5G is coming to Argentina

[dsp27]

Se viene el 5G: ¿cuándo podrá estar operativo en Argentina?

Buscamos respuestas para todas las preguntas sobre esta nueva tecnología que aterriza en Argentina, como cuál es la diferencia entre 4G y 5G, cuáles son los teléfonos aptos para su uso y qué precios tienen estos dispositivos, entre otras.

www.unidiversidad.com.ar

Argentina puso fecha: en febrero de 2023 licitará espectro para 5G

'En febrero Argentina licita el 5G y esa licitación va a generar un volumen de inversiones en el sector de las telecomunicaciones', sostuvo Sergio Massa, ministro de Economía de Argentina en la Cámara de Diputados, en el marco de su defensa del proyecto de Presupuesto 2023. Y la noticia corrió...

www.telesemana.com

 

[jblaze5779]

Most places could do with an increase in regular coverage

 

[Quilombo]

I get it in my apt sometimes when the power's out and I have to use data, or when I'm outside. I've also got it in:

- Puerto Madero
- Tribunales (like, near the Supreme Court)
- San Telmo
- San Nicolas when I've gone shopping

I've attached a screenshot of what the icon looks like when I'm connected.

My experience has been positive overall, I can watch 4K videos on my phone without buffering, websites load nice and fast, though you're not seeing speeds like you'd get in the US/Europe/Asia.

The biggest improvement has been the stability/lack of needing to refresh pages/apps that get their connections interrupted.

 

[FrankPintor]

You can get 5G service in Buenos Aires at the locations Quilombo mentions, and also around the Retiro train station. Personal are so far the only operator in Argentina with commercial 5G service, which they deployed in their current 4G bands using spectrum sharing. For that reason, you won't see much difference in performance between 4G and 5G. Most of the performance is due to aggregating 4G bands to carry the data. 70-80Mbps is more than enough to handle 4k video.

Personal are expanding their coverage, it also included Rosario from the beginning, and several other cities have been added since then. I'll see if I can find a good coverage map. Also, since before last summer, the area on the coast including Carilo, Pinamar and Mar del Plata have 5G service, there you will see a big performance difference over 4G since the spectrum is dedicated to 5G, and there are few 5G users (you're only sharing the band with a few iPhone users).

Next year, as dsp27's post indicates, there will be a new licensing round. I understand spectrum at 3.5GHz will be licensed (or re-licensed, since it was originally licensed in impractical split chunks). Also, I believe the millimetre wave band of n258 will be licensed, this will provide at least 1.5Gbps for users close to the antenna. However, it's possible that users of the mobile network won't see any benefit from this, since current plans seem to be more for residential use, providing fixed wireless access for users who are difficult to reach with cable and fibre.

 

[darachu]

When this happened in a rural area in the states my old but very functional phone stopped working, and ATT the service provider sent me a 5G capable 'similar replacement' which was a piece of cr*p and ultimately useless. I had to buy a new one. Never saw any performance improvement. The improvement would have been to bring internet to places that didn't have it (and still don't, except at a very high cost).
I don't know about forcing so many people with already limited income to have to get new phones.

 

[dsp27]

When this happened in a rural area in the states my old but very functional phone stopped working, and ATT the service provider sent me a 5G capable 'similar replacement' which was a piece of cr*p and ultimately useless. I had to buy a new one. Never saw any performance improvement. The improvement would have been to bring internet to places that didn't have it (and still don't, except at a very high cost).
I don't know about forcing so many people with already limited income to have to get new phones.

Are you sure you don't mean 4G? No one would force you to switch to 5G.
Also rural US mostly doesn't even have decent 4G yet.
For most average users switching from 4 to 5 G would make little difference. But this would change as the the hight speeds are used for new means down the road,

Also thankfully, the covid cover-up 5G cancer vaccine now covers 90% of the population so we are good to go P.S. Just kidding... or am I lol...

 

[darachu]

Are you sure you don't mean 4G? No one would force you to switch to 5G.
Also rural US mostly doesn't even have decent 4G yet.
For most average users switching from 4 to 5 G would make little difference. But this would change as the the hight speeds are used for new means down the road,

Also thankfully, the covid cover-up 5G cancer vaccine now covers 90% of the population so we are good to go P.S. Just kidding... or am I lol...

oh maybe you're right and it was 4g. isn't that even worse? the older phones were no longer supported, with no obvious benefit

 

[dsp27]

oh maybe you're right and it was 4g. isn't that even worse? the older phones were no longer supported, with no obvious benefit

I know right -- I was also really bumped up when I had to switch from a typewriter to using a computer.

 

[darachu]

But quality of life is so much better now, correct? More time for the things you love?

 

[FrankPintor]

It would be a mistake to extrapolate directly from the US, in the case of AT&T they licensed a low-frequency band around 600MHz for 5G, which allowed them to cover large rural areas with relatively little infrastructure. They had a major motivation to minimize costs by using only one technology, and they may well have "incentivized" customers to upgrade.

So far that scenario doesn't apply in Argentina, I'm not aware of any similar plans. darachu didn't say whether the old reliable mobile in question was voice only, or data. In either case there should certainly have been an improvement in performance, voice quality is now much improved over 2G and 3G, with more modern codecs, and data performance is unrecognizably better.

However, network operators do want to minimize costs, and one thing they're doing is to switch off 3G as soon as they can. This will happen here in Argentina soon. 3G is an expensive technology for the operators, since it potentially requires several radio links for reliable communication, reducing the capacity available. 2G is even less efficient, but escaped the axe for longer, since an important segment of the users was point of sales terminals (there were only a few POS terminals developed for 3G). However, any rational operator will want to have one (typically now 4G) or two (5G, coming fast) technologies in their network.