After astronomic levels of hype, the fifth generation of mobile networks has been a letdown for many consumers — and hasn't even made phone carriers much money. How'd we end up here? And who really benefitted from this?
Business Insider Producer Elizabeth McCauley sifts through the noise of industry reports and marketing and talks to experts to find out the truth.
If you want to check out the sources that informed this video, we made a reading list for you: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OG65HZ24UFcl0YQ5llLZZnCsmltYTaxWJ4g2OmOrajU/edit?usp=sharing
Business Insider Producer Elizabeth McCauley sifts through the noise of industry reports and marketing and talks to experts to find out the truth.
If you want to check out the sources that informed this video, we made a reading list for you: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OG65HZ24UFcl0YQ5llLZZnCsmltYTaxWJ4g2OmOrajU/edit?usp=sharing
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TechTranscript
00:00We were told 5G would be a transformative technology.
00:045G is a quantum leap.
00:06A technological revolution.
00:08Have an impact similar to the introduction of electricity.
00:10But roughly five years into the rollout, it seems like kind of a bust.
00:145G has been the biggest pile of lies of any technology ever.
00:18It was lie after lie after lie after lie.
00:20So what went wrong?
00:22Could the benefits of 5G still be on their way?
00:25After months of research, I'm starting to wonder, did we all get tricked?
00:305G is the fifth generation of mobile networks.
00:36When it was being rolled out, wireless industry leaders didn't just promise better cell service.
00:40They promised a better world.
00:42It's the platform for us to build the future we want.
00:45Life-changing and even life-saving.
00:49There are a few applications that came up over and over again.
00:52These were remote surgeries, driverless cars in traffic-free cities,
00:55and for some reason, 5G refrigerators.
00:58But for each of these examples, you either don't really need 5G for it,
01:02or the idea just didn't make a lot of sense in the first place.
01:05For example, to pull off a remote surgery,
01:07you need a lot more than just a high-speed, low-latency internet connection.
01:11You also need a sterile environment on the other side.
01:13You need anesthesia.
01:14You need patients who consent to being operated on from far away.
01:17And if you're inside a hospital,
01:19a wired connection would almost definitely be faster and more stable than a mobile one.
01:24Unless, of course, you're the doctor from this 2019 ad
01:27who, for some reason, is performing a remote surgery from an Italian cliffside.
01:36Another example is the idea that autonomous vehicles
01:38could be managed by tons of 5G sensors to make roads safer and less congested.
01:43This would, of course, raise complex questions
01:45about who's in charge of such a system and who's accountable if something goes wrong.
01:49Not to mention, driverless cars relying on a mobile connection at all poses some issues.
01:54An autonomous car has to still work perfectly well even if it's not connected.
01:58And it has to be perfectly well.
02:00It can't be not bad, but will kill a few pedestrians in the process,
02:03but never mind, who cares?
02:05If it works perfectly well without coverage, why does it need coverage?
02:09Most likely, if driverless cars finally take off as a technology,
02:13a mobile connection will be useful but not essential.
02:16Marketers succeeded in associating 5G with almost any futuristic technology,
02:21whether that's driverless cars, smart cities, or the Internet of Things.
02:25Most of these exciting potential uses depend on innovation in other sectors,
02:29which phone companies and carriers have no control over
02:32and which they probably knew they could never really be held accountable for.
02:35It's fascinating reading industry reports from 2017 and 2018
02:39when the sky was the limit with 5G compared to what's coming out now.
02:43A more recent report from PricewaterhouseCoopers mentions
02:47enabled drones to monitor properties and prevent insurance fraud.
02:52We've gone from ultra-convenient smart cities to insurance fraud monitoring.
02:56So what was it about 5G that was supposed to enable all these new technologies?
03:04One of the most significant changes about 5G was the introduction of new, higher frequencies.
03:09Before 5G, mobile networks mostly used frequencies below 5 gigahertz.
03:13So if we pull up the electromagnetic spectrum, that's roughly in this range.
03:19Now, carriers can utilize much more of the spectrum, including frequencies above 24 gigahertz.
03:24They're still using the previous frequencies, but adding new ones into the mix.
03:28This means more bandwidth, which is kind of like adding more lanes to a highway.
03:32These higher frequencies carry more information, but they don't travel as far.
03:36So to use them, you need more antennas closer together.
03:39This is called network densification.
03:42Building out the 5G network in the U.S. has required hundreds of billions of dollars of investment.
03:47But despite the massive spend and technical upgrades,
03:50the changes have not been that noticeable to many consumers.
03:54To save money, most of the early 5G infrastructure was built by
03:57essentially making tweaks to existing 4G sites.
