Aspects of 5G Widely Misunderstood, Says Wheeler

Former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler attempted to blow up some 5G myths in a Brookings report Tuesday. “The 5G discussion, with all its permutations and combinations, has grown to resemble an elementary school soccer game where everyone chases the ball, first in one direction, then another,” Wheeler wrote. Widely misunderstood is that 5G is both revolutionary and evolutionary, he said. “The details of the new applications that will use the network are still in the imagination stage,” he said: “How they will function, however, is not. The ubiquitous Internet Protocol will be the language of both the network architecture and the applications that run on it. Thanks to IP, 5G will be able to run multiple concurrent application layers -- each tied together by IP -- as opposed to legacy telecom networks that could only perform tasks sequentially.” Wheeler questioned whether the Trump administration is paying enough attention to 5G security, which he said must be part of the network from the beginning. “5G is not just about Huawei,” he said: “The security of 5G is an ecosystem that must be protected in its whole. The supply chain that makes up 5G runs the gamut from radio networks, to the integrated chipsets in that network, and the devices that will use the network (not just phones, but also billions of IoT devices).”