Europe Agrees To Agree With Everyone Except US What 5G Should Be

itwbennett writes: Following agreements signed by the EU with South Korea in June 2014 and with Japan in May 2015, the EU and China "have agreed to agree by the end of the year on a working definition for 5G," reports Peter Sayer. "About the only point of agreement so far is that 5G is what we'll all be building or buying after 4G, so any consensus between the EU and China could be significant," says Sayer.

Comments

Re:good

[myowntrueself]

The US will build their OWN 5G network. With Blackjack. And hookers.
In fact, forget compatibility.

The US will adopt a closed standard, with royalties, that will work only in the US. That'll keep the eurotrash out.

And the only smartphones available for sale in the USA will be iPhones. Apple will trumpet their growth and market domination. Samsung will breath a sigh of relief that they don't have to even bother selling phones in the USA cos of Apples injunctions. The rest of the world will be happy and the USA will be a lovely walled garden of 'freedom' and 'democracy'.

Re:I know why....

[Noryungi]

You make it sound like the EU approached us collectively as a country and we flipped them the bird. Because I don't remember anyone asking me.

Who is "US" in this context? Verizon/AT&T/Sprint/T-Mobile? FCC? Donald Trump?

Nope, the Europeans just decided to do the sensible thing and define a pan-european standard. Hence, they created GSM, which begat 2G, which begat 3G, etc.

Now, they also did the other sensible thing, which is to say to the rest of the world: "There you go, here is our standard, free of charge, this is what we use and it works pretty well for us". Korea, Japan, China, and pretty much everyone else ran with it, and made money hand over fist, selling cheap phones to everyone and their dog.

It's really not rocket science: create a solid standard, with a clear evolution path, and publish it for everyone to use. The only caveat, of course, is that your phone must be GSM-compliant of you want to sell it anywhere in Europe. But that's a 700+ million market, so you know you are going to make money anyway.

In the US, every single phone operator had to have its own little standard, just to f*ck their customers for as much money as possible. Because MURICA, free enterprise, and gouging the customers are all christian values, or something.

Maybe a while ago, Europe and the US would have gotten together and define a common standard, no matter how loud the US operators yelped. That time is long past.