soldering AAA batteries

[muckington]

5G cars (let’s pick on Tesla; they’re always doing stupid coordinatory stuff) could conceivably fill a multi lane motorway all doing 100mph an inch off each others bumpers, using their onboard sensors and inter-vehicles comms capabilities to move as one, the lead one needs to slow, communicates to all the others to all simultaneously brake so there isn’t a crash

You mean like Elon Musks 5G satalights

G-ness is finding better and better ways to use the radio waves to shift information and every iteration builds on the last, sometimes going back to old ideas in new ways (5G antennas can beam signals towards users, which essentially increases capacity by physically carving up the geography)

During the house arrests of the sprig of 2020 was the same time that the 5G satalights where being switched on. It was noted that the change of frequency in the ionosphere was making people sick! it was also noted that 5G was 60ghz, the same frequency as the oxygen molecule in the blood renderig them usuless and hence causing respretra breathing problems

 

[muckington]

1G you just got the whole lane to yourself; no one else could transmit/drive if you were using it. Some radio use still works this way; aircraft traffic, FM radio.. You can’t have two users on the same frequency at the same time

Like going from a foot path to a dirt track then to a C, a B then an A road then a Motorway I guess!

 

[muckington]

If 12G is still going, why did all the remote monitoring systems for the water companies fail a few years ago and suddenly thousands of new devices had to be sourced very rapidly?

There is no 2G on either of the 2 sites I have kit on and both are very prominent sites.

So what happened to the 1G ad 2G towers then? are they sill there or take down?

 

[robinbanks]

Er, it wasn’t quite what I was going for. The example was always that the road (radio waves) stays the same, and it is how it is used that gets cleverer and cleverer. Radio waves haven’t changed since the start of the universe, they just wiggle along, travelling some distance, passing through objects etc

We haven’t made them faster or wider or mode of harder, shinier stuff

We’ve progressively and massively improved the things we send along them

So what happened to the 1G ad 2G towers then? are they sill there or take down?

No point taking a tower down when you can bolt a newer antenna to it. I presume you mean the service. Some it makes sense to phase out, others it makes sense to keep. There are still millions of FM radios despite DAB being a thing. Analog TV broadcasting is gone however

 

[muckington]

Er, it wasn’t quite what I was going for. The example was always that the road (radio waves) stays the same, and it is how it is used that gets cleverer and cleverer. Radio waves haven’t changed since the start of the universe, they just wiggle along, travelling some distance, passing through objects etc

So you are saying that you can still send a 1-5G down the same signal path

Analog TV broadcasting is gone however

Where the masks taken down or still remaie?

 

[SUNRAY]

...Where the masks taken down or still remaie?

Don't be stupid, where do you think the digital transmitters are.

 

[SUNRAY]

So you are saying that you can still send a 1-5G down the same signal path

... Analog TV broadcasting is gone however

Where the masks taken down or still remaie?

Don't be stupid, where do you think the digital transmitters are.

 

[JohnW2]

G-ness isn’t much to do with radio waves. Radio waves are the road; they don’t really change or advance, they’re just a way of getting info from one place to another

I don't disagree with any of what you have written, but I thought muckington was asking whether the frequency of the radio waves has changed during the passage from G1 to G5, wasn't he/she? - a that's a question to which I personally don't know the answer (although I suspect it is "no") without doing some reading.

 

[SUNRAY]

I don't disagree with any of what you have written, but I thought muckington was asking whether the frequency of the radio waves has changed during the passage from G1 to G5, wasn't he/she? - a that's a question to which I personally don't know the answer (although I suspect it is "no") without doing some reading.

In very broad brushstrokes started at 800/900MHz and basically spread up and down ever since.

 

[robinbanks]

whether the frequency of the radio waves has changed during the passage from G1 to G5

Changed by addition, sure. 5G uses additional frequencies that 2G doesn’t, but I really want to get away from associating the two. Successive generations achieve better performance not primarily by using other frequencies..

You can’t escape the physics of the universe, that low frequencies travel far but don’t pack as much info and high ones vice versa on both factors. Classically I always felt it was a bit of a con, for Orange/T to sing about how many more masts they had than Voda/O2 - Orange masts were greater in number because they had to be; the 1800MHz signals don’t propagate as far so more masts are needed for coverage

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

So you are saying that you can still send a 1-5G down the same signal path



Where the masks taken down or still remaie?

They are essentially, the very same transmitters, as used to be used for 625 UHF transmissions, where we had 2, 3, 4 channels - now we have what - adapted to150 TV, 30 radio digital channels?

 

[JohnW2]

View attachment 413765


Changed by addition, sure. 5G uses additional frequencies that 2G doesn’t ..., but I really want to get away from associating the two. Successive generations achieve better performance not primarily by using other frequencies..

OK, but I'm still a bit confused about the relationship between 'Generation' and frequency. As far as I can make out, some 2G used/uses 1.8 GHz, as does a lot of 4G also uses 1.8 GHz, with the highest frequency used by 4G only being modestly higher at 2.6 GHz - this all suggesting that there is not a very clear relation with the progression of 'Generations' and frequency.

