Robert in CA wrote:
I've been reading about the next revolution of 5G
and that China is in the lead over the U.S. So does
this mean that China could be controlling the Internet
as well as every aspect of our lives in the near future?

Your thoughts?
Robert

I don't think you have much to worry about.

They way I read it, there is a "cheap to build" part
of 5G and an "expensive to build" part of 5G.

The "infrastructure" (not the radio towers), is where
some of the interest is located.

The 5G system needs to be wired up.

It needs hubs and switches and routers and fiber
optic cables and they need to run all over the place.

The first part of 5G, can coexist, or be installed
on, existing towers. Like the silly idea of AT&T "5Ge"
where the "e" stands for "evolution", there is a
possibility of adding a few frequencies and using
more spectrum and so on. The last article I saw, said
that measurements of the AT&T network, it was slower
than the 4G of competitors. So the 5Ge is kinda a joke,
but probably not completely deployed yet. It's early
times for the "evolution" part of this.

To some extent, the "wiring that feeds those towers"
is already there.

You might be buying a transmitter from Huawei or
from Nokia. Well, how much spying can you do from
a transmitter box on a towers ? Some. Maybe. But
I don't think that is all such a good place to
be doing the spying. The network lies beneath it,
a network we can pretend for a moment "we still own".
The towers might have a mix of technologies. Wiping
out the 5G transmitters on command, might leave
some 4G or 3G or CDMA equipment in a running state.

The other part of 5G, involves setting up a 60GHz transmitter
in every room in your house. Doing so, means your
cell phone can transmit and receive at 700MB/sec
(rate estimate based on existing WiGiG and HDMI
remoting capabilities). To make those 60GHz transmitters
work, we need new wiring to your house. Maybe a fiber
optic cable to get the 700MB/sec. The fiber
cables go back to a box on your street corner.
It in turn goes back to a larger central building
with more fiber.

Someone has to provide that fiber network. The
switching capacities could be quite large. And so on.

Who will make that equipment ? It will be in "core"
parts of the network. It will carry your ADSL traffic and
my cable modem traffic and all sorts of other stuff
will be wired to it.

That's a better place to do spying. As the operator,
I can be in the room and "program" the box to do X
and inside the box it can be doing Y instead. There are
more opportunities for mischief there.

One of the scenarios would be having an "off" switch,
where the entire distribution network goes down all
at once, at a critical time.

Satellites cannot be counted on in times of crisis.
They can be blasted out of the sky. Even if there
were 7000 of them or 20000 of them, it's just a matter
of time, to wipe out a constellation of an overlay
network in space. The proposed "Musk Internet" is
made of some sort of smaller satellite boxes, which
probably don't have a lot of thermal mass.

Some countries think the risk is manageable.

Other countries do not.

Are the opinions biased by financial interests ?
Favoring Nokia as my supplier, says that probably
isn't the case. Who are the other players ? Dunno.
I'm not in the business any more.

If a 5G network were fully built out, it would
likely cost a fortune. I don't see how we can afford
to build the whole thing. Could we raise cell phone
bills from $200 a month to $400 a month to pay for it ?
Do we really need fluffy cat photos at 700MB/sec ?

Note: In the above, I'm not an insider, haven't seen
any 5G slide decks, haven't a clue how it works.
I'm using the spectrum they're buying, and *guessing*
at how you wire it up to make it useful.

The "large satellite" numbers above, are a projection
of Musks space-based Internet solution, which is another
way of connecting cell towers. Satellite is vulnerable to
attack (lasers, kinetic weapons). And it's hard to say
whether that's a "Hughes Satellite" class solution (slow),
or is capable of duplicating the Internet capacity.

If we chose not to build 5G, what would happen ?

Would Sparkle Ponies have to die ?

I don't think so.

"Can I keep my existing cell phone plan ?" Yes.

The spectrum these companies bought, doesn't have to be
used, but it makes them look foolish if they don't use it
for something.

If I receive fluffy cat photos over 4G, while people
in another country receive their fluffy cat photos over
5G, am I a bad person ? No.

I don't see a problem with building a tiny bit of 5G
and just using a few new transmitters. And not bothering
using 60GHz at all. And leaving 24GHz for Musk to use.

Paul