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Because Chinese companies developed 5G before American companies did. American telecarriers not only didn't initially research the technology, they refused to

by ep103 5y ago

Because Chinese companies developed 5G before American companies did. American telecarriers not only didn't initially research the technology, they refused to even agree to a standard definition. IIRC, AT&T marketed their 4G network as 5G for a while. As a result, Chinese companies had an opportunity to enter western markets with superior, government funded technology. They started making sales, notably in Canada, IIRC, before Western pushback started. From the private sector, telecoms pushed on the government to ban the Chinese technology, to buy them time to play catch-up with China. Politically, the need to protect the inadequate technology (not) developed by the private market, from a government funded program doesn't fit with the current US ideological model, so a different excuse was found. The legitimate reason: "Telecommunications infrastructure is a national security priority, and Chinese technology in this arena, due to its ties to the CCP, is a national security threat" was used. Again, a legitimate reason. It even has the bonus that it implies the current western ideology that governments should not direct private research. But this sort of market protectionism makes 5G a public policy and national security interest matter. So in order to ensure there is public support for such a policy, one of the easiest things to do, is convince the bottom-information tiers of society with conspiratorial, xenophobic, nonsense. Which is where the 5G conspiracy theories come from. You will note that the 5G conspiracy theories can be generalized into the statement "5G is evil, and is used for mind control / cancer", which really, is a dumbed-down game of telephone (pun) away from the original source material: [5G is evil] <-- The CCP is bad / national security and we must reject their tainted technology; [It is used for mind control] <-- CCP = big brother, Chinese 5G = surveillance, national security; [Cancer] <-- more tangible than 'mind control'.

missedthecue 5y ago
There still isn't a standard for what 5G is. Unlike 2G, 3G, and 4G LTE, which all have very specific technological definitions, 5G could be edge computing, MIMO, small cell, beamforming, and so forth. No one has actually created guidelines about what it is. At present, it seems any kind of 5G service you can actually buy is at best just new frequency spectrums that the government auctioned off in recent years.
- cesarb 5y ago
  > There still isn't a standard for what 5G is. Unlike 2G, 3G, and 4G LTE, which all have very specific technological definitions In common usage, these "generations" always match a change in the low-level protocol used by the radios. For 1G it was analog, for 2G it was GSM, for 3G it was W-CDMA, for 4G it was LTE, and for 5G it's NR. So distinguishing between 4G and 5G is simple: if you're using LTE, it's 4G; if you're using NR, it's 5G.
- matthewmacleod 5y ago
  This is not really true – "5G" is pretty universally accepted to refer to 3GPP Release 15, defining 5G New Radio (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5G_NR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5G_NR).
- ng55QPSK 5y ago
  actually there is, ITU-R recommendation IMT2020 is 5G and only 3GPP Rel15 and following release satisfy this.
p_l 5y ago
A lot of 5G conspiracy theories might also correlate with incumbent ISPs (especially cable ones) who can block new wired ISPs but they can't block mobile phones - so a lot of the conspiracy theories included things like "wifi connected by cable to internet is fine" :V And 5G includes technologies that allow for much denser mesh, higher throughput, lower latency, and more clients per cell enjoying good service. So it could start supplanting wired broadband services.
jolux 5y ago
I think expecting that most laypeople connect the Huawei ban to 5G as a technology is really strange. The conspiracy theories about 5G all relate it to wealthy Westerners like Bill Gates, not meddling by China.
- dylan604 5y ago
  It seems there are multiple consipiracies about it though. The Gov't is pushing that CCP will use it to infiltrate. This is more of a polictical paranoia consipiracy. That is quite different than the oridinary wacko crazy conspiracies being pushed by whomever is pushing them to say things like Bill Gates is going to do whatever for whatever reasons.
- ComradePhil 5y ago
  It is clear to me that the "5G conspiracy theories" were fabricated by American interests when Huawei were 5 years ahead of them and it was very possible that Canada, Australia, parts of Europe and a whole lot of Asia would install Huawei's 5G infrastructure. It did backfire a bit when the American companies rolled out their half-baked 5G (which is absolutely horrendous and you are much better off disabling 5G on your phone for better connectivity and battery life)... but it was only a few burnt towers and not much else.
ng55QPSK 5y ago
"Because Chinese companies developed 5G before American companies did" - just No. 5G as deployed today is a 3GPP (== driven by Europe) standard and yes, Chinese, American, Australian, Asian etc. companies contributed to system architecture and RAN (radio access network) which is a domain of the old-schoolers: Nokia, Ericsson, Qualcomm, Samsung and since a few years also Huawei-EUROPE (not Huawei China).
fsiefken 5y ago
I remember there was a EU report that was suggesting Russia was spreading anti 5G conspiracy theories to slow 5G adoption so they could get ahead sooner. I searched for it a while ago but couldn't find it quickly.
cromwellian 5y ago
The majority of the core 5G patents came from Qualcomm, Samsung, Ericsson, etc. Huawei filed a metric ton of land grab incremental patents on non essential details which is why they get less than 1% of 5G patent revenue. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1237450/global-ip-revenue-share-of-top-5g-patent-owners/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1237450/global-ip-revenu... What you’re doing is running with this nationalist rhetoric on the Chinese internet that China “invented 5G”. Sorry, but 5G was not invented by Huawei. It’s fair to safe they rushed how a huge deployment of the technology, but mmWave is economically inefficient and most of the 5G benefit for China was increased subscriber density. The reality is, the US doesn’t have the subscriber density problem China does, we are far more spread out and mmWave is much more useless to us, so one of the core bragging rights of Huawei is not relevant for our use case. The other 5G bands <6Ghz are much better for the US.

