sure but is anyone deploying mmwave outside of maybe sports stadiums? I'm not exactly going to get it on my commuter train or at work.

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aaronbrethorst 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I get 5G mmWave in my home and around my neighborhood in Seattle. In fact sometimes at home I’ll turn off WiFi on my phone just because I’m sitting in a WiFi dead zone but the mmWave still works great.

This is on Mint Mobile, a budget MVNO now owned by T-Mobile. I pay $20/month for 15GB data.

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mdasen an hour ago | parent | next [-]

You're probably not getting mm wave with Mint. T-Mobile hasn't deployed mm wave much. They have deployed a lot of 2.5GHz spectrum which will be very fast (faster than most people's home internet connections). If you're seeing 5GUC, that's probably not mm wave.

I think a lot of people are attributing speeds of 200-700Mbps to mm wave when it's actually pretty ordinary speeds for 2.5-5GHz coverage today now that carriers have decent capacity there. If you're getting below 144Mbps, you're in the bottom 25% of T-Mobile's network experience. Over the past 6 years, speeds have gotten a ton faster, mostly from 2.5-5GHz spectrum. Verizon is the only carrier that put much effort into mm wave and it still covers basically nothing.

Ignoring latency, you're likely to get speeds similar to wifi from today's mobile networks without mm wave - unless you have a really great home internet connection and a good wifi setup. I have a MacBook Pro, but it only has wifi 6 and I can get 700-800Mbps out of my wifi, but I'm not getting 2Gbps from it.

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dakolli 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You're ripping yourself off, you can get 1TB of 5G from tmobile for $50-60

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majormajor 2 hours ago | parent [-]

How is paying $20 instead of $50-60 ripping themselves off? Have you considered that the extra 985GB might be useless to them?

	▲	dakolli 17 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Imagine taking the time to respond like this.

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reaperducer 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

is anyone deploying mmwave outside of maybe sports stadiums?

I have it in my home, but I live in the center of a major city. It just speedtested at 476.64 Mbps down, though I think I've seen 650+ in the past, but I might be mis-remembering that.

However, I only get 5G mmwave (indicated as "5GuW" on the phone) on my work phone.

The carrier I use for my personal phone charges an extra $20/month for 5G, and I don't care that much, so I leave it at 4G LTE.

Edit: Just re-tested and got 767 Mbps.

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mdasen an hour ago | parent [-]

5GUW on Verizon isn't necessarily mm wave. Originally, it meant mm wave, but that hasn't been the case since 2022. Now it means the 3-5GHz C-Band spectrum or the 20-50GHz mm wave. If you're seeing 5GUW on your phone, it's going to be C-Band a lot more than mm wave.

C-Band spectrum also makes sense given a speed test of 400-800Mbps. That's fast, but not hugely faster than what you should expect with really good coverage today. T-Mobile experiences speeds above 560Mbps 25% of the time. Verizon's 5GUW (which is mostly C-Band) experiences speeds above 620Mbps 25% of the time. You ran two speed tests and got 477Mbps and 767Mbps. One of those is pretty average for C-Band and one of those is quite good for C-Band (25% faster than the 75th percentile), but nothing too out of the ordinary.

Those are speeds that are relatively common when carriers have around 150MHz of 2.5-5GHz spectrum deployed in your area and you have good signal and not too much congestion.

mm wave does exist, but the coverage is often a block or two with indoor coverage being really spotty. C-band coverage will be measured in square miles. C-Band won't have the coverage that lower frequencies have, but it's a lot more practical to deploy than mm wave. mm wave shines when you have a small, high-value area where you want to deploy 1,000MHz+ of capacity. Carriers might have 50MHz of capacity around 800MHz, 90MHz of capacity around 1.9GHz, 150MHz of capacity around 4GHz, and 1,000MHz of capacity around 30GHz. That really high frequency mm wave won't cover a large area, but there's a lot of it. If you're looking to cover a sports stadium, it makes sense. If you're looking to cover people's homes (even in major cities), C-Band is going to get you really good speeds with coverage that will be a lot more usable.

It's possible that you're getting mm wave, but those speeds are pretty normal for good C-Band coverage. The first test is pretty average and the second test is quite good, but nothing extraordinary.

	▲	Zigurd 5 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Everyone uses the example of stadiums, but the occupancy rate of stadiums makes the economics of the network and backhaul iffy. I would guess only the biggest NFL stadiums get it as a showcase. Maybe parts of Manhattan, too. Chinese cities, especially at train stations and the surrounding area get really impressive flows of people every day. But even in China I would expect that while they might have a lot more 5G SA when in the US, that the radios are actually mid band and not millimeter wave for most coverage. You still get higher capacity and low latency, but most people probably don't notice the low latency, except maybe Chinese autonomous taxis faking it till they make it.