5G has a very short working distance, even if you can see it, that doesn’t mean it will work well. Most likely there is either some kind of interference or it is a different network or something.
You may be thinking of ultra-wideband, a very fast but extremely rare variant of 5G that only works over short ranges and requires you to be in sight of the transmitter. This is available in some parts of some stadiums, although Verizon tries hard to make it seem like it’s everywhere.
Normal 5G, such as the midband frequencies that T-Mobile often uses, covers a several-mile radius.
I mean its not impossible for the OP to be looking at a wideband transmitter, so maybe? Saw an MKBHD video of one on a street corner and he couldn’t get it to work while looking at it from a couple hundred feet away
MKBHD was using mmWave. When 5G first came out, most news stories talked about it being “10 times faster” and that it had a short range, so phone companies would have to put transmitters on every light pole. All of which is true for ultra-wideband/mmWave.
What those stories missed was that UWB/mmWave isn’t the common 5G. Most 5G is mid-band or low-band, which uses regular towers and has a range of miles. As of 2021, latest data I could find, less than 1% of users were on mmWave.
5G has a very short working distance, even if you can see it, that doesn’t mean it will work well. Most likely there is either some kind of interference or it is a different network or something.
You may be thinking of ultra-wideband, a very fast but extremely rare variant of 5G that only works over short ranges and requires you to be in sight of the transmitter. This is available in some parts of some stadiums, although Verizon tries hard to make it seem like it’s everywhere.
Normal 5G, such as the midband frequencies that T-Mobile often uses, covers a several-mile radius.
I mean its not impossible for the OP to be looking at a wideband transmitter, so maybe? Saw an MKBHD video of one on a street corner and he couldn’t get it to work while looking at it from a couple hundred feet away
MKBHD was using mmWave. When 5G first came out, most news stories talked about it being “10 times faster” and that it had a short range, so phone companies would have to put transmitters on every light pole. All of which is true for ultra-wideband/mmWave.
What those stories missed was that UWB/mmWave isn’t the common 5G. Most 5G is mid-band or low-band, which uses regular towers and has a range of miles. As of 2021, latest data I could find, less than 1% of users were on mmWave.