The Week in 5G: 10/15/2019 — EU Report Warns of 5G Security Risks, 5G "Hackathon" Slated for November
By Ed Biller
The European Union (EU) published last week a report warning of the risks surrounding 5G adoption, focusing on two main themes: first, that 5G technology will create “new challenges and larger attack surfaces while exposing consumers to more security threats than ever,” reports Tom’s Hardware. “The second class of risk is related to suppliers of 5G equipment and how much each country would depend on a single supplier for its 5G network.”
“Among the various potential actors, non-EU States or State-backed are considered as the most serious ones and the most likely to target 5G networks,” reads a press release that accompanied the report, stopping short of mentioning any companies by name.
Tom’s Hardware writer Lucian Armasu wonders in the article if the report is “too little, too late,” given that many countries in the 28-member EU already have inked deals with providers.
Among those operators is Switzerland’s Sunrise, which claims to have set – along with partner Huawei -- what it claims is a 5G network speed record, reports Light Reading, “with a top downlink rate of 3.67 Gbit/s being achieved with multiple 5G smartphones and one 5G cell in Zurich. The test was carried out in the 100MHz C-Band on Sunrise's commercial network, using commercial Huawei equipment conforming to 3GPP standards.”
Per Reuters, Germany also has stated it will not succumb to U.S. pressure to shut the door on Huawei, or any other vendor, on an “up-front basis.”
Related, Latvia’s Ministry of Economics has announced the first 5G Policymakers' Hackathon, which will be held in Riga, Latvia at the end of November. According to a press release, the Hackathon aims to “bring together participants from corporations, startups, mobile operators, European and national policymakers, and lawyers to map existing policy and develop recommendations for policy adaptation to support 5G deployment in the Baltic Sea Region.”
The Nordic Council of Ministers and the European Commission also have a hand in the event “to ensure effective collaboration and maximum relevance of the hackathon's output.”
In technology news, Phone Arena speculates that Nokia’s 8.2 5G phone is on track for release early in 2020. The writer notes that Nokia is likely to change the 5G phone’s name to avoid confusion with its (non-5G) model, set for release by the end of 2019.
Meanwhile, Nikkei Asian Review posits that Google will release its 5G-capable Pixel 4 phone as early as this week (the tech giant hosts a launch event for new products on Oct. 15).
Chipmaker Intel is putting its finger in the software pie by agreeing to buy Smart Edge, “a software that helps split up data and store it closer to users to make computing devices respond faster,” reports Reuters.
Finally, there is a new”5G” in town: the DC (Comics) universe’s latest reset, wherein many popular heroes will pass their capes down to new iterations of the character. DC is looking to set a distinct timeline in its universe, with four previous generations, hence the “5G” moniker for the newest.
The Beat is aware of this overlap, noting last week that 5G is “likely a placeholder title, considering 5G is also the name of the new small-cell wireless technology that’s reshaping the nation’s high-speed Internet infrastructure as we speak.”