[southerntofu]

5G is not supported by most phones. It requires a lot more infrastructure (base stations) than traditional GSM because of shorter range, so operators worldwide are currently on a concrete craze destroying the environment ever more. And it opens a lot more avenues for surveillance. All of that without bringing any measurable improvement of life to anyone.

Why the hell would i want free-software stack for that tech? On one hand it'll be used to legitimize 5G in the first place which is far from consensual topic, even in tech-friendly circles. On the other hand, i conceptually appreciate the idea to run my own GSM stack, BUT 5G is mostly worse (if i want short range i'll just do wifi thanks) and even if i run my own stack, commercial operators will never peer with me so my users won't be able to talk with anyone else (pretty useless).

In my very personal view, cell phone networks are useless pieces of tech that need to be replaced with proper Internet infrastructure.

[ng55QPSK]

"5G is not supported by most phones." - "It requires a lot more infrastructure (base stations) than traditional GSM because of shorter range". Is not fully correct. 5G brings a new air-interface and a new system architecture. Your 4G phone might use a 5G network already without you noticing - as the operators moveed to 5G system architecture already while keeping their 4G air-interface. And you can run 5G air-interface on the same spectrum 4G (or 3G) was on.

[southerntofu]

You are of course technically correct. However, most providers here have not deployed 5G yet, and are facing waves of sabotage with their trial deployments as the people are angry due to the number of controversies surrounding 5G. The usual criticisms of surveillance capitalism and IoT apply, but also:

> The report, published Saturday, found that 5G networks could be responsible for an extra 3 to 7 billion extra tonnes of CO2 released into atmosphere.

https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20201220-deploying-5g-wil...

> moveed to 5G system architecture already while keeping their 4G air-interface

Yes, so that means operator have to deploy their new 5G towers. And in addition, they still have to maintain existing infrastructure, or redeploy 2G/4G setup on their new towers. In my opinion, that's a strong maintenance burden, and a strong waste of resources that we could do without.

But what's really shocking is that most of the population still has bad connectivity, and those who have the 4G are already pretty happy with it. It's an understatement to say it's an insult to pour billions of $$$$ into 5G when some folks still don't have any (or so little) xDSL or even 2G.

[ng55QPSK]

Most operators are deploying 5g in the last years already with 4g handware that can be software updated to 5g. And the 'legacy' systems run in a lot of cases as software defined radio on 4G hardware. The only thing you see is exchanging antenna systems, because that's one of the things where physical relation (spectrum = wavelength) is showing up.