Thread Number: 90362  /  Tag: Other Home Products or Autos
T-Mobile High-Speed 5G Home Internet 		[Down to Last]

automaticwasher.org's exclusive eBay Watch:
scroll >>> for more items --- [As an eBay Partner, eBay may compensate automaticwasher.org if you make a purchase using any link to eBay on this page]
Post# 1149200   5/21/2022 at 11:20 (704 days old) by joeekaitis (Rialto, California, USA)        

joeekaitis's profile picture

 

The guy on the phone (I made the call, not a telemarketer) says I'm one of the first on my block to test-drive one of these for 15 days.

 

 

So far, pretty zippy compared to AT&T DSL (18Mbps down).  Early in the morning with little traffic, it'll hit 300 on the iPhone SpeedTest app.  Late afternoon when the network is busiest, it never drops below 150.  More than adequate for WiFi streaming on the Roku players.  T-Mobile's coverage map says we're in a 5G Ultra Capacity zone.

 

Setup was as easy as they claim.  Of course, I'm an IT Support guy so I had a head start.  One minor quibble: SSID and password can't contain spaces so I had to update everything in the house that connects to WiFi.

 

Updates as they happen.  The link is not a referral.  I don't get a kickback.

CLICK HERE TO GO TO joeekaitis's LINK



Post# 1149204 , Reply# 1   5/21/2022 at 12:49 (704 days old) by DADoES (TX, U.S. of A.)        

dadoes's profile picture
 
I get 225 to 240Mbps down, 20 to 21Mbps up.  Lowest-tier service offered by the local/area cable outfit (Sparklight).

Post# 1149207 , Reply# 2   5/21/2022 at 12:58 (704 days old) by MattL (Flushing, MI)        

Wish it was available to me.  Right now getting 1G from xfinity for $60 but 1 year contract expires in August, no idea what I will get in that price range.
Post# 1149221 , Reply# 3   5/21/2022 at 14:57 (704 days old) by jamiel (Detroit, Michigan and Palm Springs, CA)        

jamiel's profile picture
A neighbor tried it about 8 months ago and had to send it back as unusable. We border an interstate highway, but our segment is below-grade (in a ditch) so the antennae are pointed downwards and don't hit us for maximum benefit.

Post# 1149222 , Reply# 4   5/21/2022 at 14:58 (704 days old) by henene4 (Heidenheim a.d. Brenz (Germany))        

How much data is included?

I have gigabit cable and have been lucky with wired connections where ever I lived so far.

Similar offerings here in Germany always have a way to low data cap like 50GB or so to be feasible for me.
I easily have 1TB a month in data traffic with basically all media I consume being streamed.

Post# 1149224 , Reply# 5   5/21/2022 at 15:24 (704 days old) by joeekaitis (Rialto, California, USA)        
How much data is included?

joeekaitis's profile picture

 

Unlimited.  No mention of throttling for excess use.

 

Oh, and: $50.00US a month including all taxes and fees.  Not a promo price.
Post# 1149227 , Reply# 6   5/21/2022 at 15:42 (704 days old) by henene4 (Heidenheim a.d. Brenz (Germany))        

50$ for unlimited data is a really good deal.

As long as you have good reception at your home these systems are usually quite good.
They don't move, so as long as there is reception, it usually doesn't change.
Weather doesn't really affect them.


Found that 5G isn't really much faster data throughput wise on average on my phone, but latency is quite a bit better.




So this really appears to be a good deal.
It's not terribly expensive for the consumer AND the provider can give good service to more people with less upfront investment.

Post# 1149239 , Reply# 7   5/21/2022 at 19:03 (704 days old) by iej (.... )        
Mobile 5G speed test..

 I have fibre at home which gets around 1Gbit/s but recently got a 5G phone and have to say it's a huge speed improvement.

Just a random speed test wandering around - not bad for €14.99/month promo for 6 months (€29.99 after) with 30-day notice contract on a SIM only plan (bring your own handset) and they don't seem to give a damn if you tether or not - no limits at all beyond a massive excessive use limit, like if you used it to host a busy web server or something, in which case they reserve the right to throttle your speed.

I know the fibre line's capable of 2Gbit/s+ but it's amazing what can be done on mobile at this stage.

It's crazy how fast this stuff is getting though when you consider that a mobile device probably now has more data capacity than a decent sized town had in the 1990s! Whole central offices often only had a few tens of Mbit/s in reality.

