this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2023
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Why did they go with 5G? For the PR for AT&T? Seems like a shorter range less congested wavelength would work better, and potentially lower power too.
A big part of 5G is to support a lot more devices at the same time, making congestion a smaller issue.
5G, at least the fully developed version, which idk if they have here, supports directional beams, beamforming. That reduces any congestion to basically 0.
Like, I don't know the specifications here, but 5G would work fine, or possibly be better, than wi-fi. Wi-fi is designed for lower scales, and doesn't handle congestion as well, meanwhile mobile networks are designed to support mass amounts of devices simultaneously. 5G was designed with a lot of these future considerations in mind.
Edit: further, 5G uses a much shorter wavelength, or higher frequency. It can support far more theoretical traffic than wi-fi, and it has lower range to 4G due to higher attenuation, making congestion an even lower concern.