The Trouble with 5G
The real problem with 5G is that it only has a few use cases. The big one is stadiums. Tens of thousands of people watching the game on their cell phones, each needing an independent video-bandwidth channel. (Anybody ever consider WiFi multicast for that? Most of them are watching the same stream, after all.) To get all that bandwidth in one place is the use case for line of sight millimeter microwave with large numbers of small base stations. The first places to get 5G base stations were stadiums.<p>After that, it tails off. Convention centers. Busy downtown intersections.<p>Of course China is ahead in this. They need it. China has ten cities with more people than New York. Most of the US has nowhere near the population density of coastal China. Not much of a use case for short range millimeter microwave.