Think about how many of the most popular apps right now would be unusable on a 3g connection. Uploading/viewing an entire feed of images and videos on social media, streaming shows and twitch, online shopping feeds that need to load tons of product images, etc. The speed bump from 3g to 4g was what allowed these entire industries to flourish.
In terms of the improvements from 4g to 5g, going from 40mbps to 400mbps may not yield super noticeable improvements right now, but you know what will? 5g's other big feature, wired internet levels of low latency. That means things that require instant feedback like remote controlling delivery drones or surgeons performing remote surgeries by controlling a DaVinci robot in the middle of africa from their office in the US.
So no 5g is not hype, the focus is just too much on the speed and not enough on the possibilities opened by 5ms latency on devices connecting miles away from a tower.
The problem isn’t the technical standards: Right now in my living room I get around 10 Mbps download on 3G (HSPA) and around 20-30 Mbps on 4G (LTE). Latency between the two is almost the same: 1 to 2 ms difference. In some places 3G is still better due to better signal conditions.
I remember getting those speeds back in 2009, ten years ago, when the maximum speed I could get on cable was 3 Mbps.
Main difference, and I guess the real business growth motivator, are the data caps. Back then I had a data allowance in the low hundreds of megabytes which made streaming music and video an expensive endeavor, while the cheapest plans now start at a couple gigabytes.
Cable latencies in the last mile won’t help when your patient is half a world 250ms away due to the speed of light. But it might enable gaming and other real time uses, though.
In terms of the improvements from 4g to 5g, going from 40mbps to 400mbps may not yield super noticeable improvements right now, but you know what will? 5g's other big feature, wired internet levels of low latency. That means things that require instant feedback like remote controlling delivery drones or surgeons performing remote surgeries by controlling a DaVinci robot in the middle of africa from their office in the US.
So no 5g is not hype, the focus is just too much on the speed and not enough on the possibilities opened by 5ms latency on devices connecting miles away from a tower.