Will there ever be ultrafast 5G cell phone coverage in The Villages?
 

The answer is no, there won’t. So don’t rush out to buy a new phone with the best 5G connectivity or seek out the company with the best 5G network.

I’ve just read a review of the new Apple iPhone 12 in the NYTimes, and here is what I learned about 5G—no matter what phone you may use.

“Here are the two versions of 5G in a nutshell:

There’s ultrafast 5G, which is called millimeter wave. (Verizon labels it “5G Ultra Wideband.”) It travels very short distances and has trouble penetrating obstacles and walls. That makes it usable in outdoor spaces like street corners or parks, but probably not in our offices or homes anytime soon. Because of that, only tiny slivers of the country now have superfast 5G.

“Then there’s “5G Nationwide,” which is more widely available. It travels much farther, but carriers have said it will be only about 20 percent faster than 4G wireless networks.”

“. . . in San Francisco. While ultrafast 5G relies on access to light poles, most of the city’s utilities infrastructure is underground. Verizon’s progress to deploy 5G has run into red tape, she said.

“When I tested the new iPhones on the vanilla 5G network, any speed improvement was hardly noticeable. In the best cases, vanilla 5G was twice as fast as 4G, or 209 megabits a second compared with 103 megabits on 4G. But in some locations, 5G was slower than 4G. In one part of the Mission district, for instance, 5G speeds reached 28 megabits a second compared with 39 megabits on 4G.”

So, there will never be ultrafast 5G in The Villages because we have underground utilities rather than thousands of poles where the 5G boxes can be installed every hundred yards or so (very unlike cell towers). I think I’m unlikely to ever be anywhere where the fastest version is available, and I don’t think that even the slow version will ever make it to The Villages. So buy a new phone if you want, but NOT because it is set up for 5G.

Really? T-Mobile is deploying 5G here now.

T-Mobile (inc. Sprint) 3G / 4G / 5G coverage in The Villages, United States - nPerf.com

I would take their coverage map with a grain of salt. I couldn't even get T-Mobile coverage in their own store! The employee was quite embarrassed.

I think 5G will get here, right around the time 8G is replaced everywhere else with 9G.

How fast do we really need? I find that my old iphone 6S is super fast as it is. My Xfinity 200 Mbps is fast. We all need to take a breath and slow down a bit.

That is real world user data collected by the app, not from T-Mobile.

I dumped Sprint/T-Mobile just 1 month ago and switched cell phone coverage to Verizon, I see no difference...

Agreed. And, with so many "Senior Plans" in TV, what would be the incentive for Verizon or AT&T to invest in any upgrade?

Don't know how to quote. We do have many electric poles in the villages, street light poles.

I think the bandwidth in The Villages is pretty good. My sales agent was able to Facetime me from St. Catherine with no buffering. Maybe there's better speed closer to the turnpike?

I will upgrade to the iPhone 12 ProMax and it's NOT because of 5g. I'm a photographer and the added tweaks to the hardware in the ProMax will make a nice addition to my line up of cameras/lenses. I had a choice I could spend another $1000 another lens ( not a bad idea either) or just get the ProMax, the best camera is the one you have with you and 3 out of 5 times it's the phone that's with me

I'm line of sight to the the tower at the intersection of the turnpike and Warm Springs as many of the southern villages are and watching them install multiple new transmtters today on.

Thinking of getting a 5G hotspot and cutting the cable completely.

Not sure how many of you remember when "3G" then 4G then 4GLTE started out. Most of the cell companies just rebranded their previous service as the "next generation" even before it was actually available. This is a very interesting article (ignore if desired the stuff about the iPhone) from INC magazine and skim down to where the different types of 5G are explained towards the end. It is doubtful you will see "true 5G" here in any of our lifetimes. I'll bet carriers will just jack up their download speeds and change the little indicator to read 5G which is exactly what happened with 3G, 4G and 4GLTE for the first couple years unless you were living in a major metro area.

The 5G iPhone Is Coming But It'''s Not What You Think | Inc.com

From the article: Low-band 5G is generally just a rebrand of some versions of the 4G LTE we've had for years. You won't notice anything different, except your phone will probably say 5G next to the signal indicator because, again, cellular companies have spent a lot of money convincing people they need 5G, so the phones better say that's what they're giving you.

That being said, I get Over 90Mbps download on cheap Total Wireless plan that costs me $55/mo for 2 lines with 30gig of data of which we barely use 10gig per month (a Verizon MVNO, like Xfinity and a few others).

Be very diligent before you do that. We did that here for a while before a cable provider was available.
A Data plan to accomodate adequate Streaming needs costs far more than an "Internet only" cable provider.
Comcast is currently the only option in our area.
Their $25 @ Mo "basic" "cable-only" plan is totally adequate for full time Tv streaming.
Both in Bandwidth and Data cap.

Breaking news, for all you I phone addicts ,Apple does not have any devices that are 5g capable . Only Android devices have it and yes it is faster