nanog mailing list archives

Re: 5G roadblock: labor


From: Mark Milhollan <mlm () pixelgate net>
Date: Tue, 31 Dec 2019 22:30:08 -0800 (PST)

On Mon, 30 Dec 2019, Brian J. Murrell wrote:

I'm not saying that maybe one day we won't need 25Mb/s to a hand-held
device, but hologram telephone calling, Netflixing and even video
calling, are not the use-cases, IMHO.

Actually you went on to say that future innovations shouldn't exist because that's just crass consumerism, and that we should be satisfied with (in particular) HDMI instead of desiring better -- sorry, people will want better, e.g., the realism of 4k, 8k and 16k which the devices and networks of today either cannot provide (that HDMI flatscreen display probably cannot handle even 4k much less 8k+) or would struggle to provide (carrying 25+ Mb/s to dozens or hundreds of nodes -- remember even pico cells server multiple nodes).

Video to tablets and phones/phablets are indeed a major use case, for the majority not you or I -- you don't want high bandwidth video calling yet others might, i.e., Facetime is quite the thing and perhaps in 2 years with enough bandwidth available those holographic calls would be too. Even I might change my mind if my customers began demanding high-fidelity video conferencing even while mobile.

Some messages back mention was made of SSH being nice over the reduced latency 5G brings which might appeal to you but would be meaningless to most users. I had no issue with SSH even over 1xRTT so I guess 3G need not have been deployed.

IoT will need lots of bandwidth but not the low latency nor the reduced jitter that 5G can provide. A single thing generally won't need much but that isn't the measure since the idea is there will eventually be hundreds of things per household and thousands or millions per business, of which dozens, hundreds or thousands will be within the service area of a group of cells. And even if that's still low in toto it translates to needing headroom so the things that do need significant individual streams won't starve. Besides we aren't the customers for most of these, we're the product.

But there's no need to imagine a killer use case nor even a significant set of cases -- they will come if the ability is there. In NA the key will be probably the cost, as another message pointed out. The transition from 3G to 4G didn't proportionally increase the usage allowed, at least IME, but it was enough that many make video calls from their mobile device and some do watch videos on them.


/mark


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