A Peter Thiel-Backed Company Would Benefit the Most From Trump’s 5G Plan

The future of wireless Internet access in America is unclear but it will be decided soon. The debate grew more serious last month, when the Trump re-election campaign announced its support for a government-controlled 5G network. There are many things to like about the idea of open, standardized access to the wireless airwaves, as promoters of the idea have argued. But there’s also a major problem: The plan would be a massive payout to a company hand-selected by the Trump administration, for a perhaps unexpected reasonpatents. The Trump campaign proposal would essentially allocate a range of wireless spectrum, the radio frequencies by which mobile phones and all other wireless devices communicate, for open access to fifth-generation (5G) network devices. Those devices would need to follow a set of coordination rules for determining when to communicate, lest they end up interfering with each other like people who talk over each other at a crowded dinner party.