5G (and 4G) are hugely dependent on backhaul though. You can have good 5G coverage, and be in an area that isn't yet upgraded with sufficient fibre to tower and the throughput will still be quite mediocre. If you're in an area with a ton of backhaul it flies.

The problem with mobile broadband as a replacement for fixed line capacity is if you get a large uptake the networks will be swamped. There's a limited amount of bandwidth in terms of radio spectrum allocations and compared to fibre networks, especially in denser urban areas, there's just no comparison in terms of capacity to cope with large numbers of customers all downloading heavily.

  View Full Size
Post# 1149241 , Reply# 8   5/21/2022 at 19:24 (704 days old) by jamiel (Detroit, Michigan and Palm Springs, CA)        

jamiel's profile picture
so true about the backhaul needs for mobile. I distinctly remember a morning commute in Chicago (when I was managing intercarrier services/roaming for US Cellular) in about 1994 listening to NPR on how AOL dial-up was stressing the telephone network because people were staying on the line for hours on end.

Post# 1149250 , Reply# 9   5/21/2022 at 20:26 (704 days old) by iej (.... )        

Peak dial-up era really used the phone network in a way that it was never intended to be used. Switching systems were designed with an expectation that a large % of calls were likely to be short. Instead you'd modems sitting on voice lines for hours and hours. That tied up capacity in switching matrixes and was very problematic, especially in older tech switches that had centralised common control and were much less flexible.

Remember in the 1990s there were still some crossbar and reed switches in use in some local areas, and even in more modern setups, there was plenty of 1980s technology from early generations of digital switching and a lot of that wasn't all that flexible or high capacity. The 1ESS, 1AESS was computer controlled, reed relays for example and there were plenty of those still in service in the 90s.

The result was when switches got overwhelmed some customers didn't get dial tones as the system was too busy, or incoming calls were getting reorder tones (all equipment busy).

Those networks were not data networks though and really you were using data by hacking it onto old voice switches with modems or ISDN channels. Modern networks have turned that on its head, voice is now just a small application on what are in reality just IP based data networks - be they mobile or fixed.

The issues for modern mobile networks is when you upgrade a tower to 4G/5G it needs to be connected to a fibre optic network to get adequate capacity. Otherwise it's like having a fire hose connected to a 1/4" water main. A lot of older mobile infrastructure used a mesh of microwave links between towers with fibre only at key points. That continued into 3G and to some extent 4G ... higher speed 4G and 5G needs lots of fibre running to towers to carry the traffic or it will just choke and the weakest link is literally the weakest link. If there's a lower capacity microwave link to the tower you're on, doesn't matter what the radio tech between you and the tower is, it will be a slow connection.



This post was last edited 05/21/2022 at 21:11
Post# 1149268 , Reply# 10   5/22/2022 at 05:34 (704 days old) by henene4 (Heidenheim a.d. Brenz (Germany))        

Thing there is that for the provider, financially, in most circumstances, probably, it's cheaper to build a few large fibre connections to the few cell towers over fibre to every home.

I guess with 5G requiring many more stations that advantage is somewhat lower, but probably still financially better.

Post# 1149278 , Reply# 11   5/22/2022 at 07:54 (704 days old) by iej (.... )        

Well, it depends. Ultimately fibre to home is a lot more capable than any kind of wireless technology. The internet has a tendency to find content to fill whatever the maximum capacity of the network is. It wasn't all that long ago that 50mbit/s seemed way more than most of us could use. Nowadays we're getting upset about being *only* able to connect at 200mbit/s ...

The other issue with wireless technologies is radio spectrum capacity. While they're great if there aren't all that many simultaneous users, if you've fixed broadband customers camped on wireless services maxing them out, the bandwidth runs out. The available bandwidth over fibre is vastly larger and the technology at either end of the cable can also be changed and updated to make more use of it, without having to rewire anything.

So overall, investment in FTTH (fibre to home) is worthwhile.

The other aspect is the phone companies are retiring and closing the copper networks as they're just obsolete. Even plans to install IP-based MSANs to replace older TDM based digital telephone switches like 5ESS, AXE, S12, EWSD etc have been shelved or drastically reduced as the demand for voice landlines has fallen through the floor and people are finding VoIP over broadband and mobiles more than adequate as a replacement technology. So typically phone companies are either only installing very small MSANs, or skipping the technology entirely and going to pure fibre.

