this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2024
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[–] [email protected] 65 points 9 months ago (4 children)

This shit started with 3g. None of the carriers were even close to supporting 3g, which was designed to support 100mbps.

Tmo and vzw had a modest improvement from 2g even though it was still slow as shit but AT&T simple did nothing and started calling theirs 3g.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

Doesn’t it stand for generation? Like 3rd generation and 5th generation? This is referencing a wifi router is it not?

[–] [email protected] 22 points 9 months ago

So sort of: the 3g is part of a standard for data rates, but the difficulty, comes in that networks are not homogeneous. Similarly to how you might be familiar with 5Ghz and 2.4Ghz WiFi signals. As a general rule of thumb the higher the frequency the more data you can send but with more attenuation so the signal can be blocked more easily and cannot travel as far, whereas the inverse is true for lower frequencies. So while the generations did make some changes in terms of protocols— it also came with higher frequency emitters which can theoretically carry more data. Other changes include MIMO antennas which do beam forming to make more of the energy go in the direction of a user using constructive and destructive interference from an array of antennas to accomplish this. However marketing people are always very eager to adopt technical terms and inflate them into oblivion. However some of this can be attributed to honest misunderstanding within a company.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago

generation for cellular data, not wifi. I liked this video that explains it

[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago (2 children)

One hundred millibits per second? That means it takes ten whole seconds to send a single bit! That's outrageous.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago

Hey, that is still considered "high-speed" here in Germany!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

When I sold Century Link that would have cost 59 dollars a month plus 30 dollars in hidden fees.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago

4G LTE was the point of no return. It was supposed to mean "it's not 4G yet but we have an upgrade plan to get there", but when they finally did, marketing found out that to the average person, going from 4G LTE to 4G sounded like a downgrade, so they rebranded it to 5G.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

What kills me is it's the same with CPUs. A 5nm chip is larger than 5nm.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I thought it meant the transistor size.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

It doesn't really mean anything anymore. The transistors are not 5nm either. It's just marketing.

Quoth Wikipedia:

The term "5 nm" has no relation to any actual physical feature (such as gate length, metal pitch or gate pitch) of the transistors being 5 nanometers in size. According to the projections contained in the 2021 update of the International Roadmap for Devices and Systems published by IEEE Standards Association Industry Connection, a "5 nm node is expected to have a contacted gate pitch of 51 nanometers and a tightest metal pitch of 30 nanometers". However, in real world commercial practice, "5 nm" is used primarily as a marketing term by individual microchip manufacturers to refer to a new, improved generation of silicon semiconductor chips in terms of increased transistor density (i.e. a higher degree of miniaturization), increased speed and reduced power consumption compared to the previous 7 nm process.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

I'm surprised this is not enough for a lawsuit to happen