I wonder if it would be possible to upgrade Tesla to 5G?
I experienced the same connection issues with my 2018 Tesla and my older LTE phone,
while my new 5G phone is working fine.
A lot of time it’s the frequency band being used. Low frequency bands have great range but lousy data rates; high frequency bands have sometimes exceedingly short range, what with water absorption in the air, but can reach Gb/s data rates. Mid bands are in the middle, natch.
The actual bands used by a carrier are those that they’ve paid for. As a real example, Verizon’s early 5G offerings were notably only on very high bands, leading to rotten 5G coverage that only covered city centers and couldn’t be used if one was inside any kind of building. At the same time T-Mobile had won the bids on a huge number of low and medium bands, so their 5G coverage was very much better than Verizon’s, a fact that T-Mobile was not shy about advertising. T-Mobile didn’t get the data rates, of course, but better to have coverage and low speed than high speed and no coverage, I guess.
So, all that was in the early portion of the transition. Since then, all the carriers have been paying $$$$$ for more bands (which they’re loath to do, if they can help it) or closing down a band with 4G and putting 5G up on it. Supposedly 5G has better utilization (ability to put more customers on a cell site) than 4G, so there’s a gradual push to retire 4G bands over time.
And the US ain’t Europe, where lousy coverage will get one in trouble with the regulators. It appears that the FCC’s long-term approach is to let the market handle it; so if people don’t like the coverage, they can simply walk to another carrier. Which works OK if one has a cell phone and one of those carrier coverage maps, I guess, but not so well if one is locked into one carrier, period, on some 4G service which is gradually being retired in favor of 5G.
Main point is that which bands are being used for what by a given carrier in order to maximize coverage and speed, while investing in serious hardware like cell phone towers and fiber backhaul is one of those dark arts by which carriers try to compete. So a coverage hole that AT&T has on 4G, but not 5G? Not a surprise.
