December 10, 2019
As we near the end of 2019 we have seen a steady stream of announcements that 5G has been rolled out
and is working. But as these deployments come online, their reception by the public seems disappointing.
There does not seem to be much of a ramp-up in excitement over the fact that 5G is available.
More than 200 million Americans now have access to 5G but, it is, hardly, the super-speedy 5G we’ve been
promised. The “race to 5G” ridiculousness still exists. With the present hype by the carriers, it is only going
to get more confusing, especially at the bottom of what T-Mo calls the “layer cake” of bands, where 5G
technology does not offer any real advantages over 4G.
Let us unpack that a bit.
First of all, I had thought the 5G hype and marketing propaganda was behind us. Perhaps the, rather,
lackluster reception of 5G, by both the consumer and the enterprise, has the carriers sweating. In
response, it seems the carriers have upped the ante with more 5G hype.
And, in response to that, or perhaps just as an opportunity to analyze these 5G deployments, various
watchdog, research, and analyst organizations have dissected the metrics behind the deployment of
5G networks. Overall, the reports and analyses have shown that 5G is not meeting the performance
that carriers have hyped, and continue to hype. And, it is not just 5G. Sadly, just about everything that
is peripheral to 5G; existing networks, new networks, and the technologies behind them.
