4g 5g. Oh, me what is going on with this technology? This is the third installment of the global Bob Show are we hope to answer these questions, I'd like to give a big shout out to everybody that has subscribed to the show. I see the stats starting to come in and subscriber base ever so slightly ticking up, which is a good thing. Now the reason why I started the podcast is because I get a lot of calls from friends and family that asked me different questions about technology. And so I figured that if they're calling to ask me these questions, maybe they have friends that would also like to have answers to these questions. So there you go. That's how we came up with the Globalbob show. We are the crossroads of technology, and politics. The global Bob Show can be found on Spotify, Apple podcast, I Heart Radio, and of course, the site Globalbob show.com. If you'd like to get your global Bob merch, it can be purchased at shop dot global bob.org. So what is five G? Well, the G on the end stands for generation. I know that seems quite obvious to some people. But you will not believe how many times I've talked to folks that said I already have 5g at my house. So what do you mean by 5g? Hit your house? Yeah, my phone. It says 5g, whatever I connect to my Wi Fi. And so this seems to be one of the questions I get quite a bit. Is it the same as 5g Wi Fi? The answer to that is simply no. It's just a coincidence that after 4g, we went to 5g and your home Wi Fi router has what they call the 2.4 gigahertz network and the five gigahertz network. And so that 5g A lot of times it'll be the your home Wi Fi name, Dash 5g That is called gigahertz. What we're talking about is generation in this case. So starting way back generation one, and this is the first generation, obviously, because it's called the first generation of cell phone. And this was actually developed out in Japan, I believe in the round 1979. Which is easy for me to remember because that was when I was born 1979. And this was a technology that was very close to like radio, the old businessman, radio, analog radio, CB radio, perhaps. And so this was an analog technology. When it was rolled out, they could cover large, large swaths of area. One of the stories that I heard, which I have not confirmed it, but knowing what I know about RF technology, they sat down in Miami, Florida, when cellular network was rolled out down there, they covered all of Miami with three cellular towers, they were able to cover all of Miami with the three towers for a couple reasons. One, they were using frequencies down around 750 to 800 megahertz. And so with the lower frequency, you can penetrate walls more easily. And you can cover a lot more area. However, the actual bandwidth is a lot lot lower. But at the time of one G, they weren't even thinking about delivering services like we do today, not even text messaging. So were those towers, essentially what would happen with a one G connection, your phone would register to a tower as it moves from tower to tower or cell site to cell site. And that tower would assign your phone its own dedicated frequency. So think of it as kind of like an IP address. For computers. This was your own frequency. So when a call would come in, that frequency would become active and it would connect the two radios together the radio and the phone and the radio on the sell side of it. And you can have a conversation. This worked out really well call quality was really good. No data services yet. So that means no texting or anything. But the main problem was that they were running out of frequencies. I remember whenever I was a young kid, and I would have the summers off, I would ride around with my dad in his truck from job site to job site. We lived in Central Florida. And so when we would go down to South Florida, he would have to dial this code. The reason why they did this was is that they didn't want to assign a frequency. As people roamed around if they weren't going to be in that area for a while. Sometimes I remember we would stop before leaving outside the county, for him to keep dialing the code dial in the code dial in the code, because he would get a message back saying that the system essentially was busy. It really what that code was saying is, hey, we're out of frequencies. So you can see that this was very cumbersome, because you had to have your own frequency per communications. Now going forward, past the one G system is when probably a lot of y'all started to get your first phones. Like I said, with his in his truck, it was very expensive. I remember he's told me stories before, where there was nothing for his cell phone bill to run 1500 to $2,000 a month. Now that $2,000 A month would equate to $4,576.06 in today's dollars. I mean, could you imagine today getting a cell phone bill that's like $4,000. But at that time, he was able to justify it because it allowed him to transact business for the first time where he didn't have to stay at his desk, he could be visiting job sites. So to him, it was well worth it. So what did we get with two G. 2g was one of the first steps into the digital cell phones as we know it. Remember, in one G, each person was assigned a frequency while that call was happening. And so they were running out of frequencies with 2g, we did get the digital part where the texting and the speeds were reaching 9.6 kilobits per second. So if you think about that, in megabits, I mean, that is just a fraction. And so that was basically with texting, we can text back and forth. But moreover, the phones were more efficient at handling frequencies, these phones did not look like the phones of today. This is the style phone, that was the Motorola StarTAC, which was a very popular one, you know, the flip phones, the