I feel similar with 5G. I don't know anyone who was actually demanding 5G speeds from their phone, or excited about it. Technically it's very cool, but I'm unsure it actually is enabling end users to do something they could not.
From my experience, I actually must disable 5G. The 4G network in my area actually works well enough in all circumstances. The 5G network is all-or-nothing. I either wind up with incredible speeds or completely unusable.
Some aspects of 5G are sensible in that they take advantage of improving hardware to use spectrum more efficiently: denser encoding, full-duplex radios, etc.
Some of it, like beam steering that tracks moving devices, which is going to be challenging to make it work in real world cases, and using spectrum that makes it hard to penetrate inside cars and buildings, is a reach nobody asked for.
Some seems greed driven, like "If we can convince AWS customers they need to put computing at the network edge we (telcos) will capture some of the value AWS accumulates now."
As for your 4G network, that's what we call 5Ge now.
I knew a guy who worked on cell phone beam forming from the tower 20 years ago. He said it worked flawlessly in Florida where the company was based. He also said every single deployment failed because no where in the US has such a flat terrain without reflections.
Is 5Ge some sort of joke? Or is that a real designation.
At least in the US, AT&T made the incredibly cynical move to rebrand their 4G service in areas where 5G was expected one day to be available as '5Ge' aka '5G Evolution'. That was so they could 'imply' in ads you were getting a 5G connection before, you know, there was a 5G network to connect to. Even changed the little icon on your phone from 4G to 5Ge.
Sprint sued for the blatant false advertising and AT&T unsurprisingly settled.
Is the end user actually the market this is aimed at? All we really know is that 5G and the Intel ME are endeavors that are expected to make a profit. But who wants this enough to pay for it? Someone does. If not the mass market consumer, then who?
In the case of 5G, telcos love it. It's vastly less expensive to run than any lower G, both in cities and the countryside. That interest even aligns with end users' interest.
Except they still charge the same anyways, or more.
I'm with Telus up here in Canada. You pay the same old rates as per the usual for 5G speeds. If however you go with their subsidiary (Koodo) using the older infrastructure, you can pay a little less for similar packages.
Check it out yourself. Mind you, I use prepaid, cause I don't want to be on a contract, so I buy my own phone and use it. Koodo even charges more for bringing your own phone, since they aren't collecting on having leased one to you.
Simply put, if I want to save money while still having enough data for what I actually need data for; I can either spend about 35-40$ with Koodo for 2-4GB of data at 3 & 4G speeds; or 40-50$ for 2.5-4.5GB at 4 & 5G speeds. I round things this way by the way, because of taxes. Also, auto-top up also tends to give some extra data too. 500MB more. So generous of them (/s).
And also, this is new packages. They just updated them with the new promo on Telus with that whole 1GB extra data and 10$ one time credit. I'm gonna have to call them and get that I guess. Unless they auto gave it to me? Who knows with them. Ultimately, I only need 500MB though, since I use Spotify in offline mode, and only download music via my wifi at home; and the only other thing I tend to use is Google Maps which can also be downloaded ahead of time to save on data.
Edit: I should also note that they do actually state 4G on the Telus website, but my phone says I am getting 5G speeds. Hence why I state 5G. I could care less what they claim on their website. End user experience is truth.
If it aligned with end-users why not just create a robust narrowband specification that attempts to guaranteed some minimum bandwidth between the device and tower in many different signal conditions? Or would we just call that 4G?
From my experience, I actually must disable 5G. The 4G network in my area actually works well enough in all circumstances. The 5G network is all-or-nothing. I either wind up with incredible speeds or completely unusable.