For some time I’ve been seriously considering to come up with some sort of filter that would just hide news articles with ‘5G’ in the title. The vast majority just talk about myths not founded in this reality or were just pure marketing hype for some esoteric function. It seems I am not the only one who’s getting tired of it. Fierce Wireless recently had an interesting post on the ‘4 myths that will hinder 5G growth‘. Have a look on their site for details, I totally agree with their points. Also interesting in their post are two links to first speed test reports.
One article gives some details on Verizon’s mmWave network and the other one focuses on Sprint’s sub-6 GHz network on band 41 (2.6 GHz, TDD). While the reviewer was raving about the 1 Gbit/s he achieved in the Verizon network, I would have thought that when close to a base station, the speed would have been much higher. But who knows, maybe the speed test server on the other end was behind a Gbit/s Ethernet link!? But the article confirmed what many suspect, you turn around a corner or you go a bit away from the base station and the mmWave channel is gone. No in-house coverage either. Also good to have confirmation that Verizon’s mmWave network uses LTE for uplink traffic.
As for Sprint’s sub-6 GHz network I would have also expected quite a bit more than the 300 Mbit/s given the amount of spectrum they have in band 41. But good to see first indications how early 5G networks perform in the US, vs. Europe and Asia, I’m sure there is more to come.