5G transformational advanced wireless futures

It may seem strange to have what amounts to a technology report, The Transformational Impact of 5G: Proceedings of a Workshop in Brief (2019)¹ as central to an editorial in Educational Philosophy and Theory but we would justify it by pointing to the ‘big picture’ with the impacts of a wireless technology that will transform manufacturing, society and education. To understand more clearly what the report details we have consulted many current, 2019 articles on 5G. Some well-placed critics suggest that 5G mobile technologies will quickly become the basis for the lead in global innovation. Certainly, 5G has the clear potential to change not only the delivery and access of education at all levels, but also research functionality in universities. It is a transformative technology that will enhance existing 4G functionality by speed some twenty times faster with peak rates of up to 300 megabits per second (Mbits/s)² and also provide the basis going forward in developing new technologies such as connected and autonomous vehicles, shipping, real-time telesurgery, and intelligent connectivity. The GSMA Report on Intelligent Connectivity details how the ‘Combination of 5G, AI, Big Data and IoT is set to Change Everything’.³ As such these technological advances and changes raise a welter of questions in philosophy of technology about its educational, research and communicational impacts.

The era of 5G is already here in the USA, China, South Korea, Germany and United Arab Emirates, with Sweden, Estonia, Japan and Turkey planning to launch in 2020 but is still emerging elsewhere in arguably a new ‘space race, dominated by Nokia, Ericsson and Huawei. 2020 and 2021 are likely to see considerable expansion’. For Africa, Ericsson’s Middle East and Africa vice-president maintains that ‘we will see many startups and many business models like the Ubers and the AirBnBs happening through 5G. You will see a small team sitting in a small country in Africa having a huge global business’.⁴

It has been accompanied by well documented political and security considerations and controversies about Huawei’s 5G technology.⁵ This is centred around China’s 2017 National Intelligence Law which gives the state the power to compel companies and individuals to assist in gathering foreign and domestic intelligence. Huawei and Beijing have denied this. The Financial Times (FT) discusses a 37-page legal argument prepared by Huawei to clarify the situation where Zhang Yesui, vice-minister of foreign affairs says: ‘Some US government officials … have been playing up the security risks of certain Chinese companies’ products’, … that although organisations and citizens were obliged to assist national intelligence work, ‘China asks companies to strictly abide by local laws’ while abroad’.⁶ FT sets out four claims from Huawei and consults other sources to assess them, viz.: ‘1. Huawei has no duty to implant backdoors in its networks, because there is no law that empowers government authorities to demand this; 2. There are ‘safeguards’ built into Chinese law that defend businesses’ ‘legitimate interests’; 3. ‘Huawei’s subsidiaries and employees outside of China are not subject to the territorial jurisdiction of the National Intelligence Law’; 4. The ‘scope’ of anti-terrorism work is ‘direct and explicit under Chinese law, as is counter-espionage work’. Needless to say opinions in response as to whether or not this is the case vary.

Despite Huawei denials, it is maintained by the US that Huawei’s 5G network product contains ‘back doors’ open to cyber spying on companies and countries. The US has pressured many countries to follow its lead in banning Huawei, yet it is currently the ‘world’s No.1 telecom supplier and No. 2 phone manufacturer’ and many countries have not followed the US which banned using its network equipment in 2012.⁷ Instead, according to Reuters, Huawei reports that of the 65 commercial deals it has signed, ‘half are with European customers building ultra-fast fifth-generation networks’ … and ‘Germany has just published a proposed set of rules on 5G network security that stops short of singling out China or Huawei as threats; instead requiring all vendors and operators to meet common criteria. By contrast, Britain is still mulling whether to follow the advice of its National Security Council to ban Huawei - a step already taken by English-speaking U.S. allies Australia and New Zealand’.⁸ Reuters reports that Germany’s Federal Network Agency draft regulations emphasise that ‘network contractors and suppliers must prove they are trustworthy, and demonstrate, for example that they will not transmit confidential information abroad’.

