Verizon 5G Rant

[EarDemon]

Because it's low frequency.

I max out at 250 Mbps on 5G n71, but can break 300 Mbps on 4G band 66.

You have to compare apples to apples. I get 120 Mbps on n71 in the same location as I get 60 Mbps on LTE band 71. I call that a win even if it's not 3.5 Gbps second.

 

[arlo]

After just getting a Galaxy A51 5G phone to replace my 10 year old Galaxy SIII, I think I asked all of the right questions.
Firstly in my area 5G service when implemented will be spotty at the least. The towers as far as I can see with a spectrum analyzer are using the 700 MHz band. To many hills and too few towers to cover the higher frequencies. Public service and the police even use lower frequencies.
The big decision now is choosing a plan. I've had regular service with a 52 buck with taxes plan for years.
2 gigs of data. A recent power outage and a tether to my PC soon got a message that 80% of my data was eaten up. I always use wifi since getting bitten years ago with a Windows phone that kept the browser alive in the background and I got an unexpected bill of several hunderd bucks. Verizon has at least implemented text alerts since then.

So. Keep my current plan? Go to a prepaid plan (same provisions but with 5 gigs of data) for 10 bucks less a month?
Straight talk from Wally World? My friend told me about their 30 buck plan and Straight talk will send you a SIM for practically free. With unlimited data.
Does 5G mean now you will eat data up and an exponential rate? So my 2 gigs will be gone in 2 minutes watching a YouTube video on mobile data? Hmmmm.....

To put another stick in the spokes I spokes I asked several American reps why I wouldn't want to go with a prepaid plan vs my current plan. For 10 bucks less a month. They flat-out wont help you with that.
Company policy? "Grab Your Bucks"? I'm a long time user, get a company discount, and all the other crap.
Or why with even their least expensive prepaid plan it's still more than Straight Talk.
But every rep I did speak with mentioned that they had prepaid plans.....under their breath.

So I finally get this from them. A Verizon 5G customer with a premium plan will always mostly get 5G where available.
IF the network gets congested they will get randomly bumped back to 4G. But go back to 5G as soon as possible.
Prepaid customers will get bumped to 4G long before 5G gets bottle necked.
Straight Talk customers (where and if 5G is available) might get 5G. Might!
But the norm is 4G. And any bottle necking on the network will bump them further back immediately.
Right when Verizon starts bumping back 5G customers to 4g.
I take this with a grain of salt. Cell providers only tell you what they absolutely have to.

Going off a tangent here. My company in Florida back in the dial-up days had a 56k line.
It delivered 56k or very close to it. The bean counters decided to save money and go to a cheaper ISP.
Our current one was Bell South. When we switched the the other ISP. Same wires on the punch out to the same pedestal and to the central office. Our speed dropped to 22k or less. Service calls, diagnostics. Nothing was wrong. Because we used Bell South lines but a different ISP.....we received the minimum the FCC said we could and that spec was met.

So. I don't really need 5G. I use wifi everyplace it's available when away from home. 5G in my area will be spotty.
My SIII 4G was still usable for years to come. Verizon hinted that "I Needed a 5G phone because soon my services would be upgraded". My Straight Talk friend got basically the same message. But they sell predominantly 4G phones to this day. She got a new Samsung 4G phone and asked me "What about 5G"? "They said I needed to upgrade to a 5G phone".

So. There's still a big WTF out there.
My rant to add to this thread.

 

[EarDemon]

1. Post paid business
2. Post paid consumer
3. Prepaid
4. MVNO

That is generally the order of priority for cell phone providers.

5G does not mean you'll use more data. Potentially having access to faster speeds will potentially cause you to use more data. If I download a 4.7 Gb ISO image, it's not going to matter if I'm on LTE doing 60 Mbps or NR doing 120 Mbps, 4.7 Gb is 4.7 Gb. NR just allows me to get what I need to get done faster.

Currently the industry is in the 4G to 5G transition. 3G networks are being decommissioned and the frequencies are being reframed for 5G

 

[Foxbat]

Saw this mentioned on Sunday's This Week in Tech:

Verizon tells users to disable 5G to preserve battery, then deletes tweet

Verizon's now-deleted tweet said using 4G only will conserve battery life.

arstechnica.com

 

[harshness]

While it may not have painted a rosy picture for a company that makes lots of money off of selling new phones, it has long been known that 5G radios would eat a lot of battery at least until the networks were fleshed out.

