It would be great to see wireless providers becoming competitors to home ISPs. If some day wireless speeds become comparable, the problem of having only one home ISP would go away.
I get 50Mbps with 4G connection for 20euros per month. No data cap. Public ipv4 address.
Router is 4 years old Huawei 4g router and I have installed outdoor antenna on the roof for stable connection. I have been with this setup at home for the last 4 years.
I could propably get faster connection with new router but this is fine.
That still doesn't compare to the 300Mbps I'm getting right now even through Comcast, or the 1Gbps I'll be getting once the local fiber company builds out in my neighborhood in the next year or so.
Couple things- the range of 5G is pretty limited. Getting a cell down the block from your house would seem to be nearly as hard as running a line to your door. Also, with wireless, never forget about bandwidth. Bandwidth is the reason living next to thirty other WiFi networks tanks your speeds (but not your cat5 speeds!)
> Getting a cell down the block from your house would seem to be nearly as hard as running a line to your door
A 5G cell will be 0.1-1.0 km in radius and cover dozens to hundreds of users. In a suburban area, that might be an entire large subdivision. The cost of getting fiber to the cell might be just as much as getting it to a fiber distribution hub in the subdivision, but with 5G once you do that you're done. With FTTH, you have to then run it to each house, which will take (in the aggregate) way longer than it took to run fiber to the subdivision. The branch factor kills you--yeah, it's just a couple of hundred feet to each house, but it's a very labor-intensive couple of hundred feet (under yards, into basements) that you have to do for each subscriber.
Also, all bandwidth is shared--it's just a question of where the sharing starts. GPON--what's typically used for FTTH--involves sharing 2.4 gigabit down/1.2 gigabit up between 16-32 users per PON. That comfortably supports gigabit service with reasonable oversubscription. A 5G small cell will have less bandwidth shared between more users, but will be in the same ballpark.
that's incorrect. contention is the reason being next to all of those other wifi networks tanks your speed. Only 1 device can transmit on a given channel at a time. It's as if everyone is plugged into the same handful of ethernet cables.
> Priced at $50 for people who already have Verizon wireless and $70 for those who don't, it's promising speeds of "around 300 Mbps" up to 1 Gbps, with no data caps.
I currently use my phone provider's tethering plan (10GB at 4G, then throttled to .6MBPS after but with no additional charges) because there is only one ISP where I live and unless I signed a 12 month contract, I was looking at ~$80-90/month in amortized fees since I'm only living here for four or five months. It's not ideal, but other than watching fewer videos and in lower quality I've been able to manage without too many issues.
Where are you from? Here in the EU every cellular provider offers home internet plans & LTE-routers and ISPs have LTE plans (mostly to "accelerate" otherwise slow rural ADSL lines)