04:00This is called non-standalone 5G.
04:02It's an efficient way to do things, but ultimately delivers a 4G-like experience.
04:07Another thing that was supposed to be really different about 5G
04:09was the introduction of millimeter waves.
04:115G millimeter wave provides massive capacity.
04:15That is giving me an enormous throughput.
04:17But despite all the hype, millimeter wave 5G is not widely available.
04:21And lots of smartphones don't even support it.
04:23Millimeter wave is useful in select locations where crowds really pack in,
04:27like stadiums and airports.
04:28But in general, the distance they travel is so short,
04:31and these waves are so easily blocked,
04:33that widespread use in mobile networks just hasn't made a lot of sense.
04:36And as such, the flashiest use cases of 5G are practically nowhere to be found.
04:40To be clear, when phones are actually connected to a 5G network,
04:44they generally get faster speeds and lower latency.
04:46The thing is that for most people, 4G was already good enough.
04:50Coverage, not speed, is one of the biggest problems users still face.
04:59In the U.S., coverage is patchy or non-existent in many rural or remote areas.
05:04Carriers just haven't built their networks out in a lot of these places,
05:07often because there aren't enough paying customers living there to justify the investment.
05:11You only have to drive like two miles off of the interstate,
05:14and a lot of counties and your cell phone doesn't work.
05:15This is part of what's called the digital divide.
05:19People in rural areas and people with low income tend to be the most affected.
05:22But 5G is typically not the best tool for expanding coverage.
05:26Its defining feature is higher, shorter range frequencies.
05:295G can operate in lower frequency bands, which travel farther.
05:33But if the top priority was expanding coverage,
05:35building out existing 4G networks would have been more efficient.
05:38If you've ever seen a TV ad about 5G, then you might now be a little bit confused.
05:42Because the maps they show tend to make it look like 5G is already almost everywhere.
05:49People have trouble even making a cell phone call, 4G or 5G,
05:53because towers only have a limited circle around them of coverage.
05:57Doug Dawson tests cell phone speeds and coverage as part of his consulting work.
06:01He says these maps are hugely inaccurate.
06:03In most counties, they cover like 30 or 40 percent of the land area,
06:07but their maps don't show that.
06:09I asked the three major U.S. phone carriers for comment on the accuracy of their maps.
06:13Only T-Mobile answered the question directly.
06:16A spokesperson told me coverage maps provide a general service expectation.
06:20It's not flawless.
06:22According to Doug, there's not much accountability here
06:24because few people are actually going out and checking.
06:27Users might also think they're on 5G, when they're actually not.
06:30The Washington Post reported that in the U.S.,
06:32that 5G icon in the upper right corner of your phone just means the mobile network is nearby,
06:37and not necessarily that you're actually connected to it.
06:39I asked all the major U.S. carriers about this, too.
06:41AT&T seemed to confirm it and said the 5G icon appears when the technology is available.
06:47T-Mobile said their icon is always accurate, and Verizon didn't get back to us.
06:525G availability is still limited in much of the U.S., depending on your carrier.
06:55Looking at 2024 data,
06:57Verizon and AT&T users are only connected to a 5G network about a tenth of the time.
07:03This is despite the fact that the U.S. wireless industry
07:05has built nearly 100,000 new cell sites since 2018.
07:10The huge infrastructure build-out is also one of the main drivers of health concerns about 5G.
07:19People saw new antennas and towers popping up, perhaps close to their home,
07:23and thought their radiation exposure could be increasing.
07:26We are concerned about the deployment of 5G.
07:29Go to the settings and turn off 5G.
07:31Your phone is hurting you a lot more than you think.
07:36When it comes to radio frequency radiation, the type that comes from cell phones,
07:39we know that acute exposures, a really high dose all at once,
07:43can be harmful and cause severe burns.
07:45But that is nowhere near the amount of exposure you get from a cell phone.
07:49What we get on a day-to-day basis from all the devices that surround us
07:52is more like constant, low-level exposure.
07:55Figuring out the health impacts of that has been complicated, to say the least.
07:59In 2011, the International Agency for Research on Cancer,
08:02which is part of the World Health Organization,
08:04designated radio frequency radiation as a Class IIb carcinogen.
08:08What that means is that there's some evidence a substance could be a carcinogen,
08:11but a strong link has not been established.
08:14That IIb category includes things like vehicle exhaust,
08:17but it also includes aloe vera,
08:19which I imagine most people don't worry about on a day-to-day basis.
08:22The reality is that there isn't much about 5G that poses a unique radiation risk
08:26compared to previous generations.
