5G Mobile Internet: Routers, Hotspots & Antennas Are Here - Should You Wait? (Mid-2021 Update)

the summer of 2021 is turning into the summer of 5g with a whole raft of new cellular integrated 5g routers joining existing hotspots and smartphones on the market does that mean it's time to start upgrading all your old gear we've got some considerations and a major 5g update for you today hi i'm chris at the mobile internet resource center here to give you a kind of a big state of the industry update on 5g that is fifth generation cellular to let you know where things stand here going into the middle of 2021 so to give you just kind of a quick recap of well just what is 5g 5g is 5th generation cellular it's building on 4g evolving from 4g and it is basically laying the groundwork for the next decade of cellular evolution so while 5g does enable some major major major jumps in performance and it's kind of a transformational technology it is starting on the foundation of 4g and so day one in a lot of places in a lot of use cases it's just starting at the point of really good 4g and just well giving a place for the cellular networks and the cellular devices to build on and advance from there over the next decade so that's important thing to keep in mind with fifth generation cellular it's starting on top of 4g and it is not instantly automatically magic it's just a new symbol from the corner of your phone in some cases with not a lot extra to show for it but 5g is fundamentally it is inside the phones and inside all these devices new technology that starts to unlock a lot of exciting new potential so one of the things that 5g enables is a lot more cell spectrum to be put to use for cellular data this spectrum is the invisible highways through the sky and um well there's a lot more capacity more lanes of these invisible highways that can be used for data in 5g now there's three kind of like flavors of these highways with different traits that uh you know 5g networks are being deployed across there is a low manned mid band and millimeter wave super high frequency spectrum so you know low band is kind of basically the the bottom layer of the cake it's long range spectrum it's not necessarily super fast and it's basically a lot of the spectrums already is what is in use for 4g so to use it for 5g well you've got to either turn off the 4g on it or find ways to overlay 4g and 5g onto the same low band spectrum there's you know that that spectrum is out there now at the top of the cake you've got what's called millimeter wave spectrum this is super super high frequency this is basically kind of high frequency almost crazy sci-fi type stuff that lets you send amazing amounts of data you know super fast express ways through the sky but the super high frequency signals just by the laws of physics do not travel very far so you've got millimeter wave signals that can blanket an area with multi-gigabit cellular speeds it sounds almost impossible but that signal won't penetrate very far go down a block but not a mile it will not penetrate through walls or windows very well at all so it is wonderful if you want to you know give fast super fast speeds to everybody 100 thousand people in a stadium but it is not great for covering a wide a wide area now in between you've got what's called mid band spectrum this is still pretty high frequency but it is um spectrum that can still carry a lot of data but travel a reasonable distance so you can deploy mid band and that is where the bulk of what's going to be kind of the truly next generation potential of 5g comes into play because this is isn't the spectrum that is being used for 4g it is big open wide open new spectrum allows for a lot more speed still covering a decent range and well it builds a foundation for um combining with low band below it for extra range and millimeter wave above it for extra extra turbo speed in core areas so you've got these kind of like three flavors of 5g coming out and all the carriers are planning to use all three different types of flavors all three different layers in there network layer cakes but they're all starting in different places and building them out in different orders and well we're kind of going to give you a snapshot of what's the state of things where is 5g stand with each of the carriers right now in the united states [Music] so first off starting with verizon in the state of verizon's 5g network now verizon has been focusing a lot of their efforts on millimeter wave this has been kind of their core area of differentiation and they've rolled out more millimeter wave than any other cellular carrier in the world they're pushing it in a lot of places but that still comes down to only tiny parts of 70 cities so there's not a lot of places that you can get millimeter wave connections on verizon but if you do you will literally you'll get real world speeds over a gigabit per second you'll get absolutely insane speeds but well less than one percent of verizon customers have that signal anywhere near them so that's the downside of millimeter wave it's super super fast but doesn't cover a lot of people that's but hey verizon can get some bragging rights with those crazy gigabit speeds verizon has been using a technology called a dss or dynamic spectrum sharing which is layering 5g on top of existing 4g and that gives you a lot more coverage where