[DyslexicAtheist]

in 2020 US AG[1] floated the idea of buying shares in Nokia or Ericsson to be able to have a say in this space (talking about "controlling the means of production" lol). For natsec this isn't enough which seems to be also the conclusion of DoD.

Having worked in this space, a company bidding here will not be able to do this without spending billions on implementing and being part of the non-military commercial market (and paying commercial rates for engineers to build it). It took commercial vendors nearly a decade to build 5G and the only reason they were so "fast" was because they had already experienced engineers on their payroll who understood the basics of 3G/4G.

if they accept bids it would be more realistic to just focus on a MIL spec equivalent documents of 3GPP specs and then have the Nokia or Ericsson sites in the US build it for them. Even they do this there is still the "Outsourced elephant in the room":

"5G: The outsourced elephant in the room" https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/5g-elephant-in-the-room/

If they're really serious about natsec the only way forward would be a complete isolation for the military network.

[1] https://www.ft.com/content/1aa61918-48fc-11ea-aeb3-955839e06...

[otoburb]

>>It took commercial vendors nearly a decade to build 5G and the only reason they were so "fast" was because they had already experienced engineers on their payroll who understood the basics of 3G/4G.

100% agree. Also, many of the large domain players (Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia, ZTE) actively participated in the 3GPP standards process to ensure they were kept abreast of what was being proposed. This is a pretty steep hill to climb for the US to build out a competitive domestic solution.

[rektide]

Sure seems like pursuing public source & public development might help generate some of that talent & know-how. If a nation has forgotten how to do something, or never knew in the first place (the Apollo Program), sometimes a climb is worthwhile, not only for where you get, but for what your nation learns & becomes along the way: greater. I'm in extreme favor of public-sourcing America into a nation with more more savvy & more skill at wireless connection. Get the ball rolling on getting better! Thankfully there seem like a lot of interested, civic minded folk out there, whose passion for radio-based connectivity & sharing that information is high.

Meanwhile our nation's cellular networks still run fantastically unsecure SS7, is my understanding.

Some kind of neat undertones of Secret History of Silicon Valley[1] here, except it's a different kind of protection, a different kind of guard for the world: not against military adversaries, but against our own inability to connect ourselves amid the software-run world.

[1] https://steveblank.com/secret-history/

[xxpor]

FWIW this isn't a RFP for a contract yet, it's a request to answer questions to shape a challenge which could turn into an actual contract.