5G roadblock: labor

Mon Dec 30 07:33:34 UTC 2019

On 30/Dec/19 09:12, Christopher Morrow wrote:

> Huh, you mean since you have to deploy a tower/unit every ~100 meters
> to get 5g to actually work at reasonable speeds (with nothing in the
> line of sight) you're going to need a bunch more people to put up
> these new things-ma-bobs?

In my neighborhood, I've been noticing scanty investment in expanding 4G
from my mobile provider in the last 2 years or, ever since they launched
VoWiFi.

Even though I live in a reasonably well-to-do suburb, anytime I am off
the wi-fi at home, but in the hood, 4G performance is not that great,
and I sometimes get downgraded to 3G or even EDGE, depending on which
side of the house I am. Performance is significantly better if I am
around commercial buildings/neighborhoods, though.

My theory is that due to the growth of FTTH in the last 2 - 3 years in
major South African cities, mobile carriers (well, mine, anyway) are
relying on VoWiFi to deliver their (voice and SMS) services to you in
their home, where they are using your FTTH service for the workload,
getting you to push data off their network, and spending more of their
cash elsewhere (or not at all).

You should see what happens when the neighborhood has a power outage.
You still get 75% - 100% radio quality with 4G, but 80% packet loss when
you try to connect to the Internet.

At least in residential areas, I think my mobile provider is offloading
their costs to home owners' FTTH services, while still milking us of
decent wedge.

This does not give me any hope of them spending real time and effort on
5G. To be fair, I wouldn't blame them either.

Mark.