You can’t escape the physics of the universe, that low frequencies travel far but don’t pack as much info and high ones vice versa on both factors.

Indeed, and, as I'm sure you know, it's not just a question 'how far', but also how far it can travel 'through what'. Although they can carry more data, the higher frequencies are less able to penetrate or 'go through' building/structures etc. and therefore presumably require much higher 'density of masts' than is the case in more rural environments.

One thing I have yet to understand is what this all means in terms of the phones. For each 'G' one sees a range of frequencies mentioned. Does this mean that phones have to be able to switch between, and use, different frequencies according to 'what they find', or what?

 

[robinbanks]

OK, but I'm still a bit confused about the relationship between 'Generation' and frequency.

As I keep saying, there isn’t a direct relationship between generation and frequency. A mobile “generation” is mainly about the radio technology and network architecture: how the spectrum is used, how data is encoded, how devices are scheduled, how antennas are used, how handover works, latency, efficiency, and so on.


The frequency spectrum is divided into bands, and in the UK licences for mobile spectrum are issued by Ofcom. Those licences are valuable, so once an operator has spectrum it wants to use it as efficiently as possible. Moving from 2G to 3G to 4G to 5G generally means using the same scarce radio resource more cleverly, not simply “using a higher frequency.” Ofcom lists UK mobile/wireless broadband spectrum across bands such as 700 MHz, 800 MHz, 900 MHz, 1400 MHz, 1800 MHz, 2100 MHz, 2300 MHz, 2600 MHz, 3.4–3.8 GHz, and 3.8–4.2 GHz.


5G can use multiple kinds of spectrum. In the UK, 700 MHz is useful for wider-area coverage, 3.4–3.8 GHz is a key mid-band range for higher-capacity 5G, and very high bands such as 26 GHz are aimed more at dense/hotspot use where short range is acceptable in exchange for very high capacity. Ofcom awarded 700 MHz and 3.6–3.8 GHz spectrum for services including 5G.

2G in the UK has historically used bands such as 900 MHz and 1800 MHz. Those frequencies are not “2G frequencies” in any permanent sense; they are just licensed spectrum that happened to be used for 2G. Operators can refarm spectrum: switching off older technologies and reusing the same frequency range for 4G or 5G, which can deliver much more capacity from the same airwaves.

So, yes, 5G often uses more and sometimes higher frequency ranges than 2G did. But the performance improvement from 2G to 5G is not mainly because “the frequency went up.” It is mostly because the technology using the frequency became much more efficient, and because operators may also have more total bandwidth available.

That said, the physics still matters. Lower frequencies usually travel farther and penetrate buildings better, which is why bands around 700/800/900 MHz are valuable for broad coverage. Higher frequencies usually have shorter range and poorer penetration, but there is often much more bandwidth available, which makes them useful for high-capacity urban or hotspot deployments.

In the UK, 2G will not continue indefinitely: operators have told Government they do not intend to offer 2G and 3G past 2033, and Ofcom says individual operators may switch off earlier.

For each 'G' one sees a range of frequencies mentioned. Does this mean that phones have to be able to switch between, and use, different frequencies according to 'what they find', or what?

Yes — broadly, phones do switch between different frequencies, but not by randomly scanning and using whatever they find. That implies the phone is like some sort of passive FM radio that knows how to jump from 88.1MHz to 90.5 MHz to keep listening to radio 2 when the signal strength on 88.1 degrades; management of cell networks is incredibly more active than that and a true engineering marvel

A phone is built to support a set of frequency bands and radio technologies: for example GSM/2G, LTE/4G, NR/5G, depending on the model. The mobile network also broadcasts information telling phones which cells and bands are available nearby. The phone measures signal quality, reports it to the network, and the network normally decides when the phone should move to another cell, another frequency, or another technology.

Each “G” can operate on several possible frequency bands. A phone must support the relevant bands, and the network must be licensed and configured to use them. The phone does not just choose any frequency; it camps on and hands over between authorised network cells.

For example, a phone might use:
700/800/900 MHz for broader coverage, especially rural or indoor coverage;
1800/2100/2600 MHz for more urban capacity;
3.4–3.8 GHz for high-capacity 5G;
and possibly mmWave in some countries or dense hotspot deployments.

Thus, phones are designed to work across multiple frequency bands, and they can switch between them. But they do not simply hunt around the spectrum and use whatever they find. The network broadcasts information about available cells and frequencies, and the phone measures signal strength and quality. The network then usually instructs the phone to use a particular cell, band, or technology.

This is why phone specifications list lots of bands: a given model has hardware support for some set of 2G/3G/4G/5G bands, but it can only use bands that both the phone and the operator support in that country.

So when people say “2G uses these frequencies” or “5G uses those frequencies,” they mean those technologies can be deployed on those licensed bands. In real use, the phone may move between different frequencies as you move around, as capacity changes, or as the network steers it between coverage and speed.

Modern phones can sometimes use several frequencies at the same time. With 4G this is called carrier aggregation, and with 5G there are similar mechanisms, including using 4G and 5G together in some deployments. So it is not always just “switching”; sometimes it is combining multiple carriers to increase speed.