candy bar phones, you could play the snake game on them. So there wasn't the, you know, the real robust color screens, definitely no touch screens. And so these are kind of the generation of phones for the 2g that most of us entered into the cell phone market with. Remember the story of my dad, very, very expensive. During the 2g phone is when you could go down to Circuit City, they come dating myself now go down to Radio Shack, and you would just, you know, get a phone, they were still pretty expensive. The minutes were expensive, but they started doing some promotions where you could get free nights and weekends. And the one promotion I liked the past was, it was free incoming calls. Man, I loved it. Me and my friends, we would set it up to where hey, I'm going to call you hang up, then you call me back from a landline if you're around one that way. I don't have to pay for the call. Also remember, I would call sometimes, and someone would say Hey, can I put you on hold? And you would always tell him okay, yeah, make it quick. I'm on my cell phone. So that's the 2g phone. Now we're getting ready for the 3g, 4g 5g. Wow, what a revolution that was. So about the time that 3g came out, there was a little product that was getting ready to hit the market, one that would revolutionize the phone industry forever. Did you guys figure out what I'm fixing to talk about? That's right. It's the iPhone. This Apple iPhone when it hit it hit big time. 3g being faster than 2g would top out at 42 megabits per second was about the the maximum transmit speed across the frequency. Of course, we never achieved 42 megabits per second on our 3g Apple phones. But it allowed us to do things like download songs, or browse the web. And so what the 3g coming out with the faster speeds combined with the iPhone, it just everybody had to have one I remembered was up in Maryland and waited in long lines. Matter of fact, at&t was the one that had the exclusive launch of that phone, I guess it was and I can't tell you how many people started switching to at&t. It was amazing. But with 3g that we also got more efficiencies where each cell tower could handle more and more calls So remember that back in Miami, three cell towers covered the whole place in one G? Well, these three G's, they started using the higher frequencies to get the the density up. And so the towers had to be closer to the person now, they would still call on analog. If the network the higher frequencies were available. And we all remember this, right? Remember, when your phone would be in some other kind of mode, like you really didn't know what it was, but the icon would change. All you know is that your battery would be drained quickly. Well, that's because it was using the analog system until the 3g system was built out. But still, now everybody had a crave for give me all this technology in my pocket. Now with the 4g when it came out, I don't really think it made as big of a splash to the average person. Because we already had a phone with a web browser. Remember, when we went from one G two, two g, we got texting, from 2g to 3g, we got web browsing. And the ability to download 4g was just a faster experience, right. So a lot of people really didn't maybe care too much. Because it wasn't like, Oh, I gotta get 4g. So I can do this or that. However, 4g was the first generation of what I like to say video messaging, video ish type transactions. So you could snap a picture right and send it to somebody and on your 3g phones, you know, you really the it was kind of clunky, not a lot of people were doing it. So especially with the iPhone in your pocket, it was really cool to be able to FaceTime but it's kind of like a play pretty, right. It's great something for the kids. Now, today. We know we all video conference off of our 4g enabled phones, of course, a lot of us now have the 5g phone. But my my iPad is still 4g. And it's nothing for me to get it out. If I'm going down the road, not driving my wife's driving, I'm on the iPad video conference with Zoom and teams and, and all of them so for businessmen, it really opened up the doors were for collaboration. This is because with the 4g technology, it tops out at a theoretical limit of 300 megabits per second. Now here we go. Starting to get in some of these marketing terms that we're going to see is really very, very heavy with the 5g, you'll never see those 300 megabits per second on your smart device that's 4g enabled. However, it is quick enough to do two way video. And so it really allowed us to send large files back and forth and not have to, you know, read a preview of it on your phone and then go get on a computer. Also, the phone started becoming more advanced where you can actually edit Word documents and Excel documents and everything on your phone, send them back and forth, the cameras started to become really, really robust into the multi multi megapixel. So it made sense for people to snap pictures to say, this is what I'm looking for. Can you find this particular part in a warehouse but however, the 4g really opened the door because these Goliath started to come on like Facebook, and Twitter, and Instagram and all the other services around social media. And so with your phone, you could snap these high quality pictures and send them to friends and family when you are off on a trip. Now here we go. It is time for the main event. The heavyweight is entering their Reina five G. So before we start down the path of explaining the differences between 4g and 5g, you may want to acquire yourself a caffeinated beverage or an alcoholic beverage if it's that time in your particular timezone. Because there's a lot here, these marketing folks have had a field day with five G, as you know, you watch any