08:28There's even a decent chance our radiation exposure could go down due to 5G.
08:39You might expect radiation levels to go up as we send more and more data.
08:43But one study out of Switzerland found that over a seven-year period,
08:46even as the amount of mobile data traffic increased 18-fold,
08:50the amount of radiation in the environment stayed pretty much the same.
08:53So it appears that improved network efficiency might have helped cancel that out.
08:57If, in the 5G era, people keep sending roughly the same amount of data that they sent on 4G,
09:02then radiation exposures would likely go down.
09:04But if something like VR takes off and causes people to transmit
09:07way more data than they did before, then exposures would likely go up.
09:11So if you weren't worried about 4G, you probably don't need to worry about 5G.
09:15For the same reason that it's been a bit of an underwhelming technology.
09:19It's just not super different.
09:21A lot of people perceive it like something completely new, and it's challenging.
09:26Of course, some people were worried about 4G, and 3G before it.
09:30Nearly as long as cell phones have been around,
09:32scientists have debated the health impacts of the radiation they emit.
09:35Do cell phones cause brain cancer?
09:38The World Health Organization is urging people to reduce their use of mobile phones.
09:42Even this low level of radiation could cause cancers.
09:45There's already been a huge amount of research into this.
09:47But I heard over and over again from people on all sides of the issue
09:51that this topic is plagued by poor quality science.
09:54Published reviews of the science on this subject often say they had to exclude
09:58a huge number of studies because they were too low quality,
10:01and call for future researchers to do better.
10:04There are a lot of things that need to be controlled,
10:06and if these parameters are not controlled, the results are not real.
10:13Olga Zeni analyzed prior studies and found that higher quality experiments
10:17were less likely to show electromagnetic fields having an impact on cells.
10:20It suggests that if all the research were carried out properly,
10:23there'd be far fewer studies with alarming findings.
10:26That said, it's also true that there are things
10:28we don't yet fully understand about this technology.
10:31There's still important research going on,
10:33like an EU-funded project looking at how radiofrequency radiation
10:36might affect the human eye,
10:38or whether it could harm insect populations,
10:40which can be more sensitive to electromagnetic fields.
10:43And some countries, like Russia, China, and Switzerland,
10:46have set their radiofrequency radiation limits at much lower levels
10:49than those in the US and much of Europe.
10:51So there is some scientific uncertainty here.
10:54But uncertainty is not the same as proven danger.
10:58Meanwhile, there is a sizable online community promoting fear about 5G,
11:02saying that it's proven to be harmful.
11:04And that is simply not true.
11:05These emissions have proven health risks.
11:09Stop frying your baby's brain.
11:11Perhaps not that surprisingly,
11:13many of these people also happen to be selling devices
11:15that they say can protect you from electromagnetic fields.
11:18Make sure you're protecting yourself.
11:20Get a rad cap in one of our cases.
11:22These products that supposedly protect against radiation
11:24include everything from stickers you put on your phone,
11:27to necklaces, to whatever this is.
11:30It blocks 100% of EMFs from your home up to a mile away.
11:36Most of these just don't work.
11:38If any of these devices blocked 100% of radiofrequency radiation,
11:42your phone would stop working.
11:43They also speak to a clear conflict of interest,
11:46where someone is selling you both the poison and the antidote.
11:49In some ways, 5G was sort of the perfect storm for creating fear.
11:53The industry hype around 5G emphasized how powerful it was,
11:56how it was unlike anything that came before it.
11:59If you're someone who has any concern about mobile technology and radiation,
12:03then it's easy to think that more powerful must equal more dangerous.
12:06Of course, it's not really a surprise that carriers amped up the hype.
12:10They invested an enormous amount of money into it.
12:16In the U.S., the FCC auctioned off
12:19the new frequencies that were being added for 5G.
12:21The three major phone carriers spent over $100 billion,
12:24and that's just for the licenses to use these particular frequencies.
12:27It doesn't include the cost of upgrading 4G sites to 5G
12:30or of building tons of new cell sites,
12:32which has required billions more dollars in investment.
12:35As the 5G rollout has progressed,
12:37many carriers have struggled to get a return on that massive investment.
12:40Bills have actually gone down because of competition.
12:43That was a giant disappointment for carriers.
12:46They thought they could monetize this thing,
12:48and they've never really monetized it.
12:50Some carriers have charged extra fees for 5G phone plans,
12:53but overall, they've still lost money so far,
12:56with 5G investment far outpacing returns.
12:59Of course, now that carriers have gone the 5G route and spent all this money,
13:03it looks like the industry is declaring victory.
