With the arrival of 5G, will you renew your home broadband?

Since the three major operators issued 5G commercial licenses, various topics about 5G networks have been hotly discussed. Some people have tried the 5G network speed before, and the peak data is amazing. A while ago, it was revealed that the charges for 5G traffic packages are lower than 4G charges. Various signs indicate that the arrival of 5G networks may replace existing 4G networks and broadband networks, including WiFi. So will 5G replace broadband? With the arrival of 5G, do broadband still need to be renewed?

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With the arrival of 5G, do we still need to renew our broadband subscription?

In fact, broadband has entered the civilian market very early. Now we have popularized 100M optical fiber, and its most significant advantages are stable transmission and fast speed. The theoretical rate of 5G reaches 10G, which is dozens of times that of ordinary household broadband. Will we still use ordinary fiber-to-the-home broadband after 5G becomes popular? Can WiFi keep up with the speed?

Judging from the current capabilities, wired communication is more capable

The two main factors that influence people's choice of WiFi or mobile network are speed and price. In fact, users should have experienced this in the past two years. In the past, the mobile network traffic charges were high, and sometimes people would not even turn on the traffic switch. As long as there was WiFi, the first thing they would do was to ask for the WiFi password. This situation still exists now.

Now, let’s not talk about 5G, as for 4G, the data package charges have dropped a lot compared with previous years. Some packages allow you to use as much data as you want, with 10GB or 20GB of data, which you can’t use up in a month, and you don’t feel bad about watching videos. Unless you are in an extreme area without mobile network coverage, the reliance on WiFi is getting lower and lower. That is, you will only connect to the high-speed WiFi network at home when you are at home.

Mobile networks are faster and cheaper, so people naturally prefer them. However, mobile networks cannot match the current 200M broadband speed at home, and there is no data limit, so it is more convenient to use WiFi at home. This phenomenon has almost become a default. There is WiFi at work and WiFi at home, and the main reason for using mobile networks is when you are outside.

The mobile network speed in many places is very slow now, and the reason for this is that there are too many users sharing the base station signal in the same area. It is not uncommon for home broadband speeds of 100 Mbps or 200 Mbps to be converted into actual download speeds, which is also incomparable to mobile networks.

Someone may ask, if 5G comes, will it eliminate the existing broadband and WiFi? The answer is no. Broadband was designed to be one-time and long-term from the beginning. The line will not be moved until it ages or for other reasons. The long-term use of fixed networks was taken into consideration from the beginning of the design. Adding one more user to the network in a community will only cost the operator very little extra, but the layout of mobile networks is different.

The deployment and maintenance costs of mobile networks are much higher than those of fixed networks. In addition, the bandwidth of the last hop of the air interface is much smaller than that of the fiber optic cable entering the home. When there are many users, the base station will be greatly affected. Therefore, the charging model of mobile networks is usually based on traffic.

Different cost models lead to different charging methods, which in turn lead to different user habits, which means that mobile networks and fixed wired networks will develop in parallel. Whether it is 3G/4G or the 5G that is being studied, the relationship between mobile networks and WIFI will always be one of integration and complementarity.