they've turned this on they've been able to start expanding what they call nationwide 5g and well you get a legit real 5g up in the corner of your phone wow you've got 5g connection but it's just layered on top of 4g and that means you know laws of physics don't change you could only send so much data through the same collections of airwaves so in a lot of these places it's just a really good 4g connection with a 5g label in the corner for verizon so it's nothing truly transformative or next generation and could be kind of disappointing if you pay for a lot of expensive gear upgrade to 5g if you're not in one of these millimeter wave areas or you have gear that doesn't support millimeter wave which a lot of cellular routers aren't bothering to implement it you're going to turn on you're going to connect to 5g and you're not going to see much of a performance advantage on verizon oh wow why'd you upgrade now what verizon is doing is they are investing in a mid-band spectrum um called c-ban they've spent billions of dollars to begin buying the spectrum but they're not going to be able to start taking advantage of that until very late 2021 primarily into 2022 and that's when verizon's network will start to have you know kind of a wider range of truly next generation 5g performance so if you're considering 5g on verizon you can't hurt to have a 5g phone right now but do you really want to spend a lot of money on 5g hotspots and 5g other other gear if you're not going to be in those areas where you can take advantage of just yet so that's kind of the state of verizon maybe you keep want to keep waiting just a little bit longer next up att uh att also is like verizon has been doing a little bit of millimeter wave and then uh what they're calling their nationwide 5g network is out there as well it's covering more territory than verizon's because they've been able to set aside rather than using dynamic spectrum sharing to layer um 4g and 5g on top of the same bands they set aside basically one of their channels on lte band 5 they dedicated that to 5g but it is basically half of an lte channel dedicated to 5g gives them some nationwide coverage but it is really slow nothing special nothing to write home about 5g coverage so again on verizon on 18t you'll get the little 5g up in the corner of your device on your phone or on your hotspot but in a lot of places it's really not going to be that great it'll be a a really good 4g connection equivalent but it's just 5g combined using carry aggregation with a bunch of 4g channels so it's tiny little veneer of 5g on top of a 4g base is what att's network is basically doing right now and well if you get a 5g device on 18t you might see some amazing performance but you'd see that almost that exact same amazing performance if you had a modern fully upgraded you know cat 18 equivalent 4g device so you don't need 5g to get all this great performance that att has been upgrading their network for now again just like verizon 18t is investing in band 77 the c-band spectrum that is going to give them this you know more next-generation 5g experience going forward into the years ahead but they're not quite as pushing that as hard as verizon so they're more yeah i'm gonna have a slower pace bringing out the c band and transforming uh their network so again att's their 4g network is actually really really great but you don't necessarily need to jump ahead into 5g to take advantage of all the network upgrades they've been doing [Music] next up we have a t-mobile now t-mobile back in the the 4g era they were you know the third place carrier they were they were lagging behind verizon and att when it came to rolling out 4g and they've been determined from the start they they don't want to be in third place ever again when it comes to 5g and they've been investing harder faster than any other carriers and trying to be a leader in bringing out a real next generation 5g experience t-mobile is doing this with two flavors of 5g and they've got two marketing names for this they've got one they call extended range 5g now this is the 600 megahertz spectrum that t-mobile won at auction several years ago they set aside some of that as band 71 long-range lte but they actually kept the bulk of that spectrum that they won nationwide set aside planning ahead for 5g so you know as 5g devices and networks and hardware came became available they were able to turn all the spectrum on nationwide and basically really enable a full nationwide 5g coverage map um you know they they like to boast that they have more 5g coverage than 18t and verizon combined because of this wide 600 megahertz coverage but again this is still a low band 5g that is you know marginal speed but it's going to give great penetration into buildings and and they already do have a great coverage map and it's expanding rapidly um and then well t-mobile has done a little bit of millimeter wave deployments and stuff but again that's not their focus they are the leaders in mid-band deployments because well they bought sprint and the reason they bought sprint wasn't all the sprint customers wasn't all the sprint anything it was that sprint already owned a whole bunch of mid-band spectrum that was not being used and t-mobile has been able to take that and start turning on mid-band 5g much more rapidly than any of the other carriers and they're calling