this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2026
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None of this makes sense!
With 3G, we had clearly defined speeds, and what constitutes 3G.
4G mostly defined itself, but it left a bit of grey area.
Then 5G was posting speeds slower than 4G's top speed. There was never a defined speed range. The term 5G is nothing more than marketing. It means nothing.
I haven't even heard of 6G, but given how shit 5G's handling went right from the start, I assume 6G has to be inserted anally.
Yes, also, it should be criminal for home internet providers and phone service providers to conflate, directly or by implication, the "G" in 5G (fifth generation) and the "G" in 10G (ten gigabit).
I saw a commercial one day that went something like "Our competitors only have 1G; we have 5G. Don't you want to have the most Gs? We have the best Gs, no one has Gs like us. Don't settle for inferior Gs, call today!"
I remember commenting on the switch from 3g to 4g back around 2009 or so and they were already being deceptive in a lot of ways back then. Telecommunications has been a cesspool for decades.
Sounds like a commercial for that trump phone.
5g is rebranded 4g during the rollout for 4g most providers couldn't hit the bandwidth targets so they branded things 4g LTE or 4g+ to denote it wasn't actual 4g. when they caught up and could actually support 4g they realized everyone thought lte or + were better because of course more things = better so they just changed it to 5g
5G was mostly about cramming more connections into the spectrum and expanding broadcast range (as well as some other things), but it wasn't just about node speed on the network.
And it ended up posting significantly faster speeds in dense areas where they actually deploy the technology. My phone has hit 4Gb/s on it.
In a lot of places it got worse. At least I had reliable service inside my house on 2G and 3G. Now that those are gone, I have to use WiFi calling or try to find a spot outside where I may be able to get a bar of 5G if I'm lucky.
You're more secure using wifi calling anyway.
Unless you're using 5g NR SA which is the actual 5g - New Radio Stand Alone, which is supposed to be able to function, as the name implies, alone, without any fallback to insecure networks.
If you're using 5g NR NSA it still requires 4g to function.
I am in airplane mode 99.9% of the time, using wifi calling (sms/rcs also work over wifi), so my phone isn't susceptible to imsi catchers and such or location pinging.
Yes, I'm paranoid.
Everyone should be.
If you're that paranoid, then you shouldn't be using RCS. It's owned by google. XMPP and Matrix are secure, decentralized alternatives that don't give your data to google.
The WiFi calling can be a bit buggy. Sometimes I answer the phone and there's no audio. I have to reboot the phone to get it to work again. I should just get a VoIP line to use at home.
It was always meant to be great in dense areas, which it is, but marketers went all apeshit promising that it was going to be the second coming of Christ. Instead they should have shut the marketers ina corner and called it what it is, an enhancement to 4g. That 4g and 5g would hand off interchangeably.
This is why you should never let business dictate tech. They think they know what they're talking about but they don't, and end up pissing everyone off.
I hate to tell you this, but 3G was a lie too. 3g should have been good to 100mbps.
100Mbps? Best I can do is 83Kbps. - 3G actually
Oh? Maybe I'm interested after all...