Post# 1149285 , Reply# 12   5/22/2022 at 09:16 (703 days old) by DADoES (TX, U.S. of A.)        

dadoes's profile picture
 
I could do everything I wanted on the 100Mbps lowest-tier cable plan I had for many years, including streaming Netflix at HD quality.  A forced upgrade (and $10/month increase) was enacted in February to the 200Mbps service which is now the lowest service offered.  There is a perceptible difference on downloading program installers, .pdfs, etc., but it certainly doesn't increase my overall life experience to the next level, LOL.  I don't see any quality difference on Netflix, YouTube, or General Hospital from ABC.com.  I'd be perfectly happy to stay on 100Mbps for $120 less cost per year.

I never watch movies on my phone.  Why would I watch a movie on that little screen?  Cell data usage on the last bill is 30 MB.

Post# 1149289 , Reply# 13   5/22/2022 at 09:42 (703 days old) by henene4 (Heidenheim a.d. Brenz (Germany))        

FTTH is of course long term the only logical step, especially given that fibre has a way longer probable life span (copper has a way smaller theoretical limit in terms of capacity compared to single mode fibre).
That of course is easier for high demand areas.

On the point of technology filling out any available band width that was true so far - I wouldn't agree on that anymore without caviat.
It appears that is beginning to be less of a case.
Almost all households are now connected to the point that every member has a mobile phone, some device capable of high quality streaming and uses both regularly.
It's the same as seen with many technologies: Phones no longer make leaps generation over generation, video quality over 4k no longer makes any sense on household size displays, new processors no longer offer valuable improvement to make upgrades wirth while unless you have to (look at video calls - we went from barely managing it to on the fly background replacement without a greenscreen on mobile ultra light devices).
Of course, technology will improve, but no longer at the same pace.
Heck - even hard drives on the most up to date PCIe standard are reaching speeds where consumers don't have any noticeable advantage and DDR5 isn't projected to make much sense for quite a bit to come.


Now, of course, in urban areas, you can reach many people with little investment AND wireless networks are highly loaded out already.

But take anything not being directly connected to an urban area.
Instead of building out large scale mobile networks of state of the art technology AND building out a wired connection system to all houses, you just have to build out one first, and can upgrade the wired infrastructure as it becomes necessary anyway yet still give customers a high speed option of currently very much usable standard that they are willing to pay.

That means you don't have to do the digging until you dig up that street anyway AND can finance that investment beforehand by that intermediate offering.
Keep in mind: Fibre connections aren't expensive because the hardware HAS to be more expensive.
Installing the transmission medium is the big cost hurdle to the upgrade.

Such less densely populated suburban areas have less strain on the wireless networks anyway, so you oversize these systems with the same hardware as in urban areas.
That also gives you some economics of scale since you no longer treat less populated areas differently hardware wise.


Yet the customer gets speeds that are way more competitive value wise than jumping from just a wired connection of last gen to that new expensive rollout AND that same customer gets the same advantage on mobile. And they are paying accordingly willingly.

BUT with the current state of the art beam forming antenna technologies you still benefit from having stationary demands since you know about how much traffic will be fixed in a certain area compared to just making everything for mobile.
That allows you to offer 5G connectivity on a larger area with the same spectra available - you just assign less of them and less sending/receiving capability of a tower to thinly areas with less clients. Even those less focussed on areas still offer 5G connectivity at acceptable speed - just for less clients at a time.




For example:

My home town has basically no areas where FTTH is available.
The last new construction area was fully build out 20 years ago where FTTH wasn't a real thing yet.
As far as I know our backbone is fibre.

For about 3 miles around that town, there are no people, only low traffic town connection streets.
Our town is like 2500 people, about 1000 households.

With like 4-8 tower installations, you could cover the entire town AND surrounding area with 5G service.
That should offer enough capacity for all mobile devices AND for most households to also use it for their WiFi.

Once you did that large initial investment of running fibre around the town for those installations, everybody there could have up to date connections both at home and mobile.

Over the next few years, as the town roads are redone anyway, as possible, you use those main, large fibre connections and branch off to those streets and start to offer FTTH.

Those houses being connected wired now reduce the load on the aging wireless networks.

Meaning you get paid for up to date services by more people for longer while giving yourself a few years to get the physical infrastructure up to date step by step as cost effectively as possible.





