Gaining a lead in 5G could have other benefits for Chinese tech as well. 5G enables not just increased speeds, but the increased capacity that could help support growth of the Internet of Things. All those connected cars and other gadgets will produce data. Lots of it. That could help put China ahead in cutting-edge developments, like self-driving cars and artificial intelligence. “The massive amounts of data that 5G will enable will also be critical for training AI algorithms,” says Paul Triolo, who focuses on technology for the political risk consulting firm Eurasia Group. “So being a leader in both developing equipment and applications will be a major economic advantage to the country or countries that seize the baton.”
Providing Wireless Spectrum
The odds of China beating the US by more than a year are real, Entner says, because the US hasn’t yet allocated enough wireless spectrum for the new networks. Thus far, most development of 5G technologies has focused on “millimeter wave spectrum,” a very high frequency range that enables extremely fast speeds, but only over a very short range. That would require carriers to deploy an enormous number of small cellular antennas to blanket the US with 5G.
Carriers are pushing the FCC to open more of what’s known as the midband of the spectrum for 5G, which would allow them to use large cell towers, much as they do now. That could make it faster to deploy 5G. The fear is that if enough of this midband spectrum isn’t made available to carriers, the 5G networks launched by the 2020 start date won’t actually cover the whole country. The FCC plans an auction to sell access to some of the midband spectrum to carriers in November, and last month it formally began the process to make another big chunk available.
But the longer this takes, the longer it will take US carriers to build real 5G networks. Entner says that in the US, it has historically taken years to launch the first networks after a new portion of spectrum has been identified for a particular use.
By contrast, the Chinese government has opened up more midband spectrum for use with 5G. That’s a big part of why the CTIA report suggests that China, along with South Korea, are “ahead” of the US.
National Security Concerns
Concerns about China’s lead in 5G spill into national security. Huawei’s products are now used by carriers around the world. But the US government has long worried that Huawei could help the Chinese government spy on US citizens, businesses, or political leaders. Huawei is effectively blocked from the US market. But if telecommunications equipment companies in the US and allied countries exit the market, US carriers might be left without any option.
Security experts say the government is right to be concerned. Although there would be serious political fallout if Huawei or another Chinese company were caught spying, equipment makers are in a position to deliberately build vulnerabilities into their products and hand the details of those problems to the Chinese government, says Ryan Kalember, senior vice president of cybersecurity strategy of the security company Proofpoint. Alternately, the companies could hand over the details of newly discovered security flaws to the Chinese government before fixing them.
US buyers will almost certainly continue to shun Huawei products in favor of equipment from US companies such as Cisco and Juniper, or Europe’s Ericsson and Nokia. But that won’t do much to challenge Huawei’s role globally.
Much the same can be said of the whole race to 5G. Even if the US wins the 5G race, it won’t stop China.
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