How much cellular data people use is dictated far more by data caps and usurious overage charges than by the speed of their connection. With overage charges of >$100 a GB in some parts of the world, usage per person isn't going to increase just because speeds go up.
Unless the carriers have a sudden outbreak of generosity, data caps won't rise under 5G, so usage per person will stay the same but improved efficiency will allow the carriers to extract more profits from more people per cell simultaneously.
5G doesn't solve any problems for end-users. It solves the carriers' problem of 'how can we get more people to use up their data cap faster.'
Data caps seem to have risen pretty fast recently under 4G, and the prices of unlimited data plans have come down. You can get unlimited 5G data plans, on a good network, for under £30 per month here in the UK. Even cheaper on a crappy network!
Of course, how fast and aggressively the prices come down depends on the competitive environment in your country. But it will happen.
In some parts of the world it's very normal to have unlimited data without slowdowns. Some months I have downloaded around 200-400GB on a normal 40$/month cellular plan with no extra charges.
> Unless the carriers have a sudden outbreak of generosity, data caps won't rise under 5G,
Verizon's $80/month plan (for individuals) right now has unlimited 5G, plus 50GB of 4G LTE before you hit the soft cap. When 4G LTE was first introduced, the price was $80 for 10GB of 4G LTE. That's a factor of 5 improvement in less than a decade. Likewise, I can get 150 mbps+ on XLTE out here in the 'burbs (where Verizon's network really shines). Back in 2011, 5-10 mbps would have been great speeds.
What else in the computer industry has improved by that much over the last decade? Maybe multi-core performance of Apple's phone CPUs? (7x jump from 2013 to today.) Certainly nothing in the desktop or laptop realm. A 2019 iMac with 9th generation core CPU is only about twice as fast (multicore) than a 2011 iMac with 3rd generation core CPU.
EDIT: The $45/month is lines on a family plan. Corrected to compare $80/month for an individual plan.
> What else in the computer industry has improved by a factor of 10 over the last decade?
SSDs were still SATA in 2010 and capped at 500GB/s (and in practice were slower than that). High-end SSDs today are maxing out PCIe 4.0 x4 for 6000+ GB/s.
GPUs probably have a 10x increase in speed. AMD 5870 and GTX 200 series... yeah... that's way old.
Hard drive capacity is probably 10x bigger, maybe.
CPUs and RAM haven't improved much. Most things seem to be getting faster though.
The same sense as in 'everyone should have a pony, alas we live in the real world'? Or the sense of 'no one shall offer anyone an internet connection unless they can satisfy these arbitrary requirements I just made up'?
I can sign up for the former. The latter would just lead to fewer people getting into the business.
Neither. As in, transfer costs are vastly overstated to laypeople in the interest of profits, and that bites consumers in the form of bandwidth caps among other things.
Note that I never said payment models need to stick to a fixed monthly price. Metered connections (at a small multiple above cost) are an option.
What if the power company cut you off or greatly reduced your electricity after your consumption hit top N% of users? Why should the internet be much different?
Maybe you live in a different part of the state but here they are arbitrarily choosing sectors to shut off during peak hours. For all they tell us they could be chosen at random.
> What if the power company cut you off or greatly reduced your electricity after your consumption hit top N% of users? Why should the internet be much different?
If the contract I entered with the power company allows them to do that (and I presumably got a cheaper deal on my electricity in return), that's all fair.
Unless the carriers have a sudden outbreak of generosity, data caps won't rise under 5G, so usage per person will stay the same but improved efficiency will allow the carriers to extract more profits from more people per cell simultaneously.
5G doesn't solve any problems for end-users. It solves the carriers' problem of 'how can we get more people to use up their data cap faster.'