It's not that wireless technology will be that great package FOREVER, but 5G offers just big enough of a technology improvement to make it a cost effective option to bridge the physical infrastructure gap in those areas that otherwise would wait to long for up to date service.

In areas where wired connection updates always made sense sooner rather than later they will always make sense sooner rather than later - but those areas have no problem with updates.

Those areas don't play into my equation anyway - I probably should have made that clearer.




Last side note:

VOIP actually has become the standard for any new connection over here a few years back.

Actual example: My grandparents were on the same phone contract since they moved into the house in the 50s - no joke.
Back then our phone systems were a monopoly owned by our post office - later splitting that off into the Telecom.

Then the state monopoly was dissolved privatising the Telecom.
But the Telecom had to carry over the old contracts.

My grandparents were on such an old contract that it had no provision for the provider to dissolve the contract.
Only the customer could switch contract.
They could raise prices - but only so much since there are laws in place to prevent companies from pushing people out of these contracts by exorbitant fees.

Meaning they were paying something like 20 cents per minute and some minute monthly fixed rate.
BUT they couldn't be connected to VOIP since they would have to get an internet connection.
Which they never needed or wanted.

So some time in the 2010s, the Telecom started bombarding them with phone calls and offers for a cheap internet plan.
And they did so with EVERYONE in our town that still had no internet connection.

To the point a few people banded together and our mayor launched an inquiry as to why that was happening.
Turns out that basically no matter how much you were calling on those old contracts they were loosing money since there were so few people on that hardware that they tried to get people off of it before they were running the next overhaul on our towns routing infrastructure.
So since basically everybody was on VoIP anyway they would have gone cheaper giving those people extremely low spec connections for below usual rate to get them on VoIP.

That spamming quickly stopped soon after and my grandparents kept their actual true landline connection till they died - though for the past few years they would have been consistently cheaper to switch to the cheapest internet connection with VoIP since even those now have a flat.

Post# 1149290 , Reply# 14   5/22/2022 at 09:55 (703 days old) by henene4 (Heidenheim a.d. Brenz (Germany))        
@iej

 That really sucks that they put that cost onto consumers.

Over here, as far as I am aware, most companies basically shift their offerings one tier down pricewise and then scratch the lowest tier.
The last time people had to pay more was the shift from 16MBits to 50MBits.
That was mainly for people who only got 16MBits to their house though since they were billed the same as 50MBits under some weird exclusion.

I think most major companies offer 50MBits as the lowest tier on DSL and most cable providers have 100MBit as their lowest tier.
If you are very rural, usually coverage is given by some regional sub division that buys in hardware band width and sub divides it so they still charge with lower tier systems makeing them a financially viable option for many.

Post# 1149294 , Reply# 15   5/22/2022 at 11:22 (703 days old) by Joeekaitis (Rialto, California, USA)        
And now, a few observations.

 joeekaitis's profile picture

 

Arkadyan KVD21 gateway.

 

Not as many configuration options as the Motorola/Arris NVG599 like WiFi channel selection, guest networks, etc.  WiFi 6 seems to say “To each according to its needs”.  Devices are put on different WiFi channels with different maximum speeds.  Maybe it phones home and downloads the specs of connected devices.  You can manually set up 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks to accommodate older devices that can’t make up their minds.  You can also schedule connection times and knock the kids’ iPads off the network at bedtime.

 

Speeds are still looking good.  Stay tuned!
Post# 1149299 , Reply# 16   5/22/2022 at 14:09 (703 days old) by jamiel (Detroit, Michigan and Palm Springs, CA)        

jamiel's profile picture
Yeah, Verizon (landline) was the only carrier that in the '00s did FTTHome----SBC/AT&T and CenturyLink did only FTTHub; using the old copper into the individual location.

The Verizon spin-out of their non-regional (former GTE markets) spun some FTTHome markets (Florida/Irving TX/Fort Wayne, IN/California) into Frontier (which mismanaged them terribly resulting in bankruptcy). Now AT&T is now installing the fiber into the homes (we're in the midst of it right now in our neighborhood)

Post# 1149349 , Reply# 17   5/23/2022 at 08:28 (703 days old) by iej (.... )        
@henene4

 The way it works here in Ireland we've basically got 3 FTTH networks and a cable network. The FTTH networks are open to any ISP to use as an access network. You can pick your ISP and in some areas you've a choice of infrastructural networks, but in a lot of areas you might be stuck with just one of them.

