5G was a scam. Promises were impossible to fulfill and investment forums were full of paid shills propping up the telcom stocks. In reality 5G has the exact same throughput as 4G. Nothing changed
this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2026
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Roaming in 5G is definitely a step up from 4G. I don't know the exact tech behind it, but the home region profile is replicated while roaming, meaning you get lower latency and faster speeds. In 4G and prior, the user device had to call back home, which would send back the data, and if you're in another continent it means 200ms+.
In any next generation of cell phone networks, the providers should be forced to fill up all blind spots on the network with the new technology before they are allowed to upgrade existing networks.
They certainly shouldn't be allowed to sell 6G contracts when they've got the grand total of four towers up and an estimated completion plan way off in 2039.
mistakes like selling the evolutionary upgrade of the previous generation as the revolutionary next generation? That kind of mistake?
Never forget that the original 4G spec promised gigabit.
4G is gigabit the problem is the users don't exist in a void where they have their own cell tower and also don't all have expensive devices and also radio interference exists cause of the sun, etc. Same with WiFi.
HSPA+ is not 4G. It has a max theoretical throughput of 168Mbit. It was sold as 4G. Same with Wimax and earlier LTE implementations.
5 is good enough. Let's do something else
I'd like a different letter while we're at it as well. I think q would be good. I want 2q data.
We should follow in the footsteps of many tech companies and stop numbering the Gs in favour of tagging on the year they were launched. So next year we wouldn't get 6G, we would get G2027. Sounds much cooler, doesn't it?
Or change the G to Gen like it always is when used as an abbreviation for generation, so that people don't think it means GHz or Gb/s...
“This network? It goes to 6.”
“Is it faster?”
“Yeah, it’s one faster.”
“So why not just make 5 the top number, and make 5 faster?”
“This network goes to 6.”
I get the joke but 5 and 6 are not interoperable.
k
well because you have to actually change the equipment and not just put a label on it.
are they gonna fix the bug where it didn't turn everyone gay?
I hope 6G turns everyone trans instead
The eggpocalypse
7G turns ppl in to animals when they hit puberty and other wacky stuff
Well they need to hurry up then
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Soo, proper encryption this time?
Not as long as the Epstein class is in power, no.
Not Epstein, it's a intelligence services thing.
Epstein worked for Mossad. It's the same picture...
Which serve whose interests exactly...?
Israel
The only way that would happen ... is if Palantir gets a backdoor large enough to fit all of Alex Karp's ginormous forehead
Lol keep dreaming
I'll just be happy if they have basic things like VoIP and emergency call handling properly defined.
Australia shut down our 2G and 3G networks, and it's been an absolute dumpster fire.
A bunch of early 4G phones drop back to 3G for voice calls, but that's really easy to check for and that's mostly old phones anyway.
The real dumpster fire was emergency calls. It turns out there's phones in the wild with fully functional VoLTE but internal logic that forces them to drop back to 3G or 2G specifically for emergency calls.
Other phones can make emergency calls, but only on certain networks - a phone will try any available network regardless of SIM card when making emergency calls.
Or a phone can make emergency calls on any network - but only if it's running the correct modem firmware version.
Or it'll work on any network if it has a Telstra SIM card, but if it has an Optus card it can't make an emergency call on Telstra because it isn't running the Telstra-specific VoLTE code anymore.
The best part is that this emergency call functionality depends on you specifically dialling the emergency number, so there's no way to test any device other than actually dialling an emergency.
Call the nonemergency number and ask them how they want you to handle dialing the emergency number. Usually it's "yeah we got you, just call it and confirm it's not an emergency". Phone techs do this all the time.
Yeah but you need everyone to do this, and also do it repeatedly with different networks in range. They aren't set up for that sort of volume.
Gotta love the non testable features.
"Can we place a test call?"
"Why would you want to do THAT?"
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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.
“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!”
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.
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