Can Net Neutrality Survive 5G?

BARCELONA—A one-size-fits-all approach to net neutrality won't work in a 5G earth, Ericsson CEO Börje Ekholm said at an MWC printing conference.

Opinions "Not all traffic is created equal," he said. "In the 5G future, mission-critical apps such as remote surgery will have to accept priority over other traffic. There will need to be a regulatory government that allows the service provider to create services that are differentiated based on user experiences."

Here's Ekholm'south problem: he'southward Swedish. And then he'southward probably thinking about reasonable governments that operate based on some sort of societal consensus, not the completely cleaved politics we have in the U.s..

Our political net neutrality debate currently encounter-saws between the extremes of "ISPs should be immune to put their customers in debt bondage!" and "ISPs tin't shape traffic at all!" when the reality on the ground is already much more complicated, especially when you include mobile networks, which aren't neutral at all.

"We cannot discriminate based on content or degrade functioning," Ekholm said, "simply I think in that location are mission-disquisitional employ cases which need to be idea of differently. Remote surgery is one. Can you let that traffic not to have priority? I can't see that. That's probably why we need a unlike type of regulatory regime here."

While Due north America is helping bulldoze early on 5G development considering of more high-ring available spectrum, Ekholm said, that pb could shrink if Due north American regulators don't release more than mid-band spectrum for 5G, he said.

In this annotator'south view, an inconsistent government approach and a lack of trust between regime, industry, and the people may be the biggest hurdle of all.