'OpenEir' which is the access networks division of Eircom, the now privatised former national telco. Eircom itself trades as 'Eir' for its own retail products, but you can use any of about 15+ different ISPs. They provide their own aggregation / routing at various points around the network and backhaul their own traffic, but the access network is over OpenEir's FTTH (up to 2gbit/s) or FTTC (being gently phased out) up to 100Mbit/s.

'Siro' which is owned primarily by the ESB (publicly owned power utility. They've rolled out fibre by piggy backing it onto the electricity network, running the fibres in the same ducts and clipping it to poles and cables. So, your FTTH connection comes in next to your electricity meter. Again, this is a fully open network so you can pick from a similar range of ISPs to OpenEir and the technology is quite similar, with up to 2gibt/s in some areas, but mostly still selling 1Gbit or less. Siro itself doesn't provide retail services, so you use other ISPs over their network.

'NBI National Broadband Ireland' is a similar open network, but is a state owned operation run by a franchisee. They target only areas that are not covered by commercial networks. So very rural areas can get access to full FTTH. Similar to Siro, it provides no retail services, but you can access a wide range of ISPs over their system.

Then you've cable internet, which is increasingly fibre dense and can offer speeds of a gigabit or so. Virgin Media (Liberty Global) has progressively bought out all the smaller cable networks, so they're almost all now Virgin branded with the same equipment. This is a closed network so you can only use Virgin's services.

There are hardly any users still on traditional DSL products, although FTTC (Fibre to the Cabinet) VDSL still has a big uptake, running at up to 100mbit/s (in reality more like about 50-70 mbits for most people) but it's pretty acceptably fast for a lot of use cases. OpenEir's plan is to replace it fairly quickly as they don't really want to maintain active equipment in cabinets and there's a lot of potential cost savings and so on in having just a purely passive optical network.

The original plan (at least for the former telco OpenEir) here was a complicated replacement of the PSTN with cabinet-based MSANs and continuing dial-tone services and copper services, but the technology moved way faster than the plan and the uptake for landline PSTN services fall off a cliff a few years ago. There was a very rapid move over to VoBB (VoIP over Broadband) with exchange-based services from central offices not really seeing very much demand at all. So the entire plan to rollout all that complicated PSTN/ISDN replacement stuff was mostly shelved.

Ireland also has a very scattered population - which tends to make broadband a lot more expensive here and also has tended to sometimes hamper our speed of rollout. DSL never really suited the Irish market outside of dense urban areas, as we've long lines and lots of low density ribbon development. We've about 4.9 million people and something like 1300 telephone exchanges (central offices), most of which are tiny and serving less than 1000 customers. About half of them have less than 300 lines. Also the network was digitalised very early (beginning in 1979) because distributed digital switching suited the market here. However it also means that a lot of the oldest local switch equipment (which would have been upgraded over the years) is really beyond any kind of ability to extend its life or adapt it further to all-IP environments. The solution they're using is to replace the Ericsson AXE and Alcatel E10 switches with much smaller capacity Nokia MSANs that sit in the former central offices and will continue to provide traditional PSTN services (but not ISDN) to a dwindling number of copper lines, but without accepting any new orders. They're basically just there to smoothly manage out the extinction of the remnants of the PSTN.

When an area is regarded as having sufficient FTTH rollout (from any provider(s)), the copper PSTN/ISDN/DSL/VDSL services are now allowed to be withdrawn and the MSANs will be shut down and ultimately the copper will be pulled out of the ducts and taken off the overhead poles.

The way I see it evolving within a very short number of years will see landline voice services being very niche, other than for businesses who already mostly use VoIP systems anyway. I think the rest of us will make do with mobiles, and increasingly commercial 'over the top' IM/VoIP services. That's already where the vast majority of people are at already anyway, so it's not exactly a radical move.

It's amazing when you think about it though this is very much the end of the centralised, traditional switched telephony networks which have been around since the 1880s and have been mainstream certainly for a hundred years since automatic switching arrived in the 1920s!

Basically a little over 100 years from Stowger > Crossbar > Analogue Electronic > Digital Circuit Switching > ultra fast IP and nebulous clouds with telephony as an app
(and plenty of Ernestine's colleagues to make it all work throughout a large part of the 20th century!)

Also kind of amusing that we've gone full circle from "Hello Operator??? " to "Hey Siri! / OK Google!"



