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from the paranoia-or-shrewd-planning? dept.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
[...] But in the US and UK the rollout of 5G networks has been hampered by an international row over one of the most important suppliers of 5G equipment, China's Huawei.
Industry analysts like Edison Lee, an analyst from financial services group Jefferies, see the US pressure on Huawei as an attempt to break China's potential dominance of the global 5G market.
"The tech war is based on America's argument that China's technological advances have been built upon stolen intellectual property rights, and heavy government subsidies, and their belief that Chinese telecom equipment is not safe, and is a national security threat to the US and its allies," he says.
"As Huawei and [fellow Chinese firm] ZTE increasingly dominate the global telecom equipment market, the western world will be more vulnerable to Chinese spying," Lee adds.
Huawei has always strongly denied that its technology can be used for spying. While western nations worry about one of the key suppliers of 5G technology, China is racing ahead with its 5G rollout. On 31 October Chinese telecom companies launched 5G services in more than 50 Chinese cities, creating one of the world's largest 5G networks. Huawei has built an estimated 50% of the network.
[...] Industry analysts are not confident that the row between China and the US will be sorted out anytime soon.
"We see the current tensions as a technological Cold War, as tech nationalism intensifies," says Ben Wood, chief of research, at CCS Insight.
"With the Chinese government firmly committed to establishing China as a world-leading 5G nation, the opportunity for Huawei in its home market is immense.
"However, the rest of the world can't afford to get left behind, and without access to Huawei infrastructure US mobile network operators in particular will need to rely on alternative suppliers who may be more expensive and less advanced with 5G."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28 2019, @12:07AM (1 child)
I think China has made some advancements partly because they have focused their attention on innovation while the U.S. innovation has slowed down partly because they have been focused more on litigation. Money spent on litigation is money that could otherwise be spent on innovation. Innovation =! litigation (I know this is a hard concept for lawyers to understand since litigation = money for lawyers).
Tech has made many advancements partly because tech has a history of not enforcing patents but, instead, collecting them and cross licensing (though you have some cases of patent trolls slowing down innovation which is bad).
This is despite the fact that China has been stifling their innovation through trade restrictions and tariffs (look up export promotion vs import substation). One can argue that the U.S. using patents to restrict foreign products is a trade restriction.
Part of the reason the U.S. has historically been innovative is due to the fact that the founding fathers were skeptical of IP. While they did allow congress to create such monopolies for a limited time to promote the progress if you read much of what they had to say they were very aware of the fact that heavy abuse of such things (as we are starting to get more of) stifles innovation. IE: Benjamin Franklin never sought a patent of copyright and Thomas Jefferson initially opposed them but later very cautiously supported them with the understanding of how destructive they can be if abused.
The U.S. has also had a history of not having many trade restrictions.
Of course much of this is changing now. Instead of innovating we are simply setting up all these legal firms that get all these patents and when other countries actually innovate we complain about how they are 'stealing' our ideas. It's all this complaining that's holding us back. Instead of complaining about everyone else innovating we need to start innovating and stop pointing fingers about how every time someone implements an idea they stole it from us. They sound like little children arguing about who thought of it first. I don't care who thought of it first, it's irrelevant, it's who can bring it to market first.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28 2019, @12:09AM
never sought a patent or copyright