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‘How long does it take to download a two-hour-long movie in high-definition?’ This question might not make sense once 5G networks are fully operational because the movie will probably download before the sentence is finished. A file that took more than 20 hours to transfer at the beginning of the century will need less than 5 seconds to move from the cloud to a device in a few years from now. That is how fast 5G is and, typically for revolutionary technologies, it will have far-reaching implications, not only for the digital economy but also for security in domestic and international politics.[1] So far, security concerns have been met with protectionist responses and a trade war between the US and China entailing mutual bans of proprietary 5G equipment. The emerging alternative to this zero-sum game is an open and interoperable 5G architecture—called Open RAN—that claims to favour free trade, fair competition, and international cooperation. This paper examines Europe’s possible entanglement in this new Cold War for the digital age.
