn't really matter, if a LTE module costs 10x less than a 5G module. Also 5G doesn't have low speed modes yet, that's resulting in a really bad situation when your device doesn't need 150MBit/s connection speed.
And for home I don't think it matters anymore, as VoWIFI is a technology that can reliably cover everyone's need.

If only we could beat the mobile operators into submission, instead of their political games that they are playing, we could have uniform good service everywhere. It wouldn't take much, just support a single band worldwide, enable some of the features that has been in the standard for decades, and stop playing with roaming. Like seriously, I cannot believe in 2026 they still try to make an extra buck on you because you send data across a border.

[SiliconWizard]

"Hoax" is a big word here, but 5G certainly doesn't deliver what it promised. The adequate infrastructures are just not there and cost a fortune.
In practice, it brings practically nothing over 4G and makes it worse for many that are not close enough to a cell.
Knowing that 6G is coming in a couple years, I personally think 5G was a completely useless deployment.

[tom66]

We have "5G" widely deployed in the UK.  My phone rarely shows anything other than "5G".

Service has never been worse.

I regularly experience "not spots".  There is an entire area of my town where I can have a "full" "5G" signal and not be able to start a Google Maps session or make a phone call.

It is often impossible to work on a train line consistently.  It used to be the case that you went into a tunnel and lost the signal.  Now it's just happening randomly at some points along the line for no good reason.  The train lines often offer free Wi-Fi but this is fulfilled by a cellular antenna on top of the train, and the same issue exists with that.

The problem is overselling in many cases. Operators have sold bandwidth that they can't fulfil.  There are many mobile broadband users because for light usage these connections can make more sense than ADSL.  There's also an ever growing demand from "IoT" - both of my cars feature LTE/4G connectivity for data services. 

There's also the issue with Huawei kit.  The UK government forced cell providers to remove it all, because the US said China bad.  There is a lot of debate over how significant such an infrastructure risk actually was, especially because Huawei had genuinely some of the best 5G equipment available, and forcing the removal has created its own challenges.  Operators have been scrambling to remove this kit before the legal deadline, and must replace it with kit from other vendors, which is often years behind where Huawei's was.  This is eating up capex budgets on improving existing services.

[default0.0player]

inb4 Australia shutdown 4G after 6G implementation and IMEI blocks perfectly functional 5G phones

[m k]

Here last real was 3G, it included a speed exception from the start.

Now all connections have an exception of 5M or so.
I don't know any court cases, but initially later speeds were dedicated without an exception.

Nowadays priorities seem to be phone, ICMP and data, TV seems to be less than other data.

[edit]
missing word.

[G7PSK]

.

Service has never been worse.

I regularly experience "not spots".  There is an entire area of my town where I can have a "full" "5G" signal and not be able to start a Google Maps session or make a phone call.

It is often impossible to work on a train line consistently.  It used to be the case that you went into a tunnel and lost the signal.  Now it's just happening randomly at some points along the line for no good reason.  The train lines often offer free Wi-Fi but this is fulfilled by a cellular antenna on top of the train, and the same issue exists with that.



The problem is overselling in many cases. Operators have sold bandwidth that they can't fulfil.  There are many mobile broadband users because for light usage these connections can make more sense than ADSL.  There's also an ever growing demand from "IoT" - both of my cars feature LTE/4G connectivity for data services. 

There's also the issue with Huawei kit.  The UK government forced cell providers to remove it all, because the US said China bad.  There is a lot of debate over how significant such an infrastructure risk actually was, especially because Huawei had genuinely some of the best 5G equipment available, and forcing the removal has created its own challenges.  Operators have been scrambling to remove this kit before the legal deadline, and must replace it with kit from other vendors, which is often years behind where Huawei's was.  This is eating up capex budgets on improving existing services.[/quote]

Where I live in Norfolk any G most of the time would be nice, the area is full of black spots with no signal whatsoever. I can even be on the phone talking to someone and the signal just drops out without me ever moving. They have installed 5G in some of the towns but if anything the situation is getting worse outside of the towns. A couple of years ago I got a text from my service supplier saying that they were improving things and the signal would be turned of for a few hours, after that everything was worse.
 

