5G phone service in the woods?

[Bill Dufour]

Verizon is dropping 3g and soon 4G service and replacing it with 5g only. I thought 5G required huge numbers of antennas? Will it work in the mountains at least as far current 3g service goes. We often drive 20-30 miles beyond the end of coverage into the mountains.
Does this mean we will lose signals even sooner. Currently after the last big town in the hills, about 1750', Verizon switches over to some other cell tower provider who does not fully support testing or voice mail. I have a feeling this will be the end of the line for 5G. Of course GPS ,on a phone, does not work in the mountains anyway. Since beyond about 6,000' there is no cell service
Bil lD.

PS: any suggestions for a 5g dumb phone that will work with verizon?

[Jim Becker]

Marketing at work. ;)

"True" 5G speeds will require closely spaced radios, but the system is designed to fall back to 4G speeds and range. IE, they are calling it 5G, but a lot of the time, it will be generally the equivalent of current higher performance 4G implementations in many areas.

There are very few actual 4G phones in production right now of any kind...like one or two. As for so-called "dumb phones", you don't need to change for a long time since there will be little benefit anyway

[Bob Turkovich]

...Of course GPS ,on a phone, does not work in the mountains anyway. Since beyond about 6,000' there is no cell service
Bil lD.

PS: any suggestions for a 5g dumb phone that will work with verizon?

Can't answer your 5G question, but an Iphone (and probably others) can give you your GPS coordinates in the mountains without a signal. If you downloaded an area map before losing the service (or have a paper copy) you can figure out where you are.

Bob T.

[Bill Dufour]

Marketing at work. ;)

"True" 5G speeds will require closely spaced radios, but the system is designed to fall back to 4G speeds and range. IE, they are calling it 5G, but a lot of the time, it will be generally the equivalent of current higher performance 4G implementations in many areas.

There are very few actual 4G phones in production right now of any kind...like one or two. As for so-called "dumb phones", you don't need to change for a long time since there will be little benefit anyway

Verizon has announced they will drop 3g signals by new years. Already my 3g signal is weak and calls often drop out in a city of 200,00. So I have to upgrade? to at least a 4g phone to get any signal in a few months.
V

[Jason Roehl]

My wife and I just went to Louisville, KY for a weekend getaway two weeks ago. Our iPhone 8 phones, on AT&T, displayed a "5G" icon in the status bar while we were downtown, and things loaded noticeably FASTER during those times.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5G

[Jim Becker]

My wife and I just went to Louisville, KY for a weekend getaway two weeks ago. Our iPhone 8 phones, on AT&T, displayed a "5G" icon in the status bar while we were downtown, and things loaded noticeably FASTER during those times.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5G
But it's NOT 5G...no iPhone currently even supports true 5G. ATT is doing the same marketing game they did when "4G" was getting close to roll-out. What you are seeing as "5G" on your display is just some enhanced 4G coverage.

[Doug Garson]

Can't answer your 5G question, but an Iphone (and probably others) can give you your GPS coordinates in the mountains without a signal. If you downloaded an area map before losing the service (or have a paper copy) you can figure out where you are.

Bob T.
Yes, we did a two week road trip in Costa Rica last year and navigated with both Google maps and Waze on our Android phones and never used cell signal. Just load your map and route on WIFI and go.

[Bill Dufour]

So how does a map work on a phone with no signals?
Bil lD

[Mike Henderson]

So how does a map work on a phone with no signals?
Bil lD

The GPS signal is not received through the Wireless network - it comes from GPS satellites. Normally, the map that corresponds to the location determined by the GPS is downloaded to your phone over the wireless network.

If you know where you're going, you can pre-load the maps for that area into your phone. When you use your smartphone map app, it will receive the GPS signal and then retrieve the corresponding map from the smartphone's memory (instead of from the cloud). In that situation, your smartphone is operating like a Garmin GPS system.

You know that you can go into the wilderness with a Garmin (or other brand) GPS and you can see where you are on a map without any cellular service. Your smartphone just turns into a Garmin type system.

Mike

[Alan Rutherford]

What Verizon is dropping is LTE. They will support VOLTE (Voice Over LTE) only starting January 1. Newer phones will have no problem but if your phone is as old as mine, it will no longer work. Time to start shopping but you have a few months. My phone is about 4 years old and only does 3G at best. I'm not unhappy about having to upgrade.

