Is 5g worth it...yet?

[unwashed potato!]

a you tube vid of 5g installers wearing haz mat suits

I wonder if the vid was made with an agenda

 

[Terminal_Boy]

Not sure, but I don't see why it can't eventually be good enough to at least poach large market share from fibre companies.

Surely the long-term infrastructure costs are lower than cables.

Nope. Once you’ve buried the cables and installed the cabinets, the running costs of a fibre network are a fraction of running a cellular network. And guess what connects the base stations together and to the rest of the network? That’s right, lots of fibre optic cables as the old microwave links don’t have the bandwidth to support a fully loaded 4G base station, let alone a 5G one.

 

[Terminal_Boy]

I wonder if the vid was made with an agenda

Of course it was. You don’t rig a live cell tower of any comms technology due to the high amount of RF energy present close to the transmitter panels.

 

[Mr_Cool]

Some networks such as 3 are offering 5G at no extra cost.

is 5G worth it now? No

With Coronavirus situation rollouts will likely be delayed which will mean coverage is gonna be patchy for longer.

Speeds not an interest for me, but I think 5G will highlights its benefits in areas of high congestion e.g. at concerts. Where you frequently struggle to get signal or transmit data.

My understanding atm is the current 5G modems are just battery drinkers, which to me isnt worth it.