Well, I'm not in the US but in Spain, and work for a telco. No one in my office feels any push for that. What we are being pushed though is to replace dying copper lines with 3g/4g in many remote-ish places. Copper is expensive to maintain, and laying fiber is expensive too, so people is asking and asking for this kind of solutions, as they feel abandoned with 1/3/6mbps DSL lines, while people in cities has access to +50mbps over fiber.

The problem is that most BTSs have weak links in remote locations, and it will become a problem to manage the increasing density of such devices in this places.

I've read that 5g will allow for more divices/bts and larger coverange, but I still don't understand how that will be possible.

if i understand correctly, individual 5g stations will be able to support more clients, but the distance covered is dramatically reduced (and more degraded by obstacles in line of site) due to shorter wavelength. it is not viable for rural areas, at least not any time soon. i really think the hype is just pr for subsidies as others have said.

edit: some numbers from here https://twitter.com/Gabeuk/status/1099709788676636672 --

> Challenges of 5G deployment, according to Zhengmao Li, EVP China Mobile (biggest operator on the world).

> 1. 5G needs 3 X base stations for same coverage as LTE due to higher frequencies

> 2. Power consumption of a 5G base staion is 3 X LTE

> 3. 5G base station costs 4 X price of LTE

so, 1/3 the coverage at 4x the price

That's what I understood from reading somewhat technical docs, but I keep reading here and there that more devices/bts will be supported.

IDK, I'm just an analyst so I'm waiting for the internal spec sheets, until then I can only speculate, but I don't see anyone too exited about it.

IMHO most clients will be happy with an average of 40mbps and decent latencies, which is somewhat difficult to achieve consistently in many places.

But I also know that competitors will force us to get onto 5g with marketing stunts. There is already a large ISP marketing LTE as 5g so...

Edit: Frequencies depend more on regulation than anything else, and the spectrum in Spain is not really open for many experiments. Also more power consumption will be a problem In remote places. Maybe we could use more solar arrays, but that's increasing the cost further and adding complexity.

Not all 5g spectrum is shorter wavelength. Opening up the >6GHz range is part of 5G, but it also includes improvements to utilization and additional bands in the existing sub-6GHz range.

In South Korea, people actually move to 5G; it's not something like just a marketing buzzword :-o

I've seen about ~20 of my friend switching to 5G phones, partially because Youtube buffers when seeing 1080p videos on the 4G network.

1080 on computers right? Because needing 1080 for a phone is super silly.

I was talking about phones... iPhone XS Max, Galaxy S10 Plus, eg... High-res phone's adoption rate is unbelievably high here :-o

Not if you still have your eyesight.

You would need to be both a myope and a hypermetrope at the same time. Regular human eyes cannot focus that close for a long time.

How often are South Koreans watching 1080p videos on their phones away from wifi? For me as an American, the answer is “almost never”. Buying a whole new phone to optimize an experience I might have once or twice a year seems excessive to me.

> How often are South Koreans watching 1080p videos on their phones away from wifi?̊̈

Pretty often?̊̈ I think I'm watching 1080p videos on my data plan at least 3~4 times a week?