• deranger@sh.itjust.works
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    1 day ago

    I don’t understand the point being made here. The fact we don’t have SSTs sucks, and if they did exist anyone traveling on them would benefit. Who wouldn’t look forward to a significant shorter trip overseas? Faster traveling wouldn’t only benefit executives and world leaders.

    Consider a very brief history of airspeed in commercial air travel. Passenger aircraft today fly at around 900 kilometers per hour—and have continued to traverse the skies at the same airspeed range for the past five decades. Although supersonic passenger aircraft found a niche from the 1970s through the early 2000s with the Concorde, commercial supersonic transport is no longer available for the mainstream consumer marketplace today.

    To be clear, there may still be niche use cases for many gigabits per second of wireless bandwidth—just as there may still be executives or world leaders who continue to look forward to spanning the globe at supersonic speeds.

    • Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day ago

      Yeah this whole article fell pretty flat with me and this analogy especially. I’d sure as hell like faster air travel and sure, I’m pretty sure I’ll find a use for faster mobile connections too. Agree I’d much rather see better coverage maps with 5G than a speed bump in the select areas where I do get a good 5G connection, but seems likely that eventually there will either be some demand for 6G speeds or it will at least become cheap enough to implement as a marketing tool by telecoms.

    • Nighed@feddit.uk
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      1 day ago

      I think they were trying to make the point that we HAD faster speeds, but it was discovered that most people didn’t really need it and were happy paying less to go slower. They are comparing this to 6G, sure, some will use it, but for most it will be a needless expense.

      On the actual supersonic air travel point - eh, is it really needed considering the massive extra energy required?