Some politicians think keeping Huawei out of U.S. networks ensures security. I believe that does very little. The Chinese government does not need to compromise Huawei because there are so many other ways to crack the systems. Former FCC Chair Tom Wheeler and his security lead, Rear Admiral David Simpson note

"Never have the essential networks and services that define our lives, our economy, and our national security had so many participants, each reliant on the other—and none of which have the final responsibility for cybersecurity,"

5G networks will be vastly more complicated, with far more points of attack. Software-defined networks are harder to protect than traditional, known hardware. Control - and vulnerability - is more distributed. Running on commodity hardware and software offers more ways in. 

That 5G is not secure is well known. Congress was told that by Ericsson’s Lynn Starr, Barbara Baffer, and Jason Boswell, presumably informed by the engineers building about half of U.S. 5G networks.

"5G is ultra-reliable" is a lie.

CEO Dirk Wössner's "5G" claims are now meaningless. DT is now using DSS and calling connections "5G." Since the actual speed is about the same as 4G, that proves the industry definition of "5G' is now meaningless.

It's so slow - and the latency so high - DT refuses to provide figures. Verizon President Ronan Dunne has a similar offering, but explains, "The lower down the spectrum tiers you go, the more that will approximate to a good 4G service." That's what DT is now selling, a good low-band 4G service.

Until now, DT had said it would bring 5G to 20% of Germany by the end of 2021. It didn't consider low-band "5G," even though it uses 5G NR software.

DT has changed its actual network and capex plans. It changed what it considered 5G to the 3GPP marketing dream or anything that runs "5G NR" software. The software has only a minimum effect on the performance of below 2.5 GHz - 19% or probably less. DT is providing no figures, but its new 5G is going to be slower than some available 4G.

Minister Miao Wei demanded, "Accelerate" and the telcos are delivering. 198,000 cells had been upgraded at the end of March. The year-end goal, 600,000, has been reduced to 500,000. Ericsson and Huawei have confirmed the equipment is on the way and the buildout should hit the new target easily.

The 50 million "5G contracts" figure must be examined closely. Many reporters assume that means 50 million people are using 5G. I initially did. 

However, I discovered in March that the Chinese telcos were selling more 5G contracts than the phone makers seemed to ship.

With 5G phones as low as $285 in China (Xiaomi), it was inevitable that low prices would expand worldwide. Giant TCL just announced a US$400/Euro 400 6.5" smartphone with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 765G processor and four cameras on the rear.

Chinese company TCL has been selling under the name "Alcatel" in the west. Its sales were over 60 million phones in 2016 but it has fallen behind. It intends to deliver between June and September. The Chinese factories, include Foxconn, are close to full production.

Oppo, Vivo, Xiaomi, and ZTE are similar phones in China at $285-$400. Samsung and Huawei will soon follow. As soon as these prices come West, demand for 5G will expand rapidly.

Unless everyone decides to buy the new iPhone SE at a similar $400.

VTEL Wireless can now deliver 100 Mbps to 80% of Rutland, Vermont. With help from Ericsson, this took less than 2 weeks. The company is contributing modems and service, the school district is providing Chromebooks. The kids are learning.

~8 million U.S. homes do not have cable or a decent landline. Most can be reached from existing towers and upgraded in weeks. It should be done, whether by T-Mobile, Verizon, AT&T, or regional carriers. Ajit Pai should make this so.

Massive MIMO, invented at Bell Labs in 2010 by Tom Marzetta, uses 32-128 small antennas to deliver multiple data streams where the local demand is highest, 

Below 1800 MHz, 5G has almost no performance advantage over today's 4G LTE. For a major power grid running at 450 MHz, PGE Systemy chose Nokia 4G, resulting in a major saving. 5G is overkill for almost all IoT applications. 5G's NB-IoT is almost exactly the same as 4G NB-IoT.

The key exception is when connecting an enormous number of devices. 5G can address a million devices from a single tower. So far, I haven't found any application that needs more than 4G can handle. It's not clear whether intense concentrations of cars, all on one network, will need that. Perhaps when 5G controls munitions, the U.S. will need that capacity on the battlefield. The U.S. military is massively funding 5G research, especially on how to manage spectrum in a presumably crowded environment.

Nokia virtually "bet its future" on corporate 4G & 5G networks.

5G is growing by millions per month in China, although the exact status is unclear. The telcos are reporting "contracts," which continue to be far higher than the separately reported 5G phone sales. Some people are apparently signing up to 5G contracts even before they get the phones. The 5G price is the same as 4G and 5G has promotions. 

That said, China Mobile reported 8.7M new 5G contracts in Feb and a 15M total.8.7M new 5G contracts in Feb and a 15M total. Add China Tel & Unicom, China 5G is probably over 30M. China is now on track for >150M 5G in 2020, with the likely world total ~200M.

Xi Jinping has declared 5G a crucial part of the "New Infrastructure" that will be massively funded after the epidemic. CM is doing 300K sites in 2020, CT+CU 250K, China a total of 600K sites 2020.

What's wrong everywhere else?

Ashraf Dahod, CEO at Altiostar, is very proud. A year ago, CTO Tareq Amin dazzled the industry with bold promises: 

"Revolutionary technological innovation behind the launch of the world’s first end-to-end fully virtualized cloud-native mobile network. Construction of radio antenna network underway; On track for October 2019 Japan launch ... Soon to be the newest and most innovative mobile network operator in Japan, Rakuten Mobile Network, Inc. is currently building the world’s first end-to-end fully virtualized, cloud-native mobile network. The launch of commercial services planned for October 2019 will leverage an innovative architecture that is set to disrupt not only the telecom industry landscape in Japan but also the rest of the world. Built to serve millions of subscribers and adopting 5G systems architecture from launch, this will be the world’s first cloud-native network that is fully virtualized from radio access network (RAN) to Core, with end-to-end automation for both network and services."

Amin had been a builder of Reliance Jio's remarkably cost-effective network, that connected 370 million Indians in less than 4 years. It runs so well that Jio declares a profit on prices often below $5/ month. It reflected the most advanced thinking, originating from Stanford (CORD, O-RAN, more) and now supported everywhere from China Mobile to the White House. (Where they have no idea what it means.)

It's March 2020 now, and the network is finally ready to go beyond trials. The first 3 million will get a free year and the regular price will be under US$30, much lower than the incumbents.