broadcast on television. And about every third commercial seems to be this company that has this 5g network and they show these bits and bytes flowing around. And very quickly. You understand I gotta have 5g Because of speed. But then they cut to this map after they show you all the speed stuff. They cut to this map and it's nationwide map. And you'd look at your particular area of the state and say, hey, look, I'm covered by 5g. And there's a lot around us. So I think 5g has been the generation of marketing but it's not just the carriers that have some marketing tactics that are questionable. Even the US Government, they established a fund in 2020, called the 5g Fund for Rural America of which they allocated $9 billion to this fund. Now why would they call it that? I can only speculate is that it would be easier to ask for money to connect folks in rural America, if you live in rural America like I do, you'll know that you really only have two options. If fiber optics or other wireline services are not available, that is cellular modem, you know, the 4g modem, or you can have satellite services, everybody agrees that everyone should have internet. However, maybe 5g wireless internet isn't exactly the best option for rural America of which we'll discuss. So a lot of the carriers are trying to fake it until they make it, they've all come under the scrutiny of the national advertising division for various things, either from their commercials that are not exactly as we say, maybe true, or them going as far as changing the icon on your phone to use marketing terms. So they would take a the the phone, that's 4g and call it 5g II, which stood for extended but really it was just 4g technology was something called carrier aggregation. That means before you would go to a speed test site on your phone, and when your phone would request the data, it would come over one channel. So when the 5g II or carrier aggregation was utilized, you would go to that same speed test site and it would use two channels making your phone appear twice as fast. So it made sense, hey, I'm on 5g, it's a lot faster than 4g, however, you are simply on 4g Using two channels. Now, there's other tactics to that we've seen, they'll tell you how they have nationwide coverage for 5g. Well, in fact, they only have five G true 5g in select markets. So when you're seeing those coverage maps, if you stop and read the fine print, there's one in particular that may have the dominant color of pink in its logo. When that commercial comes on. Wait until it you see the coverage map and it says it coverage map is generated on 700. And I think it's like 47 Anyways in the 700 megahertz range. Back to my Miami analogy. Well at that range. Of course, you can cover the whole area with only a few towers, but the lower the frequency, the slower the speed. And in 5g, I like to say it's all about the higher frequencies. Remember, as we went through the generations of technology, each one had something that was pretty significant. And this is the higher frequencies. And with higher frequencies do come faster speeds. But there's a trade off to this. 5g has three bands to it. The lowest band is called low, the medium band. It's called medium. And if anybody can tell me what the high band is, you'll win a free global Bob t shirt. Just kidding. It's obvious the high band is called high band. Now the low band is in the 700 800 megahertz range. Let's harken back to the 3g That kind of sounds like we're 3g was the mid band is around 1.9 1.5 gigahertz. Well, that's about where 4g is. So 5g uses bands that are much much higher. We're talking as high as 24 to 96 Giga hertz. Okay, so I know that sounds like a lot of mumbo jumbo. But here at the highest level, if you have a phone, and I'm going to just really oversimplify everything here. But if I have a say a 4g phone, and that 4g phone, maximum frequency it can use is two gigahertz and it can download at 100 megabits per second. Jump into 5g phones, let's say the megahertz is twice as much like I said, this is all just for illustration. If it's twice as much so let's say it's around the four gigahertz spectrum, well it can download at 200 megabits per second so every time the frequency doubles in essence So does the speed. But here lies the problem. Once you get into the higher frequencies, you have two options to get the data back and forth between the tower either you have to increase the power on the handset and the tower. But reason why it's important on the handset you have to increase the power of the handset to go the same distance. So if it takes one watt of power on 4g to go for miles, then it would take two watts of power on 5g to go the same distance. And this is why I'm a little I get a little upset when the government says, Oh, this is the 5g and it's going to connect all of rural America. And it's just not exactly being truthful. Because with 5g, in essence, you got to have twice as many towers. Remember, the Miami analogy, I keep pointing back to that, right because that was low frequency, low bandwidth, couple towers, 4g, higher frequency, higher bandwidth, more towers, and now 5g to actually achieve these the speeds that they advertise, you're going to be able to download it one gigabit per second to your phone, oh my gosh, you're going to have to be within a few 100 feet of that 5g Tower. Now if you're at a stadium, where you have the clear line of sight between the cell tower, and at this point, we're not even talking cell towers, these speeds that they advertise. They're basically almost like access points. And I'll give you a great example. Back in December, I was delayed at the Salt Lake City, Utah airport. So what do I do, I go and find me a place to give me a burger and a beer. I pull out