[Jim Becker]

What Verizon is dropping is LTE. They will support VOLTE (Voice Over LTE) only starting January 1. Newer phones will have no problem but if your phone is as old as mine, it will no longer work. Time to start shopping but you have a few months. My phone is about 4 years old and only does 3G at best. I'm not unhappy about having to upgrade.

Verizon is shutting off 3G CDMA this year, not LTE. LTE was only deployed in recent years and VoLTE was part of that. LTE/VoLTE is 4G.

[Jason Roehl]

But it's NOT 5G...no iPhone currently even supports true 5G. ATT is doing the same marketing game they did when "4G" was getting close to roll-out. What you are seeing as "5G" on your display is just some enhanced 4G coverage.

According to that Wikipedia article, part of 5G is software running on 4G LTE hardware until the 5G NR (new radio) devices are widespread. I just know page loads were noticeably faster--nearly instant--in Louisville (which is listed as "Live" for 5G in that article) than on my local cell network.

[Jim Becker]

I understand, Jason, but what's actually happening is that the carriers are being creative with what they put on the display and that can actually be "anything they want". Literally. They can put "10G" on there with a few keystrokes in their IMS console. The part of 5G that is backward compatible with 4G is still 4G technology. But they have finally kicked up the 4G radios to support the long-promised higher performance 4G bands which is why you're seeing better throughput. Even when "real" 5G is available, most non-urban areas will get backstopped with the higher-performance 4G stuff because 5G transmission distance is only a couple thousand feet, rather than miles for 4G. True 5G requires a pretty dense mesh of radios, both for distance and because it has lower penetration through things like building materials. In fact, the ultimate 5G experience will require radios in interior spaces much like many of us use microcells or WiFi connections for "cellular" voice calling already. That's going to be interesting because it's going to require intense cooperation between the carriers and the building owners...

[Bob Hinden]

Verizon is shutting off 3G CDMA this year, not LTE. LTE was only deployed in recent years and VoLTE was part of that. LTE/VoLTE is 4G.

Exactly right.

In my humble opinion, everything the cell carriers are saying about 5G is just hype. We won't have 5G until there are new phones and new base stations, and to get the benefits of 5G (like higher speed and lower latency), they will have to have very small cell sizes because the new higher frequencies don't penetrate objects as well. I doubt they will be making this investment in most places for a very long time, if ever.

Bob

[Andrew Pitonyak]

Exactly right.

In my humble opinion, everything the cell carriers are saying about 5G is just hype. We won't have 5G until there are new phones and new base stations, and to get the benefits of 5G (like higher speed and lower latency), they will have to have very small cell sizes because the new higher frequencies don't penetrate objects as well. I doubt they will be making this investment in most places for a very long time, if ever.

Bob

I would say that anything they ever say about any capability it hype. They did it with 3G, 4G, and now 5G.

The game is similar to the following:



Engineers develop a new idea with benefits; for example, 10X the speed.
Idea is approved or agreed upon.
Carriers try to make is so that implementing small portions of this (maybe 1.5X achieved) allows them to claim that they use the new tech.


I stopped following any of the improvements when I saw this kind of stuff going on with 3G (if my memory serves me correctly). Anything that they stated about having support for the newer standards was mostly garbage.

[Mike Henderson]

One thing I read is that the big opportunity the wireless providers see is the ability to provide high speed Internet access to homes. Today, the incumbent Internet providers have a monopoly position, or near monopoly, because of the need to run some type of wire or optical fiber under the streets or on on poles. The wireless people will be able to put a base station in a neighborhood and offer high speed Internet access to residential customers. They might have to put an antenna on the house but many customers may be able to get the signal without it.

And, of course, those neighborhood wireless nodes will also serve smart phones.

Mike

[Jim Becker]

Mike, that's correct. For example, Verizon, specifically, is deploying fixed wireless to homes and businesses in any "new" footprints that don't have their FiOS service which is FTTH. (Fiber To The Home) The cost to deploy wireless is (theoretically) substantially less than running fiber and the necessary passive distribution equipment to support it while the projected speed available with "true" 5G are approaching a reasonable level that can satisfy most consumers without deploying fiber. ATT is thinking similarly as their VDSL just doesn't perform well and their fiber footprint is relatively small. This technology also permits them to economically overlay areas that they do not currently offer "traditional" services which is the holy grail for long-term success in their minds.