Watch: Trevor Noah explains what 5G is, and why China and the US are going to war over it
Did you know that with a 5G network, you can download a two-hour long movie in just 3.6 seconds?
The latest in the segment If You Don’t Know, Now You Know of The Daily Show with Trevor Noah is an explainer on what 5G is, and why the United States and China are in a race to further develop and control this technology.
The 5G technology will reportedly be up to twenty times faster than the current 4G standard. To put things in perspective, downloading a two-hour long movie takes 26 hours on a 3G network and six minutes on a 4G network, while it will only take 3.6 seconds on a 5G network.
China and the United States are locked in a power struggle over who will master the technology first and make it available for public usage. According to The Daily Show, when the US won the 4G race, it provided a boost of nearly $100 billion to the gross domestic product of the country. If the US also wins the race over 5G, it will create nearly 3 million jobs in the country, apart from providing a $500 billion boost to the GDP.
Having access to 5G technology also means dictating what people do over the internet, which, Trevor Noah says, is everything.
Currently, the biggest player in 5G technology is the Chinese tech giant Huawei. On May 15, the United States President Donald Trump signed an order banning American telecom firms from using equipment manufactured by foreign companies, effectively banning Huawei. The reason cited was a “threat to national security”.
