Wireless confusion: U.S., China "wrangling" over 5G standards, US tightens PRC tech stranglehold & China frustrations push India to "sharp remarks" & AU trade deal -- #China Boss #News 2.21.22
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Wireless confusion: U.S., China “wrangling” over 5G standards
In an age where wireless technology has become the backbone of critical infrastructure that supports societies, businesses, governments, and, even, military operations, U.S., China and Europe are "wrangling” for power over 5G tech standards, the Financial Times last week reported.
FT:
“5G has been described as essential for economic progress,” says Priya Chopra, head of network technology for communications, media and information for the EU and UK, at Tata Consultancy Services.
Expansion of the technology has also become more important as older networks are increasingly switched off. Vodafone and EE aim to phase out 3G networks in the UK by 2023.
But the standards set for the next generation network — who decides them, and how far they apply — will be equally important for national security and individual safety, as well as the geopolitics of equipment deployment around the world.
Former Executive Director at Yale Law School’s Information Society Project Laura DeNardis told FT: “Arrangements of technical architecture are arrangements of power.” DeNardis has written extensively “on the political and social implications of Internet technical architecture and governance.”
But the geopolitical struggle over 5G standard-setting can also have a significant impact on China business. Just ask PRC national champion Huawei. “In 2019, the Chinese telecommunications behemoth was racing toward dominance of the world’s 5G networks,” and “was a symbol of Beijing’s apparent rise to technological primacy, says AEI senior fellow and Bloomberg contributor Hal Brands.
But Huawei has been “pummeled” by sanctions and a U.S. pressure campaign to block it from participating in global telecom networks since 2020. By summer 2021, the company had issued a statement saying managers had formed their “strategic goals for the next five years” with the aim of survival, according to CNBC.
Undeterred, Beijing remains defiantly "prolific in its efforts to set the agenda on 5G — an approach that has challenged US efforts to blacklist Chinese technology,” and complicates the horizon for any company that serves or manufactures products for the telecommunications industry, FT said.
FT:
The costs of this tension are borne not only by Huawei, but by other companies, says Chopra. “Some of the immediate impacts are felt due to Chinese telecom equipment, intensive auditing of telecom products by technical specialists, the review and certification of network technology, and involvement in encryption requirements at application levels.”
DeNardis says one area where establishing standards is vital is the so-called ‘Internet of Things’ — networks of connected devices such as smart speakers and security systems.
In an article written for The Diplomat which was published earlier this month, Breaking the Internet: China-US Competition over Technology Standards, Joshua Park contends that "[t]he increasingly adversarial nature of the China-U.S. relationship is rapidly bringing forth the potential for a “splinternet” – a grim bifurcation of the cyber world," and that, while “traditionally,” standard setting has been the domain of “private sector experts and technocrats who focused on establishing the highest quality standards through meritocratic processes, it is now “central to China’s strategic goals of becoming a “cyber great power.” Emphasis added.
Park also noted that the U.S. sanctioning of Huawei produced "[c]onfusion] around the technicalities of the ruling [and] meant that U.S. companies could no longer participate in standard setting discussions where Huawei was present.”
Park, The Diplomat:
This meant the absence of U.S. representation in key standardization decisions for over a year until the Department of Commerce corrected this mistake. At the same time, U.S. sanctions prohibiting China’s use of American semiconductor technology forced Beijing to turn inwards and supercharged their focus on domestic innovation. In both cases – when the U.S. excluded itself and China – a policy of unnuanced exclusion had unfortunate implications in the standardization game, where universal inclusion and connectivity rewards all.
Worse, DeNardis called attention to a more recent policy failure that "threatened to ground flights" across the U.S. as "the largest US airlines warned that the imminent introduction of 5G" was "interfering with equipment needed for take-off and landing."
FT:
“In no advanced society should the issue of 5G antenna placement be making the news,” DeNardis says.
“This should be behind the scenes, not mediated by social media mobs. This is not how tech policy should be done in any way.”
Europe is also “seeking to play a role” in the race to control 5G standards - although “to a lesser degree” than China and the U.S., FT’s tech analyst wrote.
FT:
Making 5G available everywhere, and setting the standards for it, are among the “Digital Decade Principles” announced in January by the European Commission, in order to guide digital transformation in the EU.
Also in January, the French and German governments announced €17.7mn in funding for four 5G projects.
These included open 5G networks in business parks and 5G solutions for operating theatres, to improve telesupport.
Bruno Le Maire, French minister for the economy, finance and recovery, said the Franco-German ecosystem “will play a key role to position Europe at the forefront of innovation in 5G and its evolutions.”
For the rest of FT report, China, US and Europe vie to set 5G standards, click here. For Hal Brand’s Bloomberg opinion, Huawei’s decline shows why China will struggle to dominate, click here. For the rest of Joshua Park’s piece in The Diplomat, Breaking the Internet: China-US Competition Over Technology Standards, click here.
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