The Washington Post And AT&T Team Up To Over-hype 5G

from the hype-it-up dept

Buried underneath the blistering hype surrounding fifth-generation (5G) wireless is a quiet but unpopular reality: the technology is being over-hyped to spike lagging cell phone and network gear sales, and early incarnations were rushed to market in a way that prioritized marketing over substance. That's not to say that faster 5G networks won't be a good thing when they arrive at scale several years from now, but early offerings have been almost comical in their shortcomings to the point where, at least in tech policy circles, 5G has become a sort of magic pixie dust, capable of fixing anything.

AT&T has repeatedly lied about 5G availability by pretending its 4G network is 5G. Verizon has repeatedly hyped early non-standard launches that, when reviewers actually got to take a look, were found to be barely available. And both companies have worked overtime to suggest 5G will revolutionize things like brain surgery, when a closer look past the press release usually reveals such claims to be little more than silly bunk.

Whereas normally it would be journalism's role to point these falsehoods out and deflate marketing hype, apparently major papers have decided to join the fun. The Washington Post and AT&T this week announced a new partnership that both sides claim in press materials will somehow revolutionize journalism. Says AT&T of the new effort:

"AT&T and The Washington Post are working together on the future of digital storytelling. Teams at both companies will experiment with new formats and see what immersive journalism can do better as the world is increasingly connected to 5G. What could this look like? Think about using virtual or augmented reality to put you in the middle of a congressional hearing or giving you a front row seat at a campaign rally. Or perhaps you could see the effects of climate change by taking a virtual tour of a glacier with a digital expert by your side."

The problem with these claims is that there's nothing inherent in 5G that will help "revolutionize journalism" that wasn't possible via existing telecom technology. Outlets like the Post already have access to ultra-fast gigabit WiFi and gigabit Ethernet, not to mention 30 Mbps+ 4G networks. Sure, 5G will be faster and more reliable when it's deployed at scale five years from now, but much like the sector's claim that 5G will revolutionize surgery (nobody's going to use a wireless connection when a fiber to Ethernet hardline is available), these pie in the sky claims tend to be lacking in the supporting evidence department.

I mean maybe something genuinely interesting comes out of such a partnership, but the Washington Post blog about this partnership reads like a damn advertisement (because it is one):

"The Post has focused heavily on the reader experience, and an important part of that is our ability to create an immersive, engaging experience along with our reporting and to deliver that with the best site and app performance readers expect from us,” said Scot Gillespie, Chief Technology Officer at The Post. “With AT&T’s 5G technology, we will not only be able to deliver news more quickly, but we will also be able to deliver it in completely new and compelling ways that are enabled by leveraging the capabilities of 5G."

That's indistinguishable from a press release. It's worth noting that the New York Times struck a similar partnership with Verizon earlier this year, though neither paper has detailed the underlying financial details of these partnerships. It's pretty telling of the era that nobody at either paper thought such a partnership could potentially represent a possible conflict of interest as they cover one of the most heavily hyped tech shifts in telecom history.

You'd hope that as they cement these relationships both papers will point out things like the fact that wireless carriers are actively trying to make it harder to know where 5G really is. Or the fact that AT&T has routinely used bogus phone icons to pretend modified 4G networks are actually 5G. Or that thanks to monopoly domination of the sector, Americans are going to pay an arm and a leg for 5G service. Or how thanks to the industry's refusal to deploy fiber to more rural and less affluent parts of America (despite billions in tax breaks and subsidies), 5G will have scattered availability to the regions that need it most.

Again while it's possible something marginally interesting could come out of these experiments, the lion's share of promises and claims related to 5G have by and large been over-hyped bunk. Hopefully both papers remember it's their jobs to debunk this kind of nonsense, not amplify it.

Filed Under: 5g, media, overhype
Companies: at&t, washington post