There’s an argument that low data caps protect the network capacity, and recent numbers by Ookla, which develops the popular Speed Test performance measurement tool, suggest 5G speeds are dropping in multiple markets as more users put a strain on the network.
Ensuring network performance with low data caps raises the question as to what the point is of the high 5G download speeds, surely?
Don’t get me started on upload speeds for NZ 5G. For businesses especially, being able to transmit data at high speeds is a feature that many organisations would pay extra for. When you get below 5Mbps up, and over 400Mbps down, well … what kind of 5G is that? 4G uploads are usually faster.
The technical details on this are that as per international standards, NZ 5G spectrum is set up as time division multiplexing. What that means is that the 5G radios on devices and mobile phone towers send and receive over the same signal, and not at the same time.
I thought there was something wrong with my 5G device, because the upload speeds were so low compared to the downloads and asked Nokia about it three years ago.
Nothing was wrong with my device, it’s that 5G here is set up to allow only a short time window for uploads, and a very long one for downloads. The spectrum doesn’t have to be configured like that, but it is, and usability suffers as a result.
You can download (and bust your data cap) that multi-gigabyte file really fast on 5G, but for uploads it’s better to get into WiFi coverage.
Then there’s the power usage: 5G uses heaps more juice than 4G at both ends of the connection. This is getting better, but when 5G launched you really noticed the additional battery drain compared to 4G and some telcos would partially switch off their massive multi-user antenna arrays at night to save power.
It’s not quite as simple as that, as 5G is more efficient per transmission unit than 4G, but the power-draw levels were eyebrow-raising enough that the 3GPP telco standards organisation had to start publishing documents on sustainability.
Millimetre wave (mmWave) signals in the 24-47GHz spectrum bands for 5G can potentially offer extremely high speeds and very low latency. Unfortunately, the laws of physics put a spanner in the wheel here, with signals having very short reach, poor if any object and rain penetration, and of course, require more power-consuming radios and base stations.
The mmWave base stations also require very high-speed network connections that are expensive and use a great deal of power. As a technological tour de force, mmWave is remarkable but good luck making a business case to deploy it widely.
Looking at the bigger picture, telcos face a grim future. They are losing revenue streams one by one with nothing new to replace them like charging extra for 5G.
It reminds one of the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail who is dismembered one limb at a time.
Running a mobile network is expensive, which explains why it’s crucial to get the Government onboard to future-proof any private capital investment, and ideally, to get free radio spectrum and taxpayer subsidies to extend coverage.
Next up is 6G. Or not, as there’s no official standard yet, but the buzzword bingo around the next-gen mobile tech has already started with teraHertz spectrum, artificial intelligence, virtual/augmented reality and what have you.
Some of that might happen with 6G or even before, but the key concept for the tech is convergence. That is, make as many wireless network technologies as possible work seamlessly together for users, who won’t need to think about whether to use WiFi, cellular or satellite signals, for example.
If and when we get to that stage, it remains to be seen if there will be any standalone telcos left, or if they are swallowed up by cloud computing giants that have the money to pay for the convergence to happen and like Amazon, have a direct relationship with customers.
