5G, COVID-19 and a history without end

As it was in 1961 so it is in 2020 and so it will ever………..

I am not one to complete the above doggerel verse, some kind of kindergarten psycho-babble; because its completion is trapped in a future that is not so inspiring and has very little to offer but which we are capable of mending and changing today should we have leaders that can break through the strictures of daunting but fleeting challenges. 

As it was in 1961….Just when a pall of death seems to be blanketing the world with New York, the financial hub of the global community locked in painful throes of survival, the President of the United States, Mr. Donald Trump still found the presence of mind to deliver one of the most aspirational speeches of his administration. The speech without equivocation outlined his administration’s plan for 5G deployment in the days ahead. That is leadership. To stand in the nexus of disaster and still be able to give hope; carry the flame on behalf of the people for a glorious victory lap in the future. 

As it was in 1961……5G came into the story as being the cause of the dreaded COVID-19 which is harvesting deaths across the globe. In the United Kingdom of all places 5G base stations were being burnt because the people sought to take physical action that could eliminate this painful reaper in an unripe field. 

In Nigeria, there was an uproar. All of a sudden, sense and decency failed with some respected personalities even ready to swear on the grave of their ancestors that they met 5G on the way actually killing people. At this point nobody had remembered to consult the regulator, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), to state its position on the matter. In moments of panic ideas are as useless as sawdust and as cold as ash whose fire died over a decade ago.

When the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr Isa Pantami, came on live programme on Channel TV network news in one of those evenings, he played for political correctness and further obfuscated issues. The people needed clear communications from the leadership and not equivocation and double speak.

As it was in 1961…. In these dire times, Trump displaying his usual showmanship and the kind of swagger associated with American leaders, braved the mood of the times to communicate the US plan for 5G. There was no mistaking the fact that he was spoiling for a fight should the position of the US be challenged. In fact, there had been a subtle fight all along, quite subterranean and politically disguised. 

In a transcript released by the White House on April 12, 2020, titled: Remarks by President Trump on United States 5G Deployment, Trump who observed that 5G to him is the future, declared very confidently: “We cannot allow any other country to out-compete the United States in this powerful industry of the future.  We are leading by so much in so many different industries of that type, and we just can’t let that happen.  The race to 5G is a race America must win, and it’s a race, frankly, that our great companies are now involved in.  We’ve given them the incentive they need.  It’s a race that we will win.”

It will interest you here to know what 5G means to him and the way he presented it to the US public. In his words: “Secure 5G networks will absolutely be a vital link to America’s prosperity and national security in the 21st century.
“5G will be as much as 100 times faster than the current 4G cellular networks.  It will transform the way our citizens work, learn, communicate, and travel.  It will make American farms more productive, American manufacturing more competitive, and American healthcare better and more accessible.  Basically, it covers almost everything, when you get right down to it.  Pretty amazing.

“And just as 4G networks paved the way for smartphones and all of the exciting breakthroughs — they made possible so many things — this will be more secure and resilient.  5G networks will also create astonishing and really thrilling new opportunities for our people — opportunities that we’ve never even thought we had a possibility of looking at.”

Watching Trump make this declaration were Ajit Pai, Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) – just like the NCC in Nigeria –  and some top members of his administration. Trump never for once directed any of these officials to do something instead he challenged them to rise to the new thinking of the United States. Trump didn’t position his presidency to lead the deployment of the 5G  technology instead he openly fanned out the responsibility to the FCC and the private sector, the latter he described as being able to do a better job than the government. 

Hear him: “In the United States, our approach is private-sector driven and private-sector led.  The government doesn’t have to spend lots of money.  According to some estimates, the wireless industry plans to invest $275 billion in 5G networks, creating 3 million American jobs quickly — very quickly — and adding $500 billion to our economy.”

Trump is about America, Americans and their world view which should define the view of the world, otherwise there could be some international hostility. Pai rubbed some needed balm into the President’s position when he summarized the President’s position in the opening lines of his response in the following manner: 

“Mr. President, as you observed, America must win the race to 5G, the next generation of wireless connectivity.  And this matters for two key reasons:

“The first is national competitiveness.  We want the good-paying jobs that develop and deploy 5G technologies — jobs that support some of the folks in this room — to be created here, in America.  We want these technologies to give our economy a leg up as we compete against the rest of the world.

“The second reason U.S. leadership matters is that 5G will improve Americans’ lives in so many ways, from precision agriculture, to smart transportation networks, to telemedicine, and more.  We want Americans to be the first to benefit from this new digital revolution while protecting our innovators and our citizens.  And as you pointed out, Mr. President, we don’t want rural Americans to be left behind.”

Mind you these fellows are standing in the wreckage of COVID-19 to talk about their place in an unfolding monstrous technology. 

As it was in 1961..… 

May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy made his epochal Man on the Moon speech to the joint session of the US Congress requesting for funds to enable America land a man on the moon by the end of the decade. At the time the Soviet Union were miles ahead by sending the Sputnik into space in 1957. The United States wanted to expand history in a battle the country must win by landing a man on the moon and returning him to base safely. 

In what may look then as unusual futurism, Kennedy stated: “Space is open to us now; and our eagerness to share its meaning is not governed by the efforts of others. We go into space because whatever mankind must undertake, free men must fully share……First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.”

The President had given an order. Between 1960 and 1973 about $28bn (about $283bn in today’s inflation) was spent on the Apollo project with over 400, 000 people working behind the scene. 

July 20, 1969, American landed Apollo 11 on the moon with a spaceship that carried Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin and Michael Collins. Neil Armstrong became the first man ever to walk on the moon and he planted the American flag firmly as a totem of American adventurism and dominance in perpetuity. 

I was in the primary school in 1969. Within the period, Nigeria, unable to manage promising independence, had graduated into a full scale war. We heard of Apollo 11 on radio as it was celebrated all over the world. But what was our response as a people? Answer. When people develop red eyes because of some infections, it was called Apollo, some kind of punishment for looking at the sky for too long a time. But the ailment was actually conjunctivitis, thanks to my Secondary school teachers at ACC, Irrua, years later.  

As it was in 1961……

Nigeria has not been sleeping concerning 5G. November 25, 2019, MTN had a public demonstration of three months trial of 5G technology. The excitement and aplomb that greeted that occasion gleefully celebrated by even government officials have nearly now been attenuated by feeble response of the Ministry of Communications and Digital economy to the controversy that trailed 5G’s role in the outbreak of COVID-19. 

Thankfully, the Regulator came out with a very firm position declaring, “There is no correlation between 5G Technology and COVID-19. 5G is an advancement on todays’ 4G technology designed to transform the world positively.”

NCC also noted that “in line with our regulatory process with respect to technology neutrality, type-approval and other regulations are aimed at protecting the citizens  and ensuring standards are complied with in the Nigerian telecoms industry; NCC ensures that adequate trial is conducted before a new technology is introduced.”

Interesting. But here is my observation. In 1969, when humans walked on the moon we shouted (Apollo) eye infection. 1n 2020, when a new wave of technology is taking over the world we are shouting Coronavirus. 

This burlesque must stop. The NCC must dust up its books, study the Nigerian Communications Act 2003 afresh and plan for Nigeria post COVID-19. 

5G is a monster of technology. Whoever controls it controls the future of the world. No doubt we can’t control it but we must harvest its advantages the way we harvested the advantages of mobile technology (GSM in our local understanding).

Okoh Aihe writes from Abuja