“China Defeat US In the 5G Technology Race”

Web Desk — Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO, has warned that the U.S. has lagged far behind China in the race to build out 5G technology due to its “dithering,” urging Washington to step up investment in the next-generation internet technology.

Schmidt and Graham Allison, a professor of government at Harvard, wrote in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal that America is “far behind in almost every dimension of 5G while other nations, including China, are far ahead.”

They urged the Biden administration to make 5G a “national priority.” Otherwise, they said, “China will own the future of 5G.”

They also accused the United States of falling behind in a number of areas. The authors also pointed out that compared with the U.S., China’s 5G download speed is significantly faster.

Speedtest, a company that measures internet speeds, found that China’s median download speed was just over 299 megabits per second in the third quarter of 2021 compared to 93.73 megabits per second in the U.S.

They said that despite American sanctions, Huawei, China’s biggest telecommunications equipment maker, still dominated the market.

Meanwhile, China has “rapidly allocated” the most efficient part of the wireless spectrum, known as midband, to telecommunications companies. In the United States, AT&T and Verizon use the same spectrum band for their 4G and 5G networks.

They said that the United States’ pathetic performance in the 5G race reflected America’s larger inability to keep up with China on strategic technologies.

According to a report by the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, which Schmidt chaired, China could soon overtake the U.S. as the world’s “AI superpower” and this could have serious military implications.

WHAT IS 5G?

5G is the 5th generation of mobile networks, a significant evolution of today’s 4G LTE networks. 5G has been designed to meet the very large growth in data and connectivity of today’s modern society, the internet of things with billions of connected devices, and tomorrow’s innovations. 5G will initially operate in conjunction with existing 4G networks before evolving to fully standalone networks in subsequent releases and coverage expansions.

WHAT IS THE REAL WORLD IMPACT OF 5G TECHNOLOGY?

In healthcare, 5G technology and Wi-Fi 6 connectivity will enable patients to be monitored via connected devices that constantly deliver data on key health indicators, such as heart rate and blood pressure. In the auto industry, 5G combined with ML-driven algorithms will provide information on traffic, accidents, and more; vehicles will be able to share information with other vehicles and entities on roadways, such as traffic lights. These are just two industry applications of 5G technology that can enable better, safer experiences for users.

HOW FASTER IS 5G AS COMPARED TO 4G and 3G?

Should 5G achieve the expected data speeds of 10 Gps, this will be 100 times faster than standard 4G. It will also be 30 times faster than advanced 4G standards such as LTE-A. However, even with more conservative estimates, it will easily outpace both 3G and 4G.
This means, for example, that it would take between 4 and 40 seconds to download a full HD film on 5G, as compared to over 7 minutes on 4G and over a day with 3G.