It seems that despite US bans and some government level concerns, hesitations and even bans, business and industry in many places are forging ahead and adopting Huawei 5G network technology. Telecommunications operators in Europe, and Asia are proceeding to use its 5G-ready equipment.⁹ Bharti Ariel, the Indian telecom operator has already installed 100 hops (microwave antennae) in the last six months. UAE telecom sees no ‘security holes’.¹⁰

Kania and Sheppard (2019) argue that while 5G is important ‘promising the high speeds and unparalleled connectivity that are required to unleash the full potential of the ‘internet of things’ [IoT]…and artificial intelligence’ [AI], as well as being ‘critical to economic competitiveness’, a race to install the system ends up backfiring’. They want to question the claims of Huawei that ‘it alone can shape our technological future’.¹¹ One thing is clear, 5G is an issue of contention between US and China and a central part of the current trade or techno war which seems to be as much as anything about the US trying to at the least stall China’s technological advance while it catches up as it rushes to build a national 5G network and China is set to spend nearly half a trillion US dollars in the next phase (Peters, 2019a, 2019b). AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint have launched 5G networks in some US cities but as yet just five 5G capable phones are available in US - primarily by Samsung, LG, OnePlus and Motorola, but not Apple. Worldwide, we can add Huawei, Xiaomi and ZTE brands into the mix, and others seem to be rushing to develop this capability yet it remains early days for both 5G networks and phones.¹² In late 2019 it definitely remains an evolving situation.

One technology website gives the following factual description:

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.

In addition to delivering faster connections and greater capacity, a very important advantage of 5G is the fast response time referred to as latency.

Latency is the time taken for devices to respond to each other over the wireless network. 3G networks had a typical response time of 100 milliseconds, 4G is around 30 milliseconds and 5G will be as low as 1 millisecond. This is virtually instantaneous opening up a new world of connected applications…

5G will enable instantaneous connectivity to billions of devices, the Internet of Things (IoT) and a truly connected world.¹³

The site explains 5G will provide the speed, low latency and connectivity to enable a new generation of applications, services in terms of ‘massive machine-to-machine communication’ (the Internet of Things, IoT), ‘Ultra-reliable low latency communications’ (remote and autonomous services), and enhanced mobile broadband (faster and directional). In short, 5G provides the basis for smart schools, universities, homes, libraries, smart vehicles providing ‘significantly faster speeds in data access, downloading and streaming content’.

This explanation helps to explain why 5G mobile technologies have become a major economic, political and security issue. 5G is commonly seen as creating a new wave of development to enable a greater interconnectivity and digital world society that can link billions of mobile devices as the networked basis for the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ (a term that doesn’t fully reflect 5th generation). Some say this is in fact third wave digital innovation and economy.¹⁴ Philosophically, we prefer to talk about concepts of interconnectivity, openness, latency and collective intelligence as a means of focusing on questions concerning education and democracy. On the other hand, we also recognize the new dangers of ‘technopolitics’ in relation to BigTech that have proven to us that they can’t be trusted.¹⁵ There is little doubt that 5G mobile technologies are a defining issue at the beginning of 2020 and will dominate in the next decade at least.

This is useful background to appreciate The National Academies Press release of The Transformational Impact of 5G: Proceedings of a Workshop in Brief (2019).¹⁶ Ellen Purdy, from the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering suggested ‘5G is differentiated from other generational transitions in wireless technology because of its transformational opportunity towards ubiquitous connectivity, which will be as significant as when electricity was brought into homes and to manufacturing floors’. She went on to discuss 5G’s virtual reality capabilities, ‘creating a revolution of training opportunities’ as well as ‘smart ships and ports, health monitoring, and smart manufacturing’. She added ‘The military that masters the connectivity of everything will be the military that dominates for decades’. We will leave readers to read for themselves, the material on standards and measurements. Steve LeFrancois, chief technology officer for Verizon’s public sector division, recorded comments on 5G as a platform for innovation are important and he emphasized it was ‘critical for industry to interface with the federal government, state governments, and local organizations as they develop this technology’, laying out the capabilities of 5G: ‘networks will be able to handle 10 terabytes of “traffic,” and at any point there will be 10 million devices within a square kilometer’.

The roundtable addressed security resiliency and spectrum policy. The section we found interesting was that entitled ‘Global Competition and The Future of Advanced Wireless’ especially for the commentary on China:

China has strategically devoted significant capital to research and development for 5G. In early June 2019, China issued 5G licenses to major technology companies and projected being in 40 cities by the end of September 2019, ahead of their original schedule of 2020. The Chinese are racing to be the first mover on 5G, and if they succeed these technologies will dominate markets, which would have great economic and national security consequences for the United States.

