The Trump administration says it wants to nationalize the 5G network
President Donald Trump’s national security team is considering how best to build a national 5G network. A senior administration official confirmed the initiative and provided Axios with a PowerPoint outlining some of the proposal.
The motivation: The primary reason cited is to stay competitive with (and guard US networks against) China. The document argues that a strong 5G network is the gateway to advancement in technologies like self-driving cars and virtual reality.
The network: The report outlines two possible paths for developing 5G:
1. A network built and funded by the US government
2. A system built up of networks constructed by mobile carriers
FCC chairman Ajit Pai has already expressed his opposition to the idea of a government-run network. Companies like AT&T and T Mobile, meanwhile, have been investing heavily in the area for some time. Heck, even Facebook has gotten in on the action. But Axios reports that the White House is leaning toward option one. That would be a massive departure for an administration that has billed itself as keen to reduce the role of government in private industry.
Keep Reading
Most Popular
How Rust went from a side project to the world’s most-loved programming language
For decades, coders wrote critical systems in C and C++. Now they turn to Rust.
The inside story of how ChatGPT was built from the people who made it
Exclusive conversations that take us behind the scenes of a cultural phenomenon.
Design thinking was supposed to fix the world. Where did it go wrong?
An approach that promised to democratize design may have done the opposite.
Sam Altman invested $180 million into a company trying to delay death
Can anti-aging breakthroughs add 10 healthy years to the human life span? The CEO of OpenAI is paying to find out.
Stay connected
Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review
Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.