by ep103 5y ago

missedthecue 5y ago

There still isn't a standard for what 5G is. Unlike 2G, 3G, and 4G LTE, which all have very specific technological definitions, 5G could be edge computing, MIMO, small cell, beamforming, and so forth. No one has actually created guidelines about what it is. At present, it seems any kind of 5G service you can actually buy is at best just new frequency spectrums that the government auctioned off in recent years.

cesarb 5y ago
> There still isn't a standard for what 5G is. Unlike 2G, 3G, and 4G LTE, which all have very specific technological definitions In common usage, these "generations" always match a change in the low-level protocol used by the radios. For 1G it was analog, for 2G it was GSM, for 3G it was W-CDMA, for 4G it was LTE, and for 5G it's NR. So distinguishing between 4G and 5G is simple: if you're using LTE, it's 4G; if you're using NR, it's 5G.
matthewmacleod 5y ago
This is not really true – "5G" is pretty universally accepted to refer to 3GPP Release 15, defining 5G New Radio (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5G_NR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5G_NR).
ng55QPSK 5y ago
actually there is, ITU-R recommendation IMT2020 is 5G and only 3GPP Rel15 and following release satisfy this.

p_l 5y ago

A lot of 5G conspiracy theories might also correlate with incumbent ISPs (especially cable ones) who can block new wired ISPs but they can't block mobile phones - so a lot of the conspiracy theories included things like "wifi connected by cable to internet is fine" :V And 5G includes technologies that allow for much denser mesh, higher throughput, lower latency, and more clients per cell enjoying good service. So it could start supplanting wired broadband services.

jolux 5y ago

I think expecting that most laypeople connect the Huawei ban to 5G as a technology is really strange. The conspiracy theories about 5G all relate it to wealthy Westerners like Bill Gates, not meddling by China.

dylan604 5y ago
It seems there are multiple consipiracies about it though. The Gov't is pushing that CCP will use it to infiltrate. This is more of a polictical paranoia consipiracy. That is quite different than the oridinary wacko crazy conspiracies being pushed by whomever is pushing them to say things like Bill Gates is going to do whatever for whatever reasons.
ComradePhil 5y ago
It is clear to me that the "5G conspiracy theories" were fabricated by American interests when Huawei were 5 years ahead of them and it was very possible that Canada, Australia, parts of Europe and a whole lot of Asia would install Huawei's 5G infrastructure. It did backfire a bit when the American companies rolled out their half-baked 5G (which is absolutely horrendous and you are much better off disabling 5G on your phone for better connectivity and battery life)... but it was only a few burnt towers and not much else.

ng55QPSK 5y ago

"Because Chinese companies developed 5G before American companies did" - just No. 5G as deployed today is a 3GPP (== driven by Europe) standard and yes, Chinese, American, Australian, Asian etc. companies contributed to system architecture and RAN (radio access network) which is a domain of the old-schoolers: Nokia, Ericsson, Qualcomm, Samsung and since a few years also Huawei-EUROPE (not Huawei China).

fsiefken 5y ago

I remember there was a EU report that was suggesting Russia was spreading anti 5G conspiracy theories to slow 5G adoption so they could get ahead sooner. I searched for it a while ago but couldn't find it quickly.

cromwellian 5y ago

The majority of the core 5G patents came from Qualcomm, Samsung, Ericsson, etc. Huawei filed a metric ton of land grab incremental patents on non essential details which is why they get less than 1% of 5G patent revenue. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1237450/global-ip-revenue-share-of-top-5g-patent-owners/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1237450/global-ip-revenu... What you’re doing is running with this nationalist rhetoric on the Chinese internet that China “invented 5G”. Sorry, but 5G was not invented by Huawei. It’s fair to safe they rushed how a huge deployment of the technology, but mmWave is economically inefficient and most of the 5G benefit for China was increased subscriber density. The reality is, the US doesn’t have the subscriber density problem China does, we are far more spread out and mmWave is much more useless to us, so one of the core bragging rights of Huawei is not relevant for our use case. The other 5G bands <6Ghz are much better for the US.