<story><title>The &apos;Race to 5G&apos; Is Lobbyist Nonsense</title><url>https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200116/08134343743/race-to-5g-is-giant-pile-lobbyist-nonsense.shtml</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>Animats</author><text>The article is on point. 5G has an advantage in only a few situations:&lt;p&gt;- Very crowded areas, where you need lots of microcells so everyone can watch streaming video at once. Like stadiums. Verizon is making a lot of noise about 5G in NFL stadiums. Amusingly, latency for sports video is a big deal, because, in sports bars, not all the screens have the same amount of buffering in the path. So some people are cheering while others are waiting for their feed to catch up, and they feel left out and alone.&lt;p&gt;- Moderately remote areas where the capability to drop to the VHF bands will provide some service far from towers. That&amp;#x27;s actually useful.&lt;p&gt;Claims involving public safety and remote surgery are fantasy.&lt;p&gt;Besides, once it&amp;#x27;s going, it will probably be overloaded, and there will be rate caps and data caps. But the capped service will be called &amp;quot;unlimited&amp;quot;.</text></comment>
<story><title>The &apos;Race to 5G&apos; Is Lobbyist Nonsense</title><url>https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200116/08134343743/race-to-5g-is-giant-pile-lobbyist-nonsense.shtml</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>soylentcola</author><text>Just think if this level of marketing, lobbying, and energy was channeled into something like a national fiber broadband utility available to everyone.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;But,&amp;quot; you may ask, &amp;quot;why would industry groups ever push something like that?  Such a thing would cost loads of money and put market dominance at risk!&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;And then maybe you start to wonder why they&amp;#x27;re in such a rush to fight for the subsidies, investment, and contracts for &amp;quot;more wireless, but faster and more G&amp;#x27;s!&amp;quot;</text></comment>