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Why do wireless carriers knock on my door in a major city trying to sell 5G home internet service? (links.hackliberty.org)

submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I live in a major city with cable internet everywhere along with fiber in some areas (unfortunately not mine), but I’ve had multiple instances of carriers’ salespeople knock on my door selling 5G home internet service.

The reason this doesn’t make sense to me is 5G will always have a much higher latency than any wired alternative — it really only makes sense to sell this stuff in rural areas without the infrastructure. What’s more is the most recent carrier has a reputation for extraordinary coverage but their network is CDMA so their network speed is one of the worst in the city.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to sell this stuff elsewhere?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (2 children)

We tried out the T-Mobile 5G for a couple of days. Blew our cable connection out of the water speedwise, with comparable latency, at what would have been less than half the cost. But the AP provides next to no configuration options - can't even turn off the WiFi and use it as a bridge to a proper router. So back it went.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Not saying cable connection would be faster, when I was in Tennessee on 5g I was seeing speeds of 700/350.

But the latency was noticeable longer than a fiber connection, for reference with ATT fiber I can get 5-6ms, over the ATT 5g network I was averaging 80ms.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

I average about 20ms (Comcast over WiFi). TMo was about 30ms. I just checked my cell connection (also ATT 5g), and matched your 80ms. Not sure what the Comcast ping would be wired, but I don't run anything significant over Ethernet. The jump from 5ms to 30ms is noticeable with gaming for sure. But in my use case, the latency difference would have been negligible.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Not even DMZ and using the DMZ device with external APs? It's not great compared to just using the ISP device as a modem, but it's better than nothing.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

I'm sure something could be done on the LAN side. I know just enough about networking to know I don't want to fool with it any more than I have to lol. The setup I have now works because the cable modem is just a modem/gateway. It's not trying to be its own network.

But regardless of any efforts on my part, the AP is stuck with whatever black box software TMo is running. That WiFi signal is gonna be going 24/7. Can't disable it, can't define the IP space, can't restrict what can connect to it, etc. Just not liking that idea.