AT&T douses cold water on Verizon's 5G wireless promises

[Shawn Knight]

Verizon said last week that it plans to conduct 5G wireless technology field tests sometime in 2016. Despite prefacing the announcement with the fact that the speedy tech likely won’t arrive until sometime after 2020, the admission generated plenty of buzz online – enough to get the attention of its largest rival.

AT&T Mobility chief Glenn Lurie addressed the matter during a recent CTIA event, telling CNET that they aren’t yet in a position to be making promises or commitments to customers as to what 5G is. Lurie added that the industry has a solid track record of overpromising and under delivering when it comes to new technology.

At its technology forum in August, Verizon said 5G wireless will offer roughly 50 times the throughput compared to what’s possible using today’s 4G LTE networks with latencies in the single milliseconds. In addition to much faster connections, the technology is also expected to be able to handle what could be a boom in connected devices – assuming of course that the Internet of Things permeates our lives as forecasted.

It’s unclear if AT&T is simply trying to discredit Verizon’s achievement or play a bit of public damage control (assuming its own research into the matter isn’t as far along as its rival). Whatever the reasoning, the nation’s largest wireless provider is standing behind its statement.

A spokesperson told the publication that innovation happens when you’re willing to look at things a little differently than others and you’re willing to put in the hard work to make your vision a reality.

Image courtesy noolwlee, Shutterstock

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https://www.techspot.com/news/62097-att-douses-cold-water-verizon-5g-wireless-promises.html

 

[Puiu]

50 times the throughput with sub 10ms latency on a mobile network? that's clearly impossible to do in less than 5 years.

 

[RustyTech]

"A spokesperson told the publication that innovation happens when you’re willing to look at things a little differently than others and you’re willing to put in the hard work to make your vision a reality."

What an ironic statement...coming from a company that has never done so; but who knows - here's hoping for change!

 

[psycros]

50 times the throughput with sub 10ms latency on a mobile network? that's clearly impossible to do in less than 5 years.

Unless they've been lying to us about the limitations of current wireless tech and the so-called "spectrum squeeze" which we know they have. And AT&T is the biggest liar of them all.

Verizon is starting to figure out that WE'VE figured out their a pack of thieves. Europe and Asia have no problem delivering 4G speeds to far more customers than North American carriers, with NO data caps or throttling. They know they can't keep the scam going forever so their inventing a mythical 5G tech that will be nothing more than 4G with some of the artificial limits removed...exactly as they did with first-gen 4G. Over the next 4-5 years we can expect practically unlimited mobile data to make a return to the Big Three. If they don't do this they face a real danger of the cable companies blanketing cities with long-range WiFi towers and cutting into their obscenely profitable business.

 

[Puiu]

Unless they've been lying to us about the limitations of current wireless tech and the so-called "spectrum squeeze" which we know they have. And AT&T is the biggest liar of them all.

Verizon is starting to figure out that WE'VE figured out their a pack of thieves. Europe and Asia have no problem delivering 4G speeds to far more customers than North American carriers, with NO data caps or throttling. They know they can't keep the scam going forever so their inventing a mythical 5G tech that will be nothing more than 4G with some of the artificial limits removed...exactly as they did with first-gen 4G. Over the next 4-5 years we can expect practically unlimited mobile data to make a return to the Big Three. If they don't do this they face a real danger of the cable companies blanketing cities with long-range WiFi towers and cutting into their obscenely profitable business.

don't misunderstand getting high speeds is not the problem. they can easily get 100Gbps if they wanted. but it will come with problems like high latency, connection issues and lower speeds as more and more people start using it.

anyone saying that they will get 5G with sub 10 latency before 2020 is either intentionally lying or just a random guy who's not into IT.

 

[mctommy]

50 times the throughput with sub 10ms latency on a mobile network? that's clearly impossible to do in less than 5 years.

Unless they've been lying to us about the limitations of current wireless tech and the so-called "spectrum squeeze" which we know they have. And AT&T is the biggest liar of them all.

Verizon is starting to figure out that WE'VE figured out their a pack of thieves. Europe and Asia have no problem delivering 4G speeds to far more customers than North American carriers, with NO data caps or throttling. They know they can't keep the scam going forever so their inventing a mythical 5G tech that will be nothing more than 4G with some of the artificial limits removed...exactly as they did with first-gen 4G. Over the next 4-5 years we can expect practically unlimited mobile data to make a return to the Big Three. If they don't do this they face a real danger of the cable companies blanketing cities with long-range WiFi towers and cutting into their obscenely profitable business.

Long-range wifi like clearwire? whatever happen to clearwire/clear. Ain't gonna happen... only in your dream.

People keep on saying that the wireless industry is gauging them on pricing (which the big 2 are)... but you have to consider that there are heavy costs associated with running a network with the footprint of the size of the US. The cost of infrastructure (and upgrades) and telco payment (connecting those towers to the internet isn't free) isn't free nor cheap. Building those towers isn't cheap, renting space on those towers isn't free either.