Technology, Miao Wei.

Large Chinese manufacturers are already prepared to consider

alternative ideas and products.

"I very much liked the idea of synchronizing watches regarding the introduction of the 5G
communication standard. If that is done fast within the BRICS group, the standard will gain a
firmer foothold and the decision in its favor will encompass half of the globe’s population,"
Russian Communications Minister Nikolai Nikiforov, has said.

The technical idea behind the 5G standard is to use for wideband mobile access the
millimeter wave frequencies over 24 GHz, allowing to achieve transmission speeds over 10
Gbits/s, in other words, ten times faster than optical fiber connections allow for.

The countries that are unhappy about the United States’ heavy influence on the Internet are
already racing each other in the development of 5G standards. Just recently the European
Union and China declared they had agreed to develop 5G networks together. Earlier, the
European Union concluded similar agreements with Japan and South Korea.

Russia, too, has been taking steps to bolster its role in the development of 5G. At the end of
September it invited the International Telecommunication Union to standardize for 5G
networks frequency ranges of 4440-4500 MHz, 4800-5000 MHz and 5925-6425 MHz, which
are widely used in the country.

"Of course, the US leadership makes one feel uneasy," Professor Lyudmila Vasilenko, of the
presidential academy RANEPA, has told TASS. "The domination of one country - regardless
of what that country is — is not very good. There should always be an alternative. It is a very
different matter that we should not be disconnected from the rest of the world. We should
stay within the global system. But there must certainly remain some alternative routes."

Vasilenko said pressures from various Internet dictators never eased. "Microsoft Office
obviously dictates its terms. We are obliged to send our data and they control the PC in the
network. China has escaped this plight, because they have made their own platform and
remain independent in that sense. And we stay dependent. As a user I feel unprotected. The
world community will surely do something about that."

"The idea of cooperation at the regional level will always remain timely, because all countries
will never reconcile themselves with the thought that the Internet is a US defence industry
product and that the United States retains certain control functions in any situation, although
they may look purely nominal," the head of the international private law department at the
Russian Foreign Ministry’s Diplomatic Academy, Madina Kasenova, told TASS.

The agreement that the BRICS countries have just concluded concerns the development of
Internet technologies and means of communication, Kasenova said. "Restricting technologies
to just one country is impossible. Individual countries will be unable to achieve great success
without cooperation with others. But that surely does not mean that there will emerge some
other Internet. Attempts by the world community to create mechanisms providing an
alternative to the current world web will not succeed anyway."

First published by TASS.