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Beehaw technology can you help explain like I'm five, 5g vs 4g? (beehaw.org)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I kinda understand it has to do with frequencies and the speed they can send information but I don't know enough to have a productive conversation with those that think it's mind altering cancer rays. Thats also what i keep running into online when I'm trying to find a dummy version for how it all works. I know I'll probably never be able to have a truly productive conversation with those types but i would like to have a better understanding myself.

It would be helpful to explain and frame it with radio and public broadcasting as well. to me, these are all happy information rays that send me thing i like but i don't full understand the technology behind it.

Thanks everyone this has been super helpful! Might try and make an info graph for to hang in my post box since I've gotten some crazy anti 5g flyers recently

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I see a lot of people talking about specific parts of 5G but honestly most of them are optional and only some of them will be active at once.

"Regular" 5G uses the same frequencies as 2G, 3G, etc. The carriers will be moving more frequency ranges of older Gs to 5G as time goes on.

In general, we can send more data at once because we have better math for sending data. There's not really an ELI5 that can explain that part besides more math.

Another part is there's also more math so that the phones can take turns talking better or split up frequencies better, so they don't have to re-transmit as much.

If you're in hyper-crowded areas, they made a new frequency range that cannot go through walls, but is way faster than the regular ones that we've been using. It's only good for like sports stadiums and stuff, and you almost never use this. It's called mmwave (millimeter-wave) and you can safely ignore any marketing around it. Not many phones support it yet because it's useless 99% of the time.