5G Networks — Less Internet, More Scam?

What the hell are you paying for, exactly?

No. It’s not about the dead crows. Nor is it about virus conspiracy theories. That’s merely entertainment, if you ask me. Nice to have with a beer on the side, dissecting the ludicrousness of alternative facts just for the fun of it. But no. This is not about any of that. This is more about a hunch I’ve had for a while and was able to finally confirm during my recent travels. 5G is a fucking scam, and we’re all mostly paying for something we never get. So without further ado, allow me to elaborate.

I’ve been living in a capital city for over a decade now. Belfast, then Dublin. During these years, I have also traveled to several countries and visited both large cities, capitals, and the countryside. If there is one great thing about European mobile networks, is their roaming. It’s either absolutely free or pretty generous, even outside the EU. For the most part…

Let me make this clear. This is not a post to bash individual mobile networks, and I’m sure you have your favourite you want to defend in the comments, but hear me out. 5G is not a network-specific issue. It’s more of a network mafia marketing bullshit each and every network provider is cramming down our throats. These motherfuckers — because calling them anything else would be a disservice to both humankind and technology — have grown skin so thick they will ask you for a literal pile of cash and give you nothing in return, because they very well know the grass is most definitely not greener on the other side. Heck, there is no fucking grass, it’s just bloody network coverage desert everywhere.

Network coverage is a bigger lie than claiming Hugh Hefner was a monk…

And speaking of network coverage, this is classic. The oldest trick in the book. Look at any mobile network coverage map, and they’ll all look pretty great on paper. Heck, some of them paint so great a picture, you want to move there. The mobile internet oasis in the desert! Except it’s not, and I have now about a decade’s worth of experience to tell you, it’s really not. And it’s also not just about Irish and Northern Irish internet being an absolute disgrace. It’s far more than that. Mobile networks across this Godforsaken ball of turd called planet Earth, are what I see essentially a cartel squeezing money out of people every few years or so with an extra G and the promise of higher bandwidths only to barely ever deliver on any of it.

Add to that the mobile phone manufacturers — yes, that includes Apple too — who go on stage claiming they have just launched the “bestest” of the best 5G phones only to see 4 Mbps downloads in the middle of a major city!

Getting a 5G device with today’s mobile infrastructure is like buying an 18-wheeler to transport a spoonful of sand every trip.

And I know, there will be plenty of tech apologists out there claiming I need to shut up and read the specs of the 4G and 5G spectrum. To them, I say, nobody fucking cares what its limitations and ideal operating contexts are. One cannot and should not advertise a connected world where self-driving cars are roaming the planet when in a capital city the upload speed on 5G is 0.01 Mbps! Every single human being who uses the internet cares about one thing and one thing only — that it fucking works! Everything else is irrelevant.

When 3G in a small town is 10–100 times faster than 5G in a large city, you know you got fucked by marketing.

In a developing country like Romania, in Eastern Europe, you have 10 times better 3G than 4 and 5G in most of Ireland. What’s even more infuriating is that we’re talking about the same network provider. That’s just not on. Sticking up 5G antennas everywhere only to provide dial-up level bandwidths, but calling an area 5G-covered is highway robbery. Running a test on 4G in the heart of Dublin right now gets me 2.7Mbps download and 1.36Mbps upload. I understand backwards compatibility, but defaulting back to poor 3G speeds 90% of the time is not what customers pay for. To see things getting even worse on 5G makes you wonder what to expect from 6G? Actual dial-up?!?

In the real world, it appears that every time network companies add a G, they remove half the bandwidth instead of doubling it.

Under the current circumstances, a connected world would be better served by reliable 3G networks than 4G or 5G. Yet, the US is killing 3G off. In 2019 when I was in the US — Boston and New York — I honestly can’t say I was impressed by its mobile internet. It was bad enough that I resorted to hotel Wi-Fi, which at 10Mbps also wasn’t up to 2019 standards, and these were both 4-star hotels, cause you only live once. So, in light of all that, not sure how good an idea shutting 3G networks down is.

If you think 5G is something worth spending your money on, save yourself some hard-earned cash. It’s nowhere near adoption-ready. And frankly nor is 4G. Not the way it’s being implemented.

Attila Vago — Software Engineer improving the world one line of code at a time. Cool nerd since forever, writer of codes and blogs. Web accessibility advocate, LEGO fan, vinyl record collector. Loves craft beer! Read my Hello story here! Subscribe and/or become a member for more stories about LEGO, tech, coding and accessibility!