[ConKbot]

All of the cell phone techs are more for the carrier than you. I've had 3G refuse to stream 64kbps audio at intersections because they had too many people.  I've seen 4g go from 100mbps plus when it first launched, down to 10 as the towers filled up.  You don't buy infrastructure, the cell companies do, so the main marketing drive is boring stuff like number of devices it can support and max bandwidth at the tower.  They just do the soypog 1 morbillion bits per second demos on virtually empty towers to convince people to buy "new rectangle with new processor that can browse increasingly worse webpages at the same speed, with 4975mp camera with a tiny lens" and expect people to ignore the phone isn't anywhere near 3.2mm thick, but somehow thickness is why they had to remove the headphone jack.

[bdunham7]

"Hoax" is a big word here, but 5G certainly doesn't deliver what it promised.

So much so that I've disabled 5G for normal use because I was tired of having it show me 2-3 bars of 5G with absolutely no data service.  However, today I was waiting to pick someone up on a college campus and I noticed I had 5 bars of LTE so I ran the speedtest.  I got about 250M down and 50M up which seems fantastic.  If I can get that on 4G, why not build that out more?  Then out of curiousity I turned the 5G back on and saw 5 bars of 5G+.  1036M down and 107M up.  Gigabit service through the air! 

The "hoax" seems to be the coverage map, not shortcomings of the better 5G tech,  specifically the actual C band and mmWave implementations.  My carrier's coverage map shows me solidly in the 5G "Ultra Capacity" zone but I can't get anywhere near those speeds even standing at the peak of my roof. 

[m k]

You were a nomad.

[stretchyman]

No, but 6G most def is. I've never heard so much BS about anything ever and I've been around a while!

[Renate]

I'm an outlier and a troglodyte.

At home I want to be able stream 64k audio (BBC World Service) without a hiccough.
I like to occasionally download ROMs of up to 2 GB in under 5 minutes.

Away from home I want to be able to hit Google Maps for routing, transport, possibly check a business for opening hours.

Although I have a "5G" phone I have never seen any sign of 5G in utilities that show connections.
Moreover, 2 minutes on a train will get me where I have no service at all.

[bw2341]

The "hoax" seems to be the coverage map, not shortcomings of the better 5G tech,  specifically the actual C band and mmWave implementations.  My carrier's coverage map shows me solidly in the 5G "Ultra Capacity" zone but I can't get anywhere near those speeds even standing at the peak of my roof.

The exact level of service is incredibly local. I'm in the suburbs and my local cell tower is 500m away. The service is very mediocre with speeds of 10 to 20 Mb/s at peak times in the evening.

I tried a speed test early in the morning and got peaks of about 60 Mb/s on 5G and above 100 Mb/s on 4G.

In Canada, cell tower information is available to the public from Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada. Someone published it on an interactive map website:

https://www.ertyu.org/steven_nikkel/cancellsites.html

Looking at the information for my tower, it makes sense that 5G is worse than 4G for me. There is only 15 MHz of 5G bandwidth versus 75 MHz of 4G. As people switch to newer phones and more customers sign up for heavier usage services such as home internet, the service will likely slow down.

Poking at various cells downtown, there is a huge variety. You have ancient cells with a single band of 4G and 3G. You have modernized cells with 5G over all the available frequency bands. Physical spacing downtown can be well under 100m.

[Berni]

Here our 5G service is crap as well.

The 5G coverage is pretty poor and where we go have 5G it usually works badly, sometimes to the point that i go into my phones settings and force it back down to 4G.

Indeed this 5G is in my opinion the wrong way to go. I am perfectly happy with 4G, i don't need more speed because not like you can use it for long with datacaps.

[Randy222]

If your signal is GOOD, then 5G LTE rocks.
It can be spotty and cause user to get frustrated when 5G is preferred and the 5G cells are spotty.
Seeking also kills battery faster.
I set my 4G/5G phone to 4G preferred, because 4G by me is way more available than the 5G. Where there is good 5G my phone uses it.

[Zucca]

Very informative amp hour podcast here:
https://theamphour.com/714-the-measurement-blues-with-martin-rowe/

The "n"G is just so they can sell you a product, most marketing driven. So yes it a hoax but as stated above 6G >> 5G in "haox-iness" .

As long they place the least amount possible of antenna towers to save money, I do not expect a big change.