5G roadblock: labor

Mark Tinka mark.tinka at seacom.mu
Sat Jan 4 13:11:14 UTC 2020



On 4/Jan/20 08:37, Christopher Morrow wrote:

>
> it's nor really except that a bunch of the radio/client management is
> 'easier' in cellular than in wifi. managing roaming COULD be saner as
> well even, so when you walk out of the shop and off their pico-cell
> you can transition the running call (or data stream since it's all
> just voip/ip anyway) to the next network (some gsm/lte/4/5g thing
> perhaps.

The reason I am not too fussed about seamless call hand-off when on
wi-fi is because the kids aren't talking anymore. The closest they'll
come to talking to each other is by exchanging WhatsApp voice notes. All
the kids do is text, and voice calling is so 1920 :-).

You may coax them into WhatsApp calling, but even that is a stretch. The
only time I've seen the kids enthusiastic about talking to each other is
when they are playing networked Fortnite... "Hey, I'm lagging, I'm lagging".

For me, I'm old school; I still prefer to make a voice call from time to
time. Providers that offer VoWiFi can't even hand-off properly when the
wi-fi has an issue and the phone switches back to GSM. I always get call
drops when this happens, so much so that sometimes when I am making
calls I can't afford to drop, I just turn off the wi-fi so that I am not
using VoWiFi.

The reason seamless voice hand-off isn't going to be a big issue - I
feel - is because we've, over the years, all been accustomed to call
drops, call setup and call clarity problems. What do we do when this
happens? We just call the other person again (while taking or dishing
blaming about why the call dropped), or walk around like chicken
chanting "Can you hear me now". At no time do we hold the MNO's to
account about why call management is actually poor, even when you aren't
driving through a tunnel or inside a lift. We are just used to it, so I
don't think fixing hand-off transition is going to be the killer app.
Pure texting or the transmission of voice notes doesn't care about any
of that; and just like any ideas about ploughing money into fixing
PMTUd, I think investing too much energy into fixing seamless voice
hand-off may be a slight waste, based on what the kids are doing now.


>
> The main point, the part I missed I think in this thread bit, was that
> to make this all work the cost of the chip that does 4g/5g/lte has to
> be equivalent to the wifi chipset, such that each thing that has wifi
> also just has cellular. It may not work out that way, who knows :)

Agreed - but for laptops, you've got Bluetooth or USB ports to help
tether them to the GSM network via a mobile phone. Does putting a GSM
chip in there make sense? Maybe, maybe not.

With the cost of energy becoming a real issue, and so-called "IoT"
devices destined to be smaller and smaller, does adding yet another
wireless radio make sense? Maybe, maybe not.

Considering that you can install wi-fi pretty much everywhere for cheap
(even with a piss-poor backhaul connection), but the presence of GSM
networks being typically backed by $Big_Money, where does one want to
spend their limited time and energy?

Mark.




More information about the NANOG mailing list