This post was last edited 05/23/2022 at 08:53
Post# 1149350 , Reply# 18   5/23/2022 at 09:03 (703 days old) by jamiel (Detroit, Michigan and Palm Springs, CA)        

jamiel's profile picture
The main difference between the North America PSTN network and the rest of the world is its atomization and the local regulation..there are several thousand local telephone companies (we don't have the PTT--post/telephone/telegraph structure from most of the rest of the world). Further, each of these companies is regulated both at the state level and the national level. These are as small as several hundred subscribers up to AT&T/Verizon/CenturyLink which are the successors to the Regional Bell Operating Companies.

There are more limitations regarding electric utilities entering the broadband business (again given the multi-layer regulation of these services coming from the intdustry structure). This has occurred in a few areas (particularly where the local power company is a co-op or public power company) but is not very widespread.



Post# 1149354 , Reply# 19   5/23/2022 at 10:11 (702 days old) by iej (.... )        

There's a difference in how the markets were structured. In the old days in Europe telecommunications were generally seen as a public utility. The history of it goes back to the dawn of telephone services.

The history here (and it's part of UK history too as we were part of the UK until 1922) was that the early networks were private and were subsequently nationalised and rolled into the GPO's telegraph operations. It made some sense as the early companies were somewhat chaotic and there were issues around reliability and lack of interconnection and also the GPO had long routes for telegraph cables already in place and an international network. When the telephone services began to be seen as essential national infrastructure, there was a move to put them on the same basis as the telegraph system.

They remained like that until the 1980s.

The present day approach in Europe is regulated competition with heavy focus on preventing monopolies developing. The approach here for example deems a number of larger players to be 'incumbents', which is defined by their market share basically or by their having a monopoly over some aspect of access infrastructure. Once they're deemed to be an 'incumbent' they have to open (at regulated commercial rates) their access infrastructure networks which (here at least) includes wholesale access to networks on a virtual / logical basis and also unbundling of physical infrastructure (physical wiring networks, ducts, poles, central offices etc)

If you take this market, which is quite small (5 million people so the size of a mid sized US state) there are 4 large fixed line access companies (fibre / copper / cable), at least 10 companies providing significant long distance fibre networks within Ireland, umpteen different international fibre networks, various companies doing wholesale voice services (about 25+), at least 25 ISPs, various small local wireless ISPs (wISPs) providing voice and data in rural areas, 3 infrastructural mobile networks and about 10 MVNOs, a couple of cable operators, and you've all sorts of white label providers and companies assembling services by buying white label services - so you could end up buying your broadband and mobile from a supermarket chain under their own brand, multiple cable and cable-like IPTV providers.

We've a history of small local cable operators (going back to the 1960s) which evolved into small local ISP/telcos that were quite present in the 1990s. You'd various small towns with their own mom & pop scale cable companies offering broadband. Almost all of those were 'hoovered up' by Liberty Global in recent years and combined into Virgin Media.

Also, cable operators played a huge role in the cities and wiped the floor with the old Telecom operator back in the 1990s, so in cities like Dublin the dominant operator is actually Virgin Media / Liberty Global (cable operator) not the old PSTN players. If anything they're now trying very hard to 'win back' long lost customers to using FTTH offerings.

Internet infrastructure here also hasn't revolved around the old telco monopolies. The key interconnection infrastructure is mostly operated by industry owned associations. So for example, the INEX (Irish Neutral Exchange) and a couple of smaller regional ones like CIX (Cork Internet Exchange)operates multiple nodes where the vast majority of our national internet traffic is interconnected through data centres with high capacity peering with all the ISPs, major content providers, long distance fibre operators etc etc. That infrastructure is owned largely by its members i.e. all the ISPs and telcos who use it to interconnect.

...

The other big historical difference was there was no European AT&T/Bell System equivalent - a few of the bigger old national telcos tried to be that but didn't have the scale to vertically integrate. The result of that was you'd a very healthy raft of independent telecommunication equipment makers in Europe that evolved over the decades and were pretty innovative. It's where the likes of Ericsson, Nokia, and also many of the ITT affiliates grew up. As well as a raft of companies (or former subsidiaries) that are now merged into bigger players like Siemens Networks, Alcatel, Marconi and others.

The GSM open standards for example grew out of that kind of need for interpretability across multiple players, multiple countries and telcos that didn't want to be bound to a single supplier and were part of that philosophy of regulated, standardised but highly competitive environments.