my iPhone, and lo and behold, I had 5g Ultra wideband. Matter of fact, I've never seen the logo before it said 5g u w I've seen the other ones right and the fake logos. But this one was different. Being the nerd that I am I did a bandwidth test. And I pulled about 700 megabits per second to my phone. That was amazing. I mean, if you would have told me 2345 years ago that you'd be able to pull that much speed. I just couldn't fathom it. But then I got to look around. And I would take my phone and shield it with my beer. And I was doing that because I know millimeter waves these true 5g technology, these higher frequency waves, they're blocked by everything. Water is one of the places that where RF frequencies Coda Di. So I took my beer, and I was basically blocking the signal. So I can make my phone directional, and I was able to route immensely pinpoint where this 5g access point was. And it was about 50 feet away from me. So what that tells me is, is that that high speed is probably only available for that particular area. And to further prove this out, I went to the bathroom. And whenever I turn the corner, my phone instantly left the ultra wideband and just lit up 4g. I did a speed test on it. And on the 4g, I was pulling about 40 megabits per second. And so what the folks are trying to do is convince everybody because they show you all this high speed stuff in their commercials, but then they show you a coverage map. And the two just don't equate back to the five G fun for rural America. Now, the government would have you believe that because you have 5g on your phone, and you're at the Salt Lake City Airport. So you've experienced in your mind 5g. So who wouldn't want gigabit speeds. But these millimeter waves, I can tell you in my own experimentation at my ISP where we turn up these millimeter wave technology and we've turned these up for almost two years now. And the antenna we have to use on the client side is much bigger than an iPhone. And on the tower side. It's probably about the size of a blender with the with the the top on it and stuff you know, so it's kind of like a little cylinder cone on there. And that technology using very high power that's plugged into an electrical outlet. It's only good for about 800 feet And so when you try to convince us that, if we are are in agreeance, and to give money to the 5g fund that this is going to be available everywhere. There's a reason why it has three bands to it. So technically, your 5g is all encompassing of all the bands, from the first generation bands all the way to the new 5g bands. And then beyond with the newer ones, like I said, with a millimeter wave, all this is encompassing to come up with this brilliant thing called 5g. And I'm telling you all, I'm sure that it will get there at some point, but how do you take where I live at? And there's trees all around me? There's a lot of protected areas around me, how are they going to put up almost three times as many cell towers just to get that 5g, true 5g, the one gigabit per second 5g all the way to my house? I don't think that's going to be happening. anytime soon. I think we'll see some advances in technology, where just like with 4g, where they did the carrier aggregation, I can see that, but you cannot overcome the laws of physics. Anybody that works around me, I say it all the time. The speed of light is the speed of light, RF characteristics, or RF characteristics. And one of the main RF characteristics with any kind of RF technology is is that the higher the frequency, the higher the wattage, the higher the power that you have to go to achieve the same distance. millimeter waves also do not penetrate walls. There's nothing we can do to overcome this. And so just make sure when you're seeing these commercials, and when your congressmen are asking for funding, and they're using these marketing terms like 5g, Connect America rural, how they're going to do it all together, just ask yourself, how are they going to get this technology to do something that physically is not possible? Sure, your phone may say 5g on it. But you're not going to be having 5g at these high speeds, your phone will say 5g And chances are it'll be on a frequency around 750 800 megahertz because that's the frequencies that can penetrate walls. And at 100 foot radius that I've demonstrated, I mean, you're talking about this as a technology not for rural America. This is a technology for urban America, where they can put access points on the side of a street lamp or an access point inside of a parking garage. So Don't believe the hype around it and all the marketing around it. Also, just know that don't run out and buy a 5g phone. Because you think that you got to have that faster speed. I can tell you right now, what do we care if we download a movie and it takes a minute or so onto our phone as opposed to a few seconds? To me it's very expensive. Right now some of the new phones that are coming out, and the juice just is not worth the squeeze. So with that, I hope everybody made it to the end of the podcast. This is more than my most technical one so far. And I'm sorry, if I lost you, you can reach out to me Globalbob show@gmail.com, Twitter at Globalbob. Show. You can also call my cell phone or text me if you do have that number, and I'll try to answer all your questions. Once again. Thank you so much for tuning into the podcast if you have anything that you'd like for me to discuss, to add some clarity around, please email call or text me your questions and I will make a podcast out of it because chances are if you have the same question, I'm sure a lot of people do. And I want to explain things in such a way that my mom can understand it. And so with that, thank you so much. I'll see you next week.