Atlanta among the Cities for 5G Roll-out this year (appliances, home)

[AtlantaMove]

AT&T has named the first US Cities that will Receive Mobile 5G

I hope the other carriers offer 5G this year. I'm not with AT&T, but it is still good news.

[cwkimbro]

That's great!

Of course the reality for me is I probably won't get a new phone for 2-3 years, so it won't affect me if it goes in this year or 2 years for now.

[brown_dog_us]

I don't know about ATT, but Verizon plans 5g more for home internet than phones.

[cwkimbro]

Originally Posted by brown_dog_us

I don't know about ATT, but Verizon plans 5g more for home internet than phones.

Yes/No.....

They will definitely be pushing for phones to handle 5G heavily and will want the lion's share of subscribers on 5G, particularly in urban spaces. Part of it is marketing, but part of it is maintaining bandwidth better.

The 5G standard isn't just about speed, it is about overall bandwidth and number of devices connected. They are planning a standard for people to start having 2-3 devices connected on average, instead of just 1. This includes watches (without utilizing phones), cars, household appliances, etc...).


The issue is a 5G signal won't travel as far, which means more towers or more MIMO repeaters. However, in urban areas that might be good and needed with the increasing number of devices anyways. That is leaving the 4G LTE networked clogged, even slower than its potential speed to a single user.

In rural areas, outside of small town/cities even, most users will likely be encouraged to stick to 4G as the signal will travel a longer distance.

I suspect 5G will still be set up in small towns, anywhere a single tower can hit a larger number of subscribers in a smaller distance from a single tower.

I'm also willing to bet that 5G will be more of a multiple-layered type of network that previously before. Many in sparser suburban areas might still be on 4G LTE, but find themselves on 5G whenever they are in a large stadium or crowded area or in any commercial/office area more often than we saw with 4G's roll out.

[bryantm3]

so i'm guessing this means you have to have a phone that can pick up this kind of signal right? like, my iphone that i bought used two years ago is not going to be able to pick up 5G, i'm guessing.

[primaltech]

Any particular phones required to support this? I have ATT, but a now-old regular iPhone 6. Which I hate and am wanting to switch to Android next go around.

[cwkimbro]

So the articles I have been reading have been stating that is the problem and will lag the roll out of 5G. Phone makers haven't made a 5G phone, in fact the first 5G modem chips for devices have only just been released. So phone makers still have to engineer, test, and physically produce phones.

So no current phones will work.

Some articles have stated phone makers are targeting for 2019.

https://www.cnet.com/news/5g-phones-...es-more-proof/

Me personally... I'm not an early adopter. I usually expect them to make improvements and tweaks, so I will get a new phone maybe 2020-2021 if mine will last.

[PKCorey]

I figure, they will have 5G Hotspot modems before we will have a modem in phones.

I thought, the 5G standards had not be fully resolved yet either.

[ATLTJL]

I'm trying to figure out what the average user could possibly do on a mobile phone that would warrant 5G speeds. Can't LTE handle streaming 4K video (which you don't need on a small screen, anyway).

Unless you are transferring massive files around all day, isn't 5G pretty much total overkill for the average cell phone user?

[Need4Camaro]

Alittle insider knowledge, T-Mobile will be getting it soon as well.