this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2024
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Some really good comments here. It definitely all depends on the frequency band your phone connects to. At lower frequencies such as 700 megahertz with skinny channels the 5G speeds will be no better than 4G and LTE. However, at the higher frequencies like 2.5 gigahertz, 3.7 gigahertz, etc. and up into the millimeter wave, they are super short frequencies and do not penetrate walls and stuff well, but are way faster. This leads to tighter tower grids in order to penetrate buildings with that higher frequency. That also means less people per tower taking up your bandwidth. A tower that can go 10 miles (700 megahertz) will have a lot more users on it than a tower that will go half a mile for example.
Edit: Another thing is that tighter tower grids make for better wireless emergency alerts. Imagine a tornado warning being sent to a tower that covers 10 miles. Every one in that 10 mile tower footprint would get the warning. Whereas typically tornadoes are tiny. And a tower that covers half a mile getting a tornado warning would mean that that tornado is a lot closer to you.
Yeah I dont think I'll ever understand these weird 5g skepticism threads. I do get better battery life on lte than 5g and building penetration means a lot more switching between bands(an issue specifically with my pixel's radio) but similar issues existed with with lte and 3g when they launched. I guess the difference is LTE already has speeds and latency enough for people to get by.
And yeah on lte you're already getting 10-60mbps down so for most use cases you probably dont notice a huge difference in speed while browsing social media, and watching youtube. But having a network with higher speeds and more bandwidth is better for handling congestion. If you live in an area where the 5g is unreliable or your phone has poor support for it then you can just switch to lte while things keep cooking.