It's a different commercial history but the market in Europe is not dominated by PTTs and hasn't been in decades. There was competition, its just in different areas and also EU countries are (with a few exceptions) more on the scale of mid sized U.S. states. So their historical PTTs were comparable to at most one is the “baby Bells.” Even the largest of them weren’t anything like the scale of Ma Bell.

You’ve also got a lot of layers of regulation. There’s a broader EU regulation framework around anti-trust, interoperability, technical standards and the broader European telecommunications market and then you’ve 27 national regulators doing their own thing with in that framework.
Where Europe still falls down is the EU wide market is still highly fragmented. Some good moves in recent years like mandating pan-EU voice and data roaming (you can use your plan anywhere in the EU (and a few other countries) and a lot of wholesale stuff is pan-EU but most services are very much sold and regulated locally within one EU member state.



This post was last edited 05/23/2022 at 10:46
Post# 1149371 , Reply# 20   5/23/2022 at 15:32 (702 days old) by ozzie908 (Lincoln UK)        
City fibre

ozzie908's profile picture
Is set to take on the likes of Virgin and BT and we are watching them dig up the street ! It is meant to be the fastest upto 1000mps and its meant cost a 3rd of what we normally pay !! So we wait to hear from them as to when it is possible to connect to it...? Lincoln is the 2nd city to have the infrastructure for this.

Post# 1149451 , Reply# 21   5/24/2022 at 18:25 (701 days old) by iej (.... )        

I’ve been lucky enough to be passed by two FTTH networks and cable, opens some options but the prices here are still about €50 / month for fibre.


Post# 1149876 , Reply# 22   5/30/2022 at 12:32 (695 days old) by joeekaitis (Rialto, California, USA)        
Moved the gateway to the other end of the house . . .

 joeekaitis's profile picture

 

. . . and as high off the floor as possible as recommended by the placement assistant in the iPhone app.  Connection stays on Very Good instead of bouncing back and forth between Good and Very Good.  The 5G antenna seems to be directional giving better results if the back panel faces the tower.

Speedtest app in Windows 10 still logging some crazy fast speeds.

Based on the app, this might be the tower in Google Earth:

 
Post# 1149880 , Reply# 23   5/30/2022 at 14:18 (695 days old) by foraloysius (Leeuwarden, Friesland, the Netherlands)        

foraloysius's profile picture
The introduction of 5G has been postponed in the Netherlands due to the frequency it uses. The same frequency is used by the big ears that are located in the northern part of the Netherlands and that are partly used for intelligence purposes. They are used to get information about the situation in Ukrain too. These big ears (there are 40 of them) were supposed to be moved, but I guess the move will be delayed due to the war.



  View Full Size
Post# 1149892 , Reply# 24   5/30/2022 at 17:48 (695 days old) by iej (.... )        

The issue isn’t all 5G services, it’s specifically the 3.5Ghz C band frequencies that are used by certain satellite services.

I’ve just been looking at the frequencies my iPhone has been on 5G with here. Seems to be a mix of 1800 MHz the old GSM 1800 (DCS) band and on 700 MHz which was vacated by terrestrial UHF long gone analogue (PAL I) and current generation digital (DVB-T [NorDig]) television which has been pushed into a narrower set of frequencies to make way for more 5G.

We released those UHF bands earlier than planned to maximise bandwidth during the pandemic and ensure people has work from home fall back options if they didn’t have fibre / cable.

5G bands: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5G_NR_freq...
(Many of these are already established for 2G, 3G and 4G)

NorDig TV spec: nordig.org/...




This post was last edited 05/30/2022 at 19:03
Forum Index:       Other Forums:                      


Comes to the Rescue!

The Discuss-o-Mat has stopped, buzzer is sounding!!!
If you would like to reply to this thread please log-in...

Discuss-O-MAT Log-In



New Members Click Here To Sign Up.



                     

automaticwasher.org home
Discuss-o-Mat Forums
Vintage Brochures, Service and Owners Manuals
Fun Vintage Washer Ephemera
See It Wash!
Video Downloads
 Audio Downloads
Picture of the Day
Patent of the Day
Photos of our Collections
The Old Aberdeen Farm
Vintage Service Manuals 		Vintage washer/dryer/dishwasher to sell?
Technical/service questions?
Looking for Parts?
Website related questions?
Digital Millennium Copyright Act Policy
Our Privacy Policy