Ask HN: Whither Open Source 5G?

2 pointstravisgriggs1 comment

Wouldn't it be in everyone's interest if the 5G technologies were open sourced? Then no one "wins". One company doesn't win over another. Another nation doesn't win over another. Consumers benefit. I've been surprised that western companies that have benefited huge from 20 years of open source collaboration hasn't seen this as the solution to a lot of 5G angst that exists right now. What am I missing?

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Various companies "donate" massive resources to design standards with the assumption that they'll profit from those standards later. Royalty-free/open-source standards do not support that kind of quid pro quo so they'd have to be developed by governments, universities, or "benevolent" monopolies like Google. Maybe this would be worth it and maybe not.

Western companies like Qualcomm absolutely do not want standards to be open source. When some people talk about how "China is winning 5G" they are ignoring the phones themselves.

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