[locacorten]

Two points:

1. The article's point is that the "The Race to 5G is BS" and not "5G is BS". Please adjust.

2. I can try to offer an answer to the author. History has shown that a novel piece of technology often leads to innovation. Dial-up led to BBNs and the Web, broadband led to audio and video content delivery, and so on. Winning the "race to 5G" means the US will be the first to innovate in systems that take advantage of faster wireless broadband networks. That's important. IMO.

[baroffoos]

The article already countered #2 by pointing out that countries who "lost the race" ended up with faster, cheaper and more widespread access to 4g. And despite these countries having much better networks than the US, most companies did not just drop everything and move.

[Barrin92]

>Winning the "race to 5G" means the US will be the first to innovate in systems that take advantage of faster wireless broadband networks. That's important. IMO.

I'm not really sure if being the first is important or even beneficial. If that were true the United Kingdom would still be the world's superpower and myspace would still reign supreme. Being first is mostly an unthankful job because you're the one who does the most work while everyone else can copy.

[baroffoos]

Everyone else also gets the benefit of watching, seeing what went wrong and doing it better.

[wyattpeak]

> If that were true the United Kingdom would still be the world's superpower

I don't know if that's a good example. The UK benefitted enormously from its empire. I don't think anyone's proposing that the winner of the 5G race will be the leader forever, just that they'll be in a position of advantage.

[thaumasiotes]

> I'm not really sure if being the first is important or even beneficial. If that were true the United Kingdom would still be the world's superpower

Or, you know, Persia, or Akkad. There have been many firsts.

[techer]

Industrial Revolution I imagine.

[thaumasiotes]

England may have been the first to start powering machines with large-scale coal mining, but was it the first to start making iron tools? :D

[Despegar]

>Winning the "race to 5G" means the US will be the first to innovate in systems that take advantage of faster wireless broadband networks. That's important.

Why is being "first to innovate" important? What happens if we aren't first?

[xvilka]

Sometimes being second means to avoid the mistakes and downfalls of the first. So I would argue it is not the bad position either.

[thaumasiotes]

'The best way to learn something is when somebody else figures it out and tells you, "Don't go in that swamp. There are alligators in there."'

[ori_b]

The first to innovate tends to make the most money off of the innovation.

[Despegar]

Being first is often not a sustainable competitive advantage and we have a good case study in looking at the recent past with 3G and 4G. Apple makes all the profit in smartphones and all the incumbents like Nokia, RIM, Ericsson are gone.

[ori_b]

That's why you need to keep innovating if you want to keep making money. Turns out that doing a thing once isn't sufficient to profit off it for eternity.

[wpietri]

But Apple has rarely been the first to innovate. They were not first in the personal computer, the laptop, the MP3 player, the smartphone, or the smartwatch. Most of the true innovators there are dead.

[sandworm101]

Tell that to disney. IP protections are designed specifically so that a day of innovation may last a lifetime.

[inflatableDodo]

No, the first to innovate tend to be in research roles and rarely make the most money from their work.

[nitwit005]

In a world where so many people are on decent quality wifi at home, work, and sometimes even on their commute, I don't see a big potential for sudden innovation in consumer apps.

There is the theoretical "internet of things" usage, but such a product might have to wait for a global rollout regardless.

[woah]

What is 5g going to enable? All it does is allow cell towers to work better for stadiums and make billing for small plans smoother.

“The race for 5g” is just a way for the cell phone companies to push through a bunch of concessions by using jingoism before everyone gets 5g phones and realizes there isn’t much of a difference.

[mxcrossb]

I think the two are linked though. Imagine someone saying “why are we racing to the moon? Why are we racing to quantum computers?” If the benefit is clear, nobody asks about the race.

[darkpuma]

> "Imagine someone saying “why are we racing to the moon? Why are we racing to quantum computers?”

I can imagine that easily, the benefit of both of those is far from clear to many people.

[noelsusman]

That doesn't really convince me that coming in second matters for anything. What does it matter if we're a year or two behind?

[takanori]

You are technically correct. Updated the title.