Speaking to Bloomberg News at MWC Barcelona, Ekholm compared Europe’s sluggish move to 5G unfavourably to China
“China has already built out a 5G standalone network,” he said.
“Europe has elected to be a museum,” he added. “That’s a choice European citizens have to live with.”
EU badly needs data sovereignty and need to focus on securing the open source eco-system. They also need to crack down on gathering and sharing personal data. End the surveilance economy. It would not hurt to make mobile phone and data contracts cheaper and easier for consumers.
Man whose mega corportion donated to Trump’s inauguration says [Trump talking point].
“Europe risks falling behind on AI development”
Being behind on high tech innovation is an European insecurity. Whenever a new American tech fad comes along - blockchain or AI - Europe seems to jump on it as an opportunity to catch up. Fundamentally though, to get on the fad train you’ll need to buy USA hardware (nVidia, Intel, AMD etc.). It feels like this insecurity is being weaponized so that more US hardware gets sold.
IIRC the lithography machines TSMC etc. use are made in Europe. One wonders why they don’t build fabs locally instead of selling them all to Taiwan.
There’s a lot more to semiconductor manufacturing than just the lithography, and there’s a whole supply chain required to support it. To replicate the kind of process nodes that TSMC is manufacturing you would need a lot of institutional expertise in:
- crystal growth (or sourcing)
- wafer manufacture (or sourcing)
- silicon doping
- process design
- mask design
- mask manufacture
- photoresist manufacture (or sourcing)
- photoresist application
- etching
- sputtering
- testing and validation
- wire bonding
- packaging
That’s just off the top of my head as someone who is a spectator of the industry but not involved. There’s probably a lot more you’d need to perfect in order to produce cutting edge silicon.
If this were done in the EU it would likely involve multiple companies specialising in one area each, as we don’t have an Intel or AMD with the budget to pour into developing an in-house foundry. I can’t imagine how much investment it would take though. China has been working on this for decades and is still at least a decade behind in their own silicon process.
Ericsson? Wasn’t that the company that failed to offer a competitive alternative to the Huawei 5G equippment and then lobbied EU governments to ban that equippment? Sounds like they might be somewhat at fault themselves there no?
Instead of complaining why don’t you develop some useful technology that helps mankind, weather boy.
I’m glad to be in tech museum instead of that mass surveillance dystopia powered by AI.
How do you think the museum makes sure you don‘t touch or steal the exhibits, which you don‘t own and never will, but only are there to sell the tickets, clean the floor or walk around in nostalgia?
I don’t know man. Never crossed my mind.
Might be because I live in that one museum built on trust and respect.
I only needed to read the headline to know who posted this…
Okay so what does this means for me as a consuner? In terms of mobile coverage and speed I am really satisfied since many years.
Nothing. The rich fat bastard just wants some of that “line going up” which his US oligarch colleagues sees.
Funny for this to be happening at a time when it’s becoming more and more important to spend time offline.
Is there really a benefit to 5g for the average citizen? It seems to me that coverage is much more important and europe has that pretty well covered.
It seems to me that coverage is much more important and europe has that pretty well covered.
Yeah, Germany is almost done with having full EDGE coverage. Almost.
yeah, i still remember the remarks “5G bis zur Milchkanne” several years ago by CDU. like who needs this? and who has to pay for it. obviously, with CDU its the citizens that have to pay for it, even though they reap the least benefits. And all that just because the actors pushing for stuff (agrar and tech lobby) don’t want to pay and always go around the “gespenst” of Europe falling behind in tech. As if our agrar producers suddenly could not produce food without it.
Well, yes. Now there’s just around 1.5 kilometers of my 16.5 kilometers work commute left where I have absolutely no network on my phone. We are really almost there. Maybe in 10 years or so when there will be the next generation standard after 5G we will have full EDGE coverage.
Something something efficiency something technoligical progress. And “Technologieoffenheit” of course.
I realize that AI is a hot topic right now, so it’s maybe useful to reference it, but I feel like the links between cell network infrastructure and AI capability probably aren’t quite as tight as is being presented.
At least in telecommunications research at the moment everyone is trying to do stuff using AI/ML.