 

[Foxbat]

While it may not have painted a rosy picture for a company that makes lots of money off of selling new phones, it has long been known that 5G radios would eat a lot of battery at least until the networks were fleshed out.

I see T-Mobile was also caught up in this, suggesting users fall back to 2G to save battery…

T-Mobile saw Verizon telling people to turn off 5G and thought ‘why stop there’

Why build a 5G network then tell people not to use it?

www.theverge.com

 

[harshness]

I see T-Mobile was also caught up in this, suggesting users fall back to 2G to save battery…

I would ask why this downshift isn't done automatically when the phone doesn't appear to be actively used.

 

[Juan]

2g is text messaging only...data didn't start until 3g( very limited)

2G - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[ncted]

2g is text messaging only...data didn't start until 3g( very limited)

2G - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

EDGE was 3G until it wasn't. I remember a lot of bummed engineers when I worked at Nortel and they moved the goal posts.

 

[Juan]

EDGE was 3G until it wasn't. I remember a lot of bummed engineers when I worked at Nortel and they moved the goal posts.

Was that 2.5?

 

[ncted]

Was that 2.5?

When I started at Nortel in 1999, GPRS was 2G and EDGE was 3G. By the time I left in 2001, GPRS was 2.5G and EDGE was 2.75G.

 

[comfortably_numb]

I now have an iPhone 12 on the Verizon 15GB prepaid plan. I am going to upgrade to the 5G WB plan beginning this Wednesday and keep it for the next 2 months. In early June I'll be in Las Vegas and Southern Californa and there should be plenty of ultra wide band cells out there.

Current download/upload speeds on "nationwide 5G:"

 

[Radioguy41]

That's really impressive, if you care about data (I don't). All I want is a reliable phone and it seems as more and more hype is butterered all over 5G the less reliable the plain old phone function is becoming. It reminds me of the old horsepower races of the sixties, the more HP in the engine the less reliable the car became, or the stereo wattage wars of the 70s-80s where as the WPC number went up the quality coming out of the speakers went down. Let's stop the stupidity and get back to providing reliable quality telephone service.

 

[comfortably_numb]

While I agree that 5G is overhyped and probably not necessary for 90% of phone users, I like gadgets and technology so I'm excited to play around with it. I also believe we need to stay competitive with our cellular technology on the world stage.

I have no complaints about the quality or reliability of my phone service. Not sure which carrier you use, but Verizon rarely disappoints me in terms of QOS.

 

[Juan]

That's really impressive, if you care about data (I don't). All I want is a reliable phone and it seems as more and more hype is butterered all over 5G the less reliable the plain old phone function is becoming. It reminds me of the old horsepower races of the sixties, the more HP in the engine the less reliable the car became, or the stereo wattage wars of the 70s-80s where as the WPC number went up the quality coming out of the speakers went down. Let's stop the stupidity and get back to providing reliable quality telephone service.

Nobody makes calls anymore

 

[comfortably_numb]

Nobody makes calls anymore

You mean young people don't make calls anymore. I'm 41 and make multiple calls every day. And I try to remember to call my mother at least once a week, too

 

[Juan]

You mean young people don't make calls anymore. I'm 41 and make multiple calls every day. And I try to remember to call my mother at least once a week, too

I meant in general we communicate in many different ways..the phone call is just being used less and less....ofcourse businesses will always need them

 

[harshness]

I meant in general we communicate in many different ways..the phone call is just being used less and less....ofcourse businesses will always need them

Voice should be the most used. E-mail should be used for stuff that needs to be remembered. Texting is generally a bad idea.

If you've got time to text back and forth, you've got time to have a conversation. Now they just need to work on auto-correct for voice conversations.

 

[Juan]

Voice should be the most used. E-mail should be used for stuff that needs to be remembered. Texting is generally a bad idea.

If you've got time to text back and forth, you've got time to have a conversation. Now they just need to work on auto-correct for voice conversations.

Voice is so 20th century

 

[clucas]

Still, I talk faster than I text.