Why 5G Sucks ⚠️

5G was meant to be the future of mobile
internet we're going to be able to
control robots from the other side of
the world and download entire movies in
seconds but I'm on 5G right now and with
this speed I can barely send a WhatsApp
message what happened here well picture
this it's 2015. we've just had the
release of the iPhone 6s people are
starting to enjoy the luxuries of 4G
connectivity and tech companies have
just started to use the word AI every
two sentences and AI is simply
artificial intelligence this is the year
where 5G was finalized a whole bunch of
tech Brands like Samsung Qualcomm and
Nokia basically came together to figure
out the three key things that we're
going to define the next standard to
make sure that they were all on the same
page and that they could all start
separately planning their part in it and
what they came up with seemed incredible
like just for starters much faster
speeds these companies figured out that
by using smaller higher frequency radio
waves than 4G called millimeter waves
they could send signals that carried
much more energy so much more energy in
fact that while the max speed of 4G was
around 100 megabits per second 5G can go
not five times faster or 10 times faster
but 200 times faster at 20 gigabits per
second but as well as speeds these
companies also promised us more
potential users because these higher
frequency bandwidths also have more
capacity it would apparently take 100
times more data traffic for a 5G signal
to get overloaded whereas with 4G it was
already getting to a stage where in
packed cities people having to share
their speed with each other and this
wasn't just about more smartphone users
being able to watch cat videos any one
time the idea of a hundred times more
capacity was to support the internet of
things and even smart cities where every
single electronic device your cars your
washing machines your toothbrushes can
be always connected with their own
separate 5G connection and then the
final key pillar was 0 latency because
internet speed is not just download
speed and upload speed it's also the
response time taken between a user
request like you clicking a web page
link and then that action being taken
like that web page starting to load up
these tech companies were so confident
in this new 5G Tech they promised
latency rates of 100 times less than 4G
down from about 90 milliseconds to
literally less than one which if
actually achieved would have been a game
changer because For the First Time Ever
it would allow internet-based activities
to effectively happen in real time like
if you were at a sports event and you
open up your camera you could have the
stats of each player hover above their
heads as they move around instantly
updating every time they made a pass or
had a shot at goal or you know the
metaverse if we're actually moving
towards completely virtual interactions
then for that to feel real there needs
to be no delay at all not to mention
anything that requires High Precision
movements like being able to control a
medical robot from the other side of the
world coordinate hundreds of drones to
fly in formation or self-drive in cars
that need to be able to respond to their
environments or break in a split second
it's the idea that you can do things
over the Internet with no more lag than
if you were to do those same things
physically in person this is the world
that these companies promise that 5G
would bring so why does it suck so much
why is it that I'm currently paying 50
more than I used to 30 UK pounds a month
versus 20 for my 5G contract why is it
that some 5G contracts are now going all
the way up to 120 pounds a month which
is just extraordinate Why is it that
even in the US which is one of the best
places for 5G in the world an average
user was spending less than one percent
of their time actually connected to a 5G
millimeter wave Network in 2021 and then
why is it that when I call up my
provider to ask more about it if they
just tell me that I'm doing a great
thing by being 5G ready not seeming to
understand how dumb that is given that
5G isn't ready am I doing a great thing
by being 5G ready
um yeah sure well 5G had a problem right
from the very moment it was announced
the marketing the way that it was so to
us see unlike every generation before it
4G 3G 2G where the kinds of apps we were
using and the way that we wanted to
communicate with each other had almost
required another step in networking to
achieve we didn't really need 5G
obviously tech companies wanted
something new to be able to Brand their
devices with a killer new exciting
feature to be able to Market but for the
first time with 4G the consumer didn't
really have any pain points that needed
fixing we could already consume the
content we wanted to in a quality that
looks crisp on our small phone displays
so what these companies effectively had
to do if they wanted people to be
interested in 5G was to shoot for the
moon to be so ambitious to make claims
so bold to promise people a new world
without really having any clue on how
they were going to deliver on it but
even with these great promises they
still failed to get people excited
because I think they also picked the
wrong things to focus on if you'd asked
an average 4G user what they wanted from
5G most of it probably just said that
the key thing I want is a more reliable
connection just literally maximum 4G
speeds that never drop but instead what
we're actually getting is a medium to
slow connection 99.5 percent of the time
and then some ludicrously fast speed 0.5
of the time the speeds so fast that the
