5G Has Become The Magic Pixie Dust Of Tech Policy Conversations
Found on Techdirt on Friday, 15 February 2019
Fifth generation wireless (5G) has quickly become a sort of magical carrot on a stick in tech and telecom policy circles. Telecom lobbyists and the Ajit Pai FCC have spent the better part of the last two years trying to claim that unless we gut consumer protections like net neutrality, America will somehow fall behind in the "race" to 5G.
Of course this is all bullshit. As we've noted previously, the "race to 5G" rhetoric is largely nonsense crafted by hardware vendors looking to sell more network hardware and wireless carriers looking to justify high US mobile data prices and spur lagging phone and tablet sales.
5G ist nothing else but a buzzword that politicians manage to remember. Just ask one of them why a factory, which usually does not move around much, absolutely requires a wireless uplink instead of FTTB which is better; or why autonomous cars, which have to be capable of sensing the environment via build-in sensors, need a wireless connection to operate. They won't be able to answer, because there is no answer.