this ultra capacity 5g as their marketing term for it so they've started to roll out ultra capacity 5g in a whole bunch of cities they're planning to have coverage reaching 200 million people so a significant portion of the people in the country by the end of 2021 um with this ultra capacity 5g and this is going to give you a truly next generation experience they like to say it's fi is cellular as fast as wi-fi certainly probably a lot faster than campground wi-fi and marina wi-fi that we're all used to but they're rolling out a real next generation experience so t-mobile unlike att or verizon if you have 5g gear you have the potential to tap into something that is would give you a really next generation experience at least in a lot more places it is still that next generation experience is still relatively small limited but expanding fast and certainly kind of exciting now even t-mobile customers though there's i will explain just a minute might want to wait and consider well there's certain things about their coverage that the current generation of 5g devices won't be able to take advantage of so there still might be a reason to want to wait and upgrade if you can if it's practical for you okay so that was an update on the state of the carriers and their 5g network rollouts it's they're getting started they're making a lot of progress um but again this is going to be a 10-year long process of 5g rolling out um you don't necessarily want to be too far ahead of the curve buying hardware to take advantage of these networks but then again the hardware's starting to come out so let's tell you give you the latest on the state of 5g so mobile internet hardware so of course 5g smartphones are becoming pretty common iphone 12 last year and pretty much all the flagship androids are now 5g and they're great phones there's not really a trade-off like some of the very first generation of 5g phones they were avoid avoid not something to get now there's really not a lot of downside to having a 5g phone you might not get a real great 5g next generation experience in a lot of places but there's no downside to the 5g phones we're also starting to see 5g mobile hot spots like we've got the netgear nighthawk 5g from 18t the insigo m 2100 that is on verizon and the m2000 version is almost identical just without millimeter wave antennas inside of it on t-mobile so we're seeing 5g hotspots um again they're more expensive than the 4g flagships they're replacing um and a lot of places you don't really see a huge advantage with them so maybe maybe not worth investing in just yet or maybe hold on for the next generation and what's new coming summer of 2021 is 5g cellular integrated routers so if you've got more demanding networking needs on your boat or your rv and you want a cellular integrated router finally you're getting some 5g choices like this is the pep wave max transit 5g we've been getting hands on time with this since march um just in the last week the pep wave max br1 5g has been announced which is actually got some technical advantages over this is supposedly its big brother but the new br15g is actually got some advancements check our last news story for our details of that we'll be getting that hands on soon um there's uh things like the insta-connect the 5g version of that is scheduled to come out this summer the new generation mofi 5500 there's a 5g version of that scheduled to come out later this summer and there's some other enterprise kind of you know prosumer level of 5g routers from cradle point and sierra wireless and probably yet more to come because well there's kind of a little explosion of 5g hardware about to happen now there's you know all of these products are very very different in feature sets they're targeting very different market segments they have different overall performance levels but every single one of these is best that we know have one thing in common and they're all actually using the same exact 5g modem chipset and this is the qualcomm snapdragon x55 and well okay so what is the moto chipset why does this matter and why does it matter that they're all using the same one um just to give you the bit of the basics uh the modem is the chip that inside that communicates from my device to the cellular network it's basically the translator and qualcomm is been the leader in developing 5g technology and in the united states at least they are basically completely dominant when it comes to the current generations of 5g modem chips in the future there will be other manufacturers other chips and other things but right now basically everybody is building their 5g devices on exactly the same technical foundation and so understanding the qualcomm chips and the different versions of them can help you understand like well does it make sense to buy a 5g device this year or is the qualcomm chip that'll be in next year's device or later this year or whatnot have some important features that might be worth waiting for and so this is going to be a little bit geeky but this could actually save you a lot in the long run to understand this so we're going to try to explain qualcomm's modem product lineup and why it might just make sense to skip over some of the current generation and wait till the next generation comes out [Music] so first off qualcomm has already announced four generations of 5g modem chips as