Has 5G lived up to the hype? People are united in this survey.

5G phones have been on the market for over five years, and I vividly remember how the entire industry hyped up this tech. From industrial applications and remote surgery to unforeseen advancements and cars that talk to each other, companies breathlessly declared how 5G would change the world.

Has 5G lived up to the hype?

Over 4,500 votes were counted, and it turns out that the vast majority of respondents thought 5G was overhyped. In fact, just over 85% of polled readers voted this way.

This isn’t a surprise, as companies incessantly hyped up 5G to the point of incredulity. One of the most infamous examples was the oft-repeated claim that remote surgery could be possible via 5G. This was accompanied by other pie-in-the-sky claims, like your 5G-equipped car downloading 100GB in just a few seconds via a mmWave-equipped traffic light. And of course, there’s my favorite way of promoting 5G, as countless execs said 5G could enable use-cases we can’t even envision right now.

Real-world results show that 5G has improved speed and latency, but nowhere near the industry’s claims. Furthermore, geographical coverage is still an issue outside urban areas.

Otherwise, 7.2% of respondents said 5G has lived up to the hype, while 7.5% said they weren’t sure. I’m not sure I understand why people voted for the former. I can understand if you had low expectations. I can also understand if you lived in an area with poor 4G coverage that now has a healthy 5G signal.

Then again, reader xenokc-ads rightfully notes that capacity was one benefit:

What the carriers got was more capacity. If 5G didn’t happen and everyone still on LTE then we’d either have much lower speeds or very tight caps with possibly no unlimited plans available. It’s not just because more bands were added using 5G. 5G also has about double the capacity (via spectral efficiency) for the same amount of spectrum for the same bands including the older ones. 5G was overhyped but still necessary.

It’s worth noting that the reader still thought it was overhyped. Nevertheless, 5G was supposed to address network congestion, too. I can confirm that 5G hasn’t adequately addressed this problem after attending a concert in January.