In June 2019, the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies’ China-Africa Research Initiative (SAIS-CARI), examined the Chinese government’s role in supporting Huawei’s telecommunication contracts in Africa. The company signed a contract for South Africa’s first commercial 5G network—the only 5G network currently in all of Africa. SAIS-CARI found that between 2000 and 2017, there were 47 different loan-backed projects across Africa involving Huawei contracts, and 45 of these were financed by the Chinese government.

In terms of the roundtable 5G emerges as ‘unifying connectivity –like electricity, we will expect it everywhere’. 5G is the big enabler for the next decade – factories, autonomous transport, health care, ‘precision agriculture, efficient use of energy and utilities, and sustainable smart cities’.

We now need to consider how a philosophy of technology rather than philosophy of science, can be further developed around ethics, subjectivity, epistemology, and the sociological implications such as equal access to 5G alongside economic considerations. The implications for the world of work are immense and these in turn will create considerable personal and societal stresses, especially with likely technological unemployment as many recent works suggest (e.g., Peters, 2017; Peters, Jandric & Means, 2019; Monaghan, Schwartz, Hagel, & Wooll, 2019). What jobs will disappear? new jobs might be created, where? How do we educate for this future? Are our current subjects relevant - if not, what and how should we teach? The consequences for universities and schools are enormous as any reflection on the above might suggest especially in ‘promoting future learning model will foster an international, immediate, virtual, and interactive environment’ as ‘learner-centric, skill-centric, on-demand and personalized’.¹⁷ Of course, its potential to improve open and online education is immense. 5G will also intensify data-intensive science and, no doubt, the world of academic journal publishing.

Michael A. Peters
Beijing Normal University, PR China
[email protected]
Tina Besley
Beijing Normal University, PR China

Notes

1 The National Academies Press is the publishing arm of the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. See: https://www.nap.edu/catalog/25598/the-transformational-impact-of-5g-proceedings-of-a-workshop-in; https://www.nap.edu/read/25598/chapter/1

2 See: www.telekom.com

3 See: Intelligent Connectivity: How the Combination of 5G, AI, Big Data and IoT is set to Change Everything. GSMA Report. https://www.gsma.com/IC/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/22209-Intelligent-connectivity-report.pdf

4 See: Oheneba Ama Nti Osei, 5 April 2019, The Need for Speed. The 5G Revolution is coming to Africa. The Africa Report. https://www.theafricareport.com/11461/the-5g-revolution-is-coming-to-africa/

5 See the Carnegie Endowment for Peace and Security’s ‘Huawei in Europe and Beyond’ timeline, https://carnegieendowment.org/publications/interactive/huawei-timeline

6 See: Yuan Yang, March 5, 2019, Is Huawei compelled by Chinese Law to help with espionage? Financial Times. https://www.ft.com/content/282f8ca0-3be6-11e9-b72b-2c7f526ca5d0

7 Sean Keane, October 14, 2019, ‘Huawei ban: Full timeline as Trump is reportedly ready to approve sales to the Chinese company’, CNET. https://www.cnet.com/news/huawei-ban-full-timeline-trump-approve-sales-mate-30-threat-china/

8 Douglas Busvine, October, 2019 ‘Despite political headwinds, Huawei wins 5G customers in Europe.’ Reuters. https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN1WU2GI

9 http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201910/16/WS5da682f8a310cf3e35570c26.html

10 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-huawei-tech-emirates-du/uae-telecom-du-sees-no-evidence-of-security-holes-in-huaweis-5g-technology-cto-idUSKCN1WL0A4

11 See: Elsa B. Kania & Lindsey R. Shepperd, 12 October, 2019. Why Huawei isn’t so scary. https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/12/huawei-china-5g-race-technology/

12 See: Philip Michaels, 4 October 2019, 5G phones: Every Known Phone and Release date,’ Tom’s Guide. https://tomsguide.com

13 http://www.emfexplained.info/?ID=25916

14 https://medium.com/mit-initiative-on-the-digital-economy/the-next-wave-of-the-digital-economy-promises-and-challenges-ff0d245d17

15 See video: Peters, M. A. 2019. https://thesiseleven.com/2019/08/13/video-techno-politics-of-the-future-university-michael-peters/

16 See: https://www.nap.edu/catalog/25598/the-transformational-impact-of-5g-proceedings-of-a-workshop-in; https://www.nap.edu/read/25598/chapter/1

17 https://community.jisc.ac.uk/sites/default/files/Education-VM_Extended.pdf