Last week a Facebook reminder unearthed a story I filed for Sky News Australia about the launch of 5G. It happened six years ago. Unbelievable … has it really been that long? A lot was promised but as we all know, not much was delivered. That doesn’t mean 5G hasn’t been successful, far from it. It’s seriously impressive technology, all I’m saying is 5G hasn’t lived up to hype and that’s something different. It hasn’t been a technology fail, it’s been a marketing fail.
On the 28th of May 20219, Telstra officially went live to the public with 5G, marking the end of the hype phase. And there was a lot of it. 5G was supposed to be the answer to everything. But it wasn’t and still isn’t. The marketing hype talked about remote robotic surgery and autonomous cars communicating with each other, it was all just over the top.
I live halfway between Sydney Airport and the City. I have poor cellular reception no matter which network I use. It says 5G on my phone but it’s barely holding on. When I drive in the country I experience the same crappy coverage I’ve always had since Australia went digital.
However, I have noticed an improvement at domestic airports when I’m desperately trying to download content to my phone before takeoff. There was no way I could have downloaded full movies and TV shows that quickly before 5G. So that’s a win. The other victory was 5G NBN alternatives. I got one of the first Optus 5G home Internet WI-FI modems when the company first launched the product in 2019. This was a big deal as you can see in the video below.
So there were wins but mostly losses. Gains made in capacity didn’t really translate to a remarkable user experience on the ground. The biggest disappointment has been the lack of mmWave sites. This is the real promise of 5G . mmWave in Australia uses the 26 GHz band, a very high frequency in comparison with 5G at the lower end, 3500 MHz. mmWave offers insane speeds but it’s also very weak. Walls, trees, and even people can block these high frequency waves. It also has limited range but when I tested Telstra’s site at Circular Quay (as you can see in the video below) I got some great speeds in the wild (over 2Gbps) with the Pixel 6 Pro.
But mmWave handsets have been few and far between since then. I haven’t even used mmWave since that day back in 2021 and that’s a major fail as far as I’m concerned. Telstra sent me this statement regarding the current state of its mmWave sites.
“Telstra deploys a variety of technologies to best meet our customer needs, this includes mmWave in more populated areas. In the past year we have deployed new mmWave sites in the Brisbane and Sydney CBDs, Greater Melbourne, Bendigo, and Perth. We continue to engage with vendors on this technology but recognise the ecosystem is still fairly limited.“
Overall the networks are in a better place for the future. We don’t really appreciate it as consumers but the work being done behind the scenes by the telcos is significant. We are already seeing more satellite use with current smartphones, starting with text messaging from anywhere in the county with a view of the sky.
We’ll probably see 6G in 2030 and satellite coverage will be standard across the board. But until then, it’s 5G minus the hype.
