The controversial arrest of the Huawei CFO remains one of the main subjects discussed by the world media. Politicians and diplomats keep making loud statements. In the meantime, the company continues working on its project.
My fellow host of Vesti.net Fillip Trofimov discovered the details of that project.
The Global Times newspaper which is a branch of Renmin Ribao, the official paper of the Chinese Communist Party published an article, here's its online copy encouraging Canada to stop bowing to the US and release the CFO of Huawei. The British Parliament addressed the universities proposing to stop working with Huawei for security reasons. For the same reason, Japanese telecom operators refused to purchase Chinese mobile network equipment. Previously, the Japanese public authorities were prohibited to purchase Chinese equipment.
However, the position of the Australian Minister for Home Affairs is out of line with the general American harassment policy against the major Chinese company. According to Sydney Morning Herald, he had a meeting with the Huawei top management last summer where he said that America lost this technological race to China. The thing is that the 5th generation networks whose development contracts are being considered by mobile companies across the world don't just mean an increased data transfer speed but are supposed to become the technological basis of the future smart cities, for instance.
The control system of a smart city looks something like this. This particular system controls a small district in Shenzhen. The "small" district accommodates 4.5 million people. The heat map in the center of the screen shows people concentration to the accuracy of one block. The side menus show various data about the city including the population happiness level in the top right corner. Happiness here means the comfort of living, the accessibility of hospitals and kindergartens. But anyway, a smart city where an AI controls traffic lights in real time and one can remotely watch a roof is getting repaired implies a lot of sensors.
Igor Akunin, Huawei Russia: "It means a high level of connectivity the ability of networks to connect a large number of devices. IT is the main focus of the industry. The 5G standard implies that up to a million devices can be connected within a square kilometer. We even managed to reach one billion within a square kilometer in the Huawei test zones. It means that every device can be equipped with a sensor winch will be able to connect to the network, other sensor, and etc. That's what we call connectivity".
The companies that produce various drones, from passenger cars and buses to air taxis also have high hopes for the 5th generation networks. For example, the Huawei headquarters have a coffee-delivering drone. However, packages aren't 100% safe since it attracts too much attention. The Huawei drone utilizes the 5G network to operate — a prototype network for a prototype drone.
Igor Akunin: "It's highly reliable and has low signal lag, meaning immediate response. The signal gets transmitted instantly. High speed doesn't eliminate lag. There network might still lag even at the high speed. Sometimes your YouTube videos take forever to buffer. It's the example of the high speed lag. You don't always need a high speed network; what you need is immediate response especially when controlling aircraft or various land transport when each millisecond of lag increases your braking distance by several meters. Immediate response is critical".
In general, some say that the 5G standard will be more oriented towards government institution and companies. The only thing the end-users might notice is the increased loading speed. But the fault tolerance, low lag, and universal compatibility is a necessary feature for critically important infrastructure. Perhaps that's why the fight over who gets to produce it has become an actual battle.
Fillip Trofimov and Oleg Polishchuk Vesti, China.
