this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2023
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4G, 5G and now 6G are worthless if cell providers don't provide enough bandwidth to the towers. The range also keeps decreasing as the generations increase, so now there are these big gaps that 3G used to cover.
In my area, 5G is slower than 4G and both have lower signal and slower speeds than 3G used to have. I need a dual SIM phone and to constantly switch my phone between AT&T and T-Mobile, and both are crap. I only use about 1GB in total too, and I'm lucky if I can pull more than 1 megabit on either service. I miss 3G speeds, coverage, and competition.
Worst of all, AT&T is forcing home users to switch to a 5G hotspot from DSL. It's probably a big part of why the cell towers are always overloaded too. Imagine running your home internet on 1 megabit with constant drops...
5g home internet is not “1 megabit with constant drops” in my experience. I live in a large city in the US and on Verizon I get several hundreds down and 40-70 up depending on the time. I used to have T-Mobile which was worse, but still typically 200mbps down. There is packet loss but it is very low and not an issue. Upload is not great but much better than what the cable company offers. My parents out in the middle of nowhere were still able to get ~50-100 based on conditions. Even then, that’s a huge upgrade over most DSL services.