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"the industry consensus is that 5G will double to triple energy consumption for mobile operators" - https://www.fiercewireless.com/tech/5g-base-stations-use-a-l

by odc 6y ago

"the industry consensus is that 5G will double to triple energy consumption for mobile operators" - https://www.fiercewireless.com/tech/5g-base-stations-use-a-lot-more-energy-than-4g-base-stations-says-mtn https://www.fiercewireless.com/tech/5g-base-stations-use-a-l... Needless to say that ecologists see the 5G deployment as utter madness, especially since, in their view, 4G is good enough.

Zealotux 6y ago
I've yet to read a compelling argument in favor of large-scale 5G deployment, and I'm far from being anti-tech. Except for self-driving cars, I suppose.
- rsynnott 6y ago
  More efficient use of spectrum. LTE spectrum is already overloaded in many places.
- pg-gadfly 6y ago
  Latency benefits would enable many new realtime applications both in business and consumer end and speed up many existing ones so they'd be much less janky to use, and thus more accessible to people. It's impossible to see all the future exploits the new technology allows. All the things we do are built upon other existing ideas, moving to higher speed, lower latency connection is another step in progress. Think about being able to download several GiB application on the fly just to view a demo for a house, or get the schematics for what you're viewing in realtime with AR
- Arbalest 6y ago
  There's a reason China is so keen on it (let's not get on the state surveillence bandwagon yet). Their population and population density is consistently high in so many cities, that they face contention problems more than anyone else. If we're talking relatively sparse cities found in many places around the world, then no, the extra local capacity is probably not in high demand. I would bet that 5G has cut down base stations which operate similarly to 4G, but the option to not use a new generation only works for maybe 1 generation before it gets too far behind. Data consumption is still going up after all, and some countries (such as Australia) have already mandated the shutdown of older generations, with 2G switched off to refarm spectrum, and 3G scheduled for switch off.
lcam84 6y ago
That's my opinion also. 4G is good enough, it consumes not only less material resources but also our atention that is a scarse resource also.
- pg-gadfly 6y ago
  Attention is highly latency sensitive, and bringing reaction for your action a second sooner has major implications, and significantly increases your ability to interact with and understand content
mytailorisrich 6y ago
"Good enough" does not mean anything in itself. Good enough for what? More and more of the use cases move away from providing higher data rates to smartphones, so yes, oone could argue that 4G is currently good enough for that specific use case, but that's just one among many. 5G is about supporting greater capacity in general (so maybe the same rate as 4G but to more users at the same time, which is important in dense areas), massive IOT, extremely short latency, high reliability. These are important use cases but they are mostly off the radar of the average person.

by odc 6y ago

Zealotux 6y ago

I've yet to read a compelling argument in favor of large-scale 5G deployment, and I'm far from being anti-tech. Except for self-driving cars, I suppose.

rsynnott 6y ago
More efficient use of spectrum. LTE spectrum is already overloaded in many places.
pg-gadfly 6y ago
Latency benefits would enable many new realtime applications both in business and consumer end and speed up many existing ones so they'd be much less janky to use, and thus more accessible to people. It's impossible to see all the future exploits the new technology allows. All the things we do are built upon other existing ideas, moving to higher speed, lower latency connection is another step in progress. Think about being able to download several GiB application on the fly just to view a demo for a house, or get the schematics for what you're viewing in realtime with AR
Arbalest 6y ago
There's a reason China is so keen on it (let's not get on the state surveillence bandwagon yet). Their population and population density is consistently high in so many cities, that they face contention problems more than anyone else. If we're talking relatively sparse cities found in many places around the world, then no, the extra local capacity is probably not in high demand. I would bet that 5G has cut down base stations which operate similarly to 4G, but the option to not use a new generation only works for maybe 1 generation before it gets too far behind. Data consumption is still going up after all, and some countries (such as Australia) have already mandated the shutdown of older generations, with 2G switched off to refarm spectrum, and 3G scheduled for switch off.

lcam84 6y ago

That's my opinion also. 4G is good enough, it consumes not only less material resources but also our atention that is a scarse resource also.

pg-gadfly 6y ago
Attention is highly latency sensitive, and bringing reaction for your action a second sooner has major implications, and significantly increases your ability to interact with and understand content

mytailorisrich 6y ago

"Good enough" does not mean anything in itself. Good enough for what? More and more of the use cases move away from providing higher data rates to smartphones, so yes, oone could argue that 4G is currently good enough for that specific use case, but that's just one among many. 5G is about supporting greater capacity in general (so maybe the same rate as 4G but to more users at the same time, which is important in dense areas), massive IOT, extremely short latency, high reliability. These are important use cases but they are mostly off the radar of the average person.