13:05It often brags about rolling out 5G at record speeds
13:08and about the huge number of subscribers to 5G plans,
13:11ignoring the fact that many people were just
13:13automatically put on one when they got a new phone.
13:15Meanwhile, phone carriers are in a bit of a squeeze.
13:18The average revenue per user —
13:20that's the amount phone companies make off of us each month —
13:22has actually been trending downwards in the U.S. for decades.
13:25So to recap, many consumers are not really noticing the changes.
13:28Carriers spent a ton of money implementing this and haven't made very much back.
13:32So why'd we do this?
13:38Every time there's a new generation of mobile tech,
13:40a lot of equipment needs to be upgraded,
13:42which means a big payday for equipment suppliers.
13:45They're the ones who sell the antennas, infrastructure,
13:47and software needed to build out a mobile network.
13:50The industry wants to churn the market.
13:53That's the only way you can get new revenue.
13:55There's only a handful of these in the world,
13:57but some of the most famous ones are Ericsson and Nokia.
14:00Because telecommunications is of massive economic and social importance,
14:04equipment vendors and industry trade groups can lobby government officials,
14:08telling them that the next generation will be essential and transformative,
14:12and that if they don't act quickly, they might miss out on the benefits.
14:15As I started reading about the 5G rollout,
14:18I found people talking about a 5G race everywhere I looked.
14:21This is a global race to 5G.
14:23The latest move in the race to 5G.
14:25The United States must win the global race to 5G.
14:32Similar to the space race,
14:33it was drumming up this idea that whoever did it first would be the best,
14:37and would get some sort of massive benefit from getting first place.
14:41In turn, politicians who most likely are not telecoms engineering experts,
14:45and who might be eager to bring new infrastructure projects,
14:48see this as a no-risk position.
14:50Who wouldn't want to align themselves
14:51with the next frontier of technological innovation?
14:54The problem is that sprinting towards a goal
14:56can lead to questionable choices along the way.
15:11I personally think you can credit this rush
15:13for a lot of the problems we've discussed here,
15:14including the failure of 5G
15:16to differentiate itself from 4G in the eyes of consumers.
15:19Developing a plan for a new generation
15:21usually takes about 10 years,
15:23but 5G was rushed out in just eight.
15:25Those two extra years, you know, it's like a hockey stick.
15:28At the end, the last two years really make a big difference.
15:31Gerhard Fettweiss's research had a big influence on 5G's development.
15:35I asked him why two years were shaved off of the process.
15:37It was the Olympics in Japan.
15:43That's it? It's that simple?
15:45They were pushing for it.
15:46Instead of going for 2022,
15:48we went for 2020 because that was supposed to be the Olympics.
15:52Of course, it's probably a bit more complicated than that,
15:54but Japan did plan a splashy 5G debut for the 2020 Olympics,
15:58which likely added to the pressure.
16:02Fettweiss says the rush was a disadvantage,
16:04but still thinks 5G was a step in the right direction
16:06because of lower latency
16:08and a capability called network slicing,
16:10which isn't widely used yet
16:12but could be useful in some industries.
16:14Some experts told me that we just haven't 5G'd hard enough yet,
16:17and that if we keep rolling out infrastructure
16:20and commit to the standalone 5G that really defines the technology,
16:23that we might actually see some of the transformational changes
16:26that were initially predicted.
16:27It's also possible that 5G will be a continuation
16:30of a pattern established by previous networks.
16:33The odd generations, 1G and 3G, were a bit disappointing,
16:36but the even generations that followed
16:38worked out the kinks and had greater benefits.
16:40Maybe 5G is a little bit of a bust,
16:42but 6G is where we'll see the real transformation.
16:45Others think 5G was just the wrong approach entirely.
16:485G is a set of terrible choices.
16:51Can you just elaborate a little on what those terrible choices were?
16:54Frequencies, the way in which they do signal processing,
16:59the enormous optimism about the quality of signals
17:05that they would get at those frequencies.
17:08And as 6G gets closer,
17:10most experts I spoke to agreed it's on the same troubled path.
17:13What I see at the moment in 6G is a joke, quite frankly.
17:19It's repeating the major errors.
17:22I think there's a possibility that you could have a good 6G standard,
17:27but it wouldn't be one that fixes 5G.
17:29It would be one that heads off in a completely different direction.
17:31William Webb says the best direction would involve
17:33tightly integrating mobile signals with Wi-Fi and satellite
17:36to make one seamless network with excellent coverage.
17:39But so far, it doesn't look like the industry is going that route.
17:42And soon enough, we'll be off to the races again.