soon for a lot of us it's like oh 5g seems brand new but no these this has been in the works for a long time and actually the first qualcomm 5g modem the snapdragon x50 was announced way back in 2018 and powered some of these like very early 5g devices on the first generation nighthawk 5g um there was a hotspot on verizon there was some early 5g phones that used this x50 chip and we put out warnings at the time saying do not get this this the x50 was basically kind of a proof of concept they let carriers and device makers show off some raw 5g potential but it had some huge limitations in particular the hardware did not support um dynamic spectrum sharing to combine 4g and 5g together and the x50 didn't have support for 4g frequencies and 4g communication so it couldn't fall back from 5g to 4g and because this qualcomm's second generation modem the x 55 was announced in early 2019 and basically started shipping in in 2020 and powered a lot of the flagship devices the flagship phones announced in 2020 including the iphone 12 uses the x55 modem in it and it's great the x55 supports most of all the standards that the carriers are rolling out to enable 5g but it has some key limitations the huge improvement with the x60 is that it actually can connect to all three types of frequency bands millimeter wave fdd tdd low band mid band all of these things can connect to them all at once and combine them and that's going to let the x60 have a lot better performance and range and kind of the sort of fringe longer range areas where rvers and cruisers tend to be so if you um you know to be very specific with this is like you know the carriers what they're rolling out um t-mobile as an example they've rolled out their mid-band on band n41 the their extra capacity ultra capacity of 5g that is primarily that is all built on tdd spectrum and their long range band 71 is fdd the x55 cannot use both of those bands at once it cannot take advantage of combining them via 5g carrier aggregation to get the best of both worlds range and speed at the same time the x60 can so that's the reason that you might want to consider waiting for x60 powered devices [Music] when can you get them the some of the flagship smartphones that have been announced in early 2021 starting with the uh samsung galaxy s 21 and a few other top-end android smartphones now incorporate the snapdragon x60 it's actually built into their cpu the qualcomm also builds cpus the snapdragon 888 includes the x60 inside it has all these capabilities as we go into the rest of 2021 we'll start to see other high-end smartphones certainly the iphone 13 and everything else will start to use this next generation modem and well you know cellular routers and hotspots always lag behind phones so maybe by the end of the year maybe into 2022 we will start to see that level of technology reaching smartphones and cellular routers um and well if you invest this year you might be kind of wishing you hadn't once this next generation stuff comes out particularly when you consider that you know by the time x60 modems are out there that's about the time the networks will have evolved enough to really start to let the 5g hardware totally shine so does that mean you know wait till next year and this is the time to to embrace everything well then then there will be the next qualcomm chipset they've already announced the snapdragon x65 that is the the follow-on to the x60 they announced it in early 2021 it will probably start powering devices in early 2022 but that one isn't quite as transformational because it still uses the same bands and everything else like that it just enables them to go faster it enables it to be a lot more power efficient they're going to have lower cost versions of it so that 5g high performance 5g can become at real true mainstream prices and stuff like that uh enables things like you know eight-way eight antenna memo receiving so you can have eight antennas reception it enables a lot of cool new stuff but the big transformative one is probably the x60 and you've got to decide the trade-offs do you want to embrace technology now or well the universal law there's always going to be something better faster and cheaper available 10 minutes after you buy something today now the other area 5g hardware we get asked about is 5g signal enhancing you know cellular antennas and cellular boosters and some of them you know a lot of antennas are now being marketed as 5g ready there are boosters out there that are being marketed as 5g ready um what does that mean should does it make the is there a reason to wait on buying those or should you be able to buy those now now antennas in particular actually might make sense to invest in sooner rather than later because if you put in a 5g ready antenna now and even if you're still keeping your 4g gear that you're happy with until putting off your 5g router upgrades for another year or two well the 5g antenna is going to work great as a 4g antenna as well um and well the reverse isn't necessarily true if you have a 4g antenna and you're looking to upgrade it a 4g antenna is probably not going to support the full wide range of bands that a 5g antenna does so if you're shopping now if you're deferring your router purchase and you're buying a 5g antenna that that could be very very reasonable now we've done recent videos and articles talking about 