President Donald Trump’s National security officials are considering building a 5G network as an option to counter concerns of China spying on U.S. cyberspace.
The officials who confirmed the discussions on terms of anonymity said that the deliberations are still preliminary and so decisions on funding and control of the 5G network haven’t been reached yet. The accuracy of the news was confirmed late Sunday to Reuters.
The deliberations, currently at a low level in the Trump Administration suggest that the 5G Network will be a nationalized 5G network and won’t be considered by the president for six to eight months, according to Axios. The network would be designed to counter Chinese threats to US economic and cybersecurity, focused on the protection of emerging technologies reliant on 5G, such as self-driving cars.
Being a Nationalised network, it implies it would be built and owned by the government, which will intern rent out the infrastructure to US carriers which will be a departure from the tradition of auctioning licenses to telecommunications companies to build their own networks.
A few carriers, including Verizon, who have already made significant progress with the 5G network technology and have been moving from trials to deployments. It was expected that they would speak out against the idea. On Monday, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said in his statement.
“I oppose any proposal for the federal government to build and operate a nationwide 5G network,” Pai said in a statement. “Any federal effort to construct a nationalized 5G network would be a costly and counterproductive distraction from the policies we need to help the United States win the 5G future.”
Representatives for the White House didn’t respond to a request for comment.
