5G arrives in the UK!

I have no requirement for 5G but oh my god that is quick. It will put huge pressure on broadband providers as the 5G prices begin to come down.

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Blimey how much data?
We have BT mobile and FOUR Phones on the plan each with 10 GB for less than £60 a month

Oh this is interesting as their CS is one of the better ones out the bunch. I moved to them because of their customer service :smile:

While 5g can be faster (but not necessarily as it depends what band you’re on at the time) the main benefits aren’t really it’s speed. The mix of technologies allow for things like lower latency, better reliability, higher capacity and range.

5g has been used in Orkney for example on a trial for months. There’s some good benefits for 5g in rural areas.

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It already is, but actually getting the lines in is harder than it might seem. A lot of places have such bad broadband because well… there isn’t any broadband. There on copper telephone lines miles away from any exchange on dialup, and in a lot of cases no green box. In some places your looking at a single house miles away in any direction from civilisation, and in other cases there’s logistical issues in determining how to put in the new infrastructure.

It can take a year or more to plan if new infrastructure needs to come from the east or west of the other side of the country to service a village of 200 people in the middle of nowhere, then you’ve got to put them in, replace all the old copper with fibre, and replace the last mile in a lot of cases as well, put in new green boxes and upgrade exchanges.

The government could throw openreach 50 billion and it still wouldn’t get done any faster unfortunately they just don’t have enough people and it’s a massive operation already.

The fact is it’s actually sometimes quicker and cheaper to put in alternative technologies like 5g or a WISP instead in a lot of these areas.

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It’s the upgrade programme, plus an Apple Watch. 100GB data.

They got me when I upgraded by iPhone 7 to the X - I didn’t read the small print that you have to be on a same plan price or higher - amazingly all the price plans were higher. So just had to wait out on 2 years with it to get out of it.

And before it gets said I’m not one of those protestor people moaning that rural people are disconnected from everything. I was fully aware that broadband was poor in this area before purchasing the property and being “disconnected” is one of many USPs that I like about the place.

I don’t expect cable to be laid and I’m not demanding it either because it would be a waste of money. :slight_smile:

Plus I’ve found that 4G is more than adequate but I don’t think people know that it is a viable solution over ADSL for home broadband.

I hasten to add; I’m aware of how 5G is more than just speed (but I still stand by that most regular folk won’t notice or need it day to day) and I know how complex and expensive getting fast internet to rural areas is (I’m from Cumbria!).

I still think it’s too integral to life now that it shouldn’t be down to you paying more for 5G to get what is basic internet speeds in your home.

Most people won’t need it now but I can’t see it being long before it is properly needed.

More and more things are becoming interconnected over networks, UHD streaming is on the up and as more generations come of age the demand for broadband will increase too.

This could revolutionise home broadband if unlimited deals for 5G home broadband were announced.

I can only get 30MB/s through fibre in my village near Manchester. When 5G is rolled out properly, I could then get better than my old Virgin Media 380MB/s speed.

Tis a shame that the farm is the only place that has been able to get a 5G signal near me.

manchester_22-05-19

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Quite. At a price.

I agree but high prices are just because it’s new. Just like anything I’m sure they’ll come down over time. In the mean time I’ll just enjoy what I have :blush:

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Exactly. EE currently have a monopoly until July. The big networks will milk it for a while. I really hope Three disrupt it more as they have already demonstrated superfast 5G home broadband. They really want to get into this market and users could save money overall if line rental is removed from broadband purchases.

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I wondered myself :smile: fyi, if you time it right, you can get their summer sale deals + uni discount (20%) on most of their stuff. It works out a really good deal.

Perhaps. the problem is you get what you pay for. The best best for communities with limited openreach connectivity is to work together to look at multiple options, there’s actually a lot out there and you can get most of it at a reasonable cost without sitting around waiting for the telephone lines to be upgraded.

They shouldn’t notice, which should be the goal. Really we want to be able to go about not noticing at all the low level network connectivity. It should just work. 5g should help improve that, fill out dead zones, improve reliability, and keep a stable connection with a speed decent enough that no matter where you are google loads at a decent speed.

What phone would you pick?

Agreed. I’ll just let all of those with lots of money pay for the intital roll out of 5G and then in about 3 years time when the prices have come down to something near acceptable, I might give it a go. For me, 4G is absolutely fine as things go.

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For me 5G isn’t about providing individual users faster speeds on mobiles. It’s about the operators having the capacity so speeds stay consistent for HD/4K streaming with no buffering etc as demand increases.
I don’t think most of the public are that bothered by headline figures, as long as the service is consistent with no buffering.

5G is going to be a big game changer for home broadband though. Really excited to see what happens in this area. My bets are on 3 to be the challenger here.

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Three are launching 5G in 25 cities in 2019, starting with London once August.
They claim their network will be twice as fast as rivals.

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2019/06/three-uk-to-launch-2x-faster-5g-broadband-for-25-cities-in-august.html

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Being that for the year I was with Three I rarely got any signal in my Central London office, I wonder what’s twice as fast as zero?

I have poor signal in my office so I use WiFi calling. Not sure if that’s an option for you?

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I’m sure I read, or heard, somewhere that they won’t be offering any handsets at launch. They’ll be offering routers instead.

Happy to be proved wrong!