average person would have no possible
use case for them which is why 5G
companies have had to kind of invent
them they've come up with just swathes
of these wild hypothetical scenarios
that we will be able to achieve with
this millimeter wave 5G which don't get
me wrong are really impressive and cool
and one day maybe even practical too but
just disconnected from the reality of
what people want right now companies
will talk about how 5G opens the door to
immersive virtual reality anywhere but
if you want to use VR you're probably
not going to be doing it in the street
for safety reasons if not social reasons
and if you're enjoying this video then a
sub to the channel would be
they talked about smart cities with
drones for surveillance which again is
fascinating from a tech perspective
that's probably not the way into the
hearts of the masses or how doctors
could operate on patients while sitting
on the other side of the world I mean I
don't know about you but I would quite
like my doctor to be sitting in the room
while operating on me my point is there
very well may be a day where these are
legitimate things that we want to be
able to do but the mistake was to
drastically overestimate how quickly
they would arrive so right from the very
beginning 5G was already in a bad way
the tech companies are not just over
promised what they could do but even
while doing that failed to get people
excited
and then politics made things a whole
lot worse there were three main
end-to-end 5G suppliers in the world
Nokia Ericsson and Huawei these were the
companies building the actual
infrastructure of 5G things like the
massive antenna that would actually be
blasting out the signal but then Huawei
got backed by the US after being accused
of spying now whether that's actually
true or not no one seems to have a
concrete tanter one thing's for sure
that this was bad news for 5G because it
wasn't just that progress slowed or even
stopped at this point but also that
everything Huawei had already built was
getting actively stripped out by not
just the United States but also the
countries allied with them like no joke
Engineers were piece by piece removing
all of huawei's 5G components from their
systems which when paired with the
growing anti-5g movement who added fuel
to the fire by
well literally burning down some of the
few remaining 5G towers for Fears that
they were about to give them cancer it
meant that for a period of time 5G was
actually going backwards but the single
most fundamental problem with 5G is none
of these things it's the major oversight
that occurred with regards to range in
the race to become as fast as possible
to achieve these potential future
scenarios that no one was really asking
for 5G uses radio waves that are so high
frequency and therefore so small they
barely travel and they get blocked by
everything you could have full
millimeter wave connection you could be
getting two gigabits per second download
speeds but step in front of a building
you could have two megabits and the
consequence of this is twofold it means
that it's not just incredibly time
consuming and expensive to set 5G up in
a city you basically need some sort of
beacon on every street corner wired up
with brand new fiber optic cabling but
also that it just won't ever make sense
to bring this Tech outside the cities it
won't be worth the price to set up an
contain these 5G stations if each of
them is only going to reach like 30
people and so realizing this what these
tech companies have done is just
broadened what it means to be 5G so that
right now 5G includes not just that true
millimeter wave Tech that makes all of
those sci-fi possibilities a reality but
also the much less exciting sub 6 waves
which are basically created by just
tweaking the already existing 4G
infrastructure and sending out a signal
that is only just marginally faster
don't get me wrong the intention makes
sense like there is not a chance we're
going to cover the globe in a true
millimeter wave network but for most of
the people that I've talked to about it
the fact that sub 6 is being bundled in
as part of 5G has made it a more
confusing to understand but also B kind
of spoiled what it means to actually
have a 5G connection literally I went to
a 5G area earlier today I saw the 5G
logo pop up on my phone did a speed test
I got less than five megabits per second
for some perspective 7 megabits per
second is the limit a 3G and so it's got
to a point where all that excitement
that I initially had about seeing that
5G logo in the corner of my phone is
gone it has practically no bearing on
how fast or reliable the internet I get
actually is and the most unfortunate
part of this is that all this confusion
and uncertainty and lack of Interest
makes this a bit of a downward spiral
given that the vast majority of the
appeal of 5G relies on these
hypothetical future use cases like the
metaverse the fact that there's so much
hesitation is making the investment in
the development of those use cases
happened really slowly you might have
seen how badly meta is struggling and
cutting back right now and spending this
is why so 5G kind of sucks right now and
unless you specifically live in the 0.2
percent of the planet that actually gets
a proper millimeter wave connection you
could save your money and buy a 4G
device and stay on a 4G contract more
than likely 5G will one day be something
great but that doesn't change the fact
that by the time it does most of the
devices that you've paid extra for
because they have five DNA name will be
redundant to see me unbox every Nintendo