5g and antennas so dive deep into that and this is an area where the technology could make sense to be investing in um next up 5g boosters and well a lot of the booster manufacturers have started to say hey our boosters are 5g ready don't be afraid to buy a booster um yes and no so these 4g boosters the booster doesn't know a lick of difference between 4g and 5g if it's a signal on one of the bands that the booster supports it hears the signal and it amplifies it um the catch is so if if the booster supports um like say att's baseline 5g across the country is on band 5 um boosters support band 5 and they will boost that and oh you're getting a stronger 5g signal on 18t but that is just a baseline signal layered on top of their 4g network and it is not really going to be any of the next generation true performance differentiated 5g the boosters that exist today have no idea how to boost any of these other bands all they do is boost these bands that are in already used for 4g the carriers are either overlaying or carving off a slice of those bands for 5g it will boost them as well but most of the bulk of the real benefit for 5g the boosters can't even touch so it's not really you know the fcc is not likely to be approving any new major generation of 5g boosters anytime soon so again it's not really something to worry about stress too much about and you know any booster that worked in the 4g era will still have some benefit in the 5g world just not nearly as much as you might hope and well then finally there is the elephant in the room it is 5g data plans you know it's not so great to be on a next generation cellular network with a next generation device capable of absolutely insane performance if you still have 100 gigabyte data cap and your video throttled to 480p resolution i mean it's almost kind of kind of what's the point um and this is a problem the carriers really have not taken advantage of 5g to roll out better more generous more high performance data plans um that let you share that connection they're all eager to show off 5g potential on your device whether it's a 5g phone or tablet you know they're giving you real unlimited plans that'll let you lose a lot of data on your device but they're very very hesitant to roll out ways to let people share those big fast connections at least until they've done the work to have more capacity on their networks so we're hoping that once the 5g networks mature the carriers maybe will get a little bit more comfortable with big data plans and such like that but but right now you know before you're investing in a 5g router make sure you understand what data plans you can get for it and what the limitations are because you might have you know you might have a ferrari and be stuck driving through a school zone for the next several years so keep that in mind data plans are critically important and are an area that is extra challenging for the time being [Music] to kind of you know wrap things up don't want to rain on your 5g parade this technology is exciting there's a lot of cool stuff coming there's not really necessarily a much of a downside to getting some of this 5g gear because any of this 5g gear is going to be a supreme top-end 4g device so even if you're not connecting to 5g all the time or even if you're intentionally disabling 5g because well there's still places there are actually quite a few places where 4g might outperform 5g for at least the next year or two it the 5g devices you buy today will be wonderful 4g devices they'll be able to outclass older 4g devices but particularly when it comes to things that are expensive and that you're going to want to have in service for several years like routers and some of the higher-end hotspots maybe it makes sense to just wait six months 12 months maybe even maybe even a little bit longer before embracing taking that jump to 5g cellular it's exciting times but the key thing is understanding what your needs are don't try to future proof too far ahead of the curve and just just just wait for the technology the networks and everything else to catch up and meet your needs and that's the time you should choose to invest so there's a big in-depth article that goes along with this video go check that out at our site we go into a lot more depth we explain some of the deeper technical uh implications of these different generations of 5g hardware and again big in-depth content like this takes a lot of time and effort to research and produce and it is all thanks to our members who support our site the mobile internet aficionados so if you are into this stuff and you want to have access to our hands-on testing notes where we've been sharing upsides and downsides and performance numbers and discoveries playing with this 5g gear um join us in our member areas you can go join the mobile internet aficionados and go deeper with us we welcome you to come see us there these videos are brought to you by our premium members or mobile internet aficionados they make it possible for us to track this news and create these videos if you like this video please give it a thumbs up leave a comment subscribe to our channel or better yet consider becoming a member yourself

Channel: Mobile Internet Resource Center

Views: 38,931

Keywords:

Id: UrXQU-nKQNk

Length: 29min 40sec (1780 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 06 2021