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Comment by rrrrrrrrrrrryan | Hacker News Reader

I'm as much a proponent of free trade as the next guy, but I do think there's a strong argument for trying to build and maintaining one's own infrastructure whenever possible, even if it's a bit more expensive. Not just for national security concerns, but because they're big domestic projects and it's nice to have to the talent and knowledge at home.

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Just to note that purchasing equipment from Nokia and Ericsson doesn't mean that you are "building and maintaining one's own infrastructure".

As a bonus the network is also actively listened by all state players who have the ability to do so, regardless of supplier.

Right, I was making an argument for domestic solutions, which wouldn't include Nokia or Ericsson - I could've been more clear.

Mobile network equipment is complicated enough that you can't expect every country to make their own from scratch. It's a bit like trying to make a domestic mobile OS or web browser.

> equipment from Nokia and Ericsson doesn't mean that you are "building and maintaining one's own infrastructure".

More than that, it's buying from allies, both political and ideological. I regard most of Europe as a liberalism ally, I'm entirely ok with my nation's telecom gear coming from eg Germany, France, Britain, Sweden, Finland and so on.

They use software from Microsoft or Adobe, and hardware from nVidia, Cisco, Intel or AMD. I'm more than happy to use their telecom gear, including paying a higher price.

I think we already bungled that one with Nortel going bankrupt, and getting parted up and sold off. And I don't think the solution for that, should've been, lets bail them out because it's in the national interest. We're in this really weird state where these bailouts allow privatizing the profits and socializing the losses. Even if that didn't happen, would Nortel survive anyways with the major consolidations over the last 10 years.

It makes it really difficult, that within a country like Canada, can you make a competitive landscape of a local supply chain, and have it only cost a little bit more, across the millions of pages of standards that make up a mobile wireless network, when you only have 3 customers that make up the majority of the market, plus some regional operators. I think it ends up costing alot more, which is what drives the consolidation and integrated supply chains. And it's not easy to support from a policy perspective.

Edit: Another thought, although the hard part about bailouts is, in a worldwide economy, you're companies are also competing with other companies that may receive bailouts or other government support which makes this an extremely complicated topic.

You may be interested in the book “100 Days: The Rush to Judgement that Killed Nortel” by James Bagnall. This story should be better known as it is a cautionary tale of virtue signalling, both by American regulators and Nortel’s Board of Directors, trumping critical thinking. Ultimately a great deal of consumer value was destroyed due to the presumption of wrongdoing.

Thanks for the recommendation, I'll check it out.

> but I do think there's a strong argument for trying to build and maintaining one's own infrastructure whenever possible

I agree. Europe should not depend on (and funnel money to) The US with Microsoft licenses for government and CPUs.

All the tech we depend on comes from the US, almost nothing is home grown.

Would you agree that we should have our own or are you coming from a position of North American protectionism?

FWIW as an American expat, I think it does make a lot of sense for Europe to encourage local software and hardware industries. I think this may be where a lot of the FLOSS activism in Europe comes from.

Nokia and Ericsson are both European companies.

Yes, and the parent is advocating for North American equivalents.

I'm asking for European equivalents to AMD/Intel and Microsoft/Apple, which underpins our entire economy.

You could make a lesser case about Google/Facebook but realistically if they went away our governments would continue working.

If Microsoft deactivated our operating systems _or_ productivity software, our economy would be put back at least a decade.

Does ARM count as an alternative? I guess not since it's still mostly American companies actually producing products with the designs.

ARM was entirely bought by Japans Softbank during the currency slump that followed the brexit referendum result[0], since then softbank has sold majority shares to Chinese companies[1][2].

ARM Holdings is predominantly Chinese now.

[0]: https://www.theverge.com/2016/9/5/12798302/softbank-arm-acqu...

[1]: https://www.theregister.com/2018/06/06/softbank_offloads_51_...

[2]: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-39204744

Apologies, I was answering in the context of an alternative to North American dominance in the CPU industry rather than European equivalents.

But I didn't realise Softbank had sold on their $31bn stake. The BBC article states a $8bn chunk went to a Saudi-backed investment group, and the other sale was the majority stake of only ARM's Chinese subsidiary (worth $775.2m). From that it doesn't seem accurate to say ARM is now predominantly Chinese but maybe there are some other deals I also missed. To be honest, I lost interest once they sold to Softbank - 'in the country's interests' ha!

I think the "security concerns" are just a smokescreen .

That is, free trade was good as long we were on top of it, but now that we get a big competitor, it is not so good.

If you want that then you also want 100% open hardware. Because let's be honest, you will be wasting a lot of time and effort solving already existing problems a 100 times over if everyone does the same thing. Less reliance on one country or company and less chance of states spying on you.

> but I do think there's a strong argument for trying to build and maintaining one's own infrastructure whenever possible, even if it's a bit more expensive.

In the semiconductor/telecom equipment industry with very specialized and globalized supply chain, it's impractical if not impossible. No single country can have their entire electronic infrastructure within their own country borders, not China, not U.S., not even the European Union, certainly not Canada. So yeah, it's not about money.

> because they're big domestic projects and it's nice to have to the talent and knowledge at home.

That's wishful thinking. In the free capitalistic society with free trades, the capital(money) and efficiency drives the supply chain. With a little bit of geo-politics, perhaps it could happen, but even then it takes time and the government have to step in and invest - lots of manufacturing industries are capital heavy but margin thin, don't bet on private companies or corporations would invest against the globalization.

And that’s precisely where tariffs should come in.

I wonder what it would have taken to keep Nortel going?

One of the reasons used by Canada's telcos to rationalize Canada's sky-high wireless rates is that it costs them more to build out the networks than it does for other countries. I would hate to give them one more excuse to lean on by having them source this equipment domestically.

I'm American, but I'd love to see more of our infrastructure projects pseudo-nationalized, personally. Governments manage to build roads and deliver mail just fine, and I don't see why digital infrastructure couldn't have more government financing and involvement as well.

Some municipalities have tried to get into the high-bandwidth-ISP-as-a-public-utility business, because they’re too small for $BIG_TELECO to invest in, but they want fiber networks to attract businesses and remote tech workers. It’s mostly been unsuccessful because running a local and profitable ISP is hard.

In the few municipalities where they’ve been successful, the big telecom companies have been more successful in lobbying state legislatures to make such municipal enterprises illegal. “It won’t be fair to private businesses to have to compete with a tax-funded local teleco.”

It’s a reasonable argument, but it perpetuates the problem. Maybe the solution is for cities to award a prize (say, $2mm) to private ISPs that can offer high bandwidth connections.

It's not a reasonable argument at all.

It's like arguing that the USPS is "not fair" to companies like UPS or FedEx. Or that public buses are not fair to Uber. Or libraries to book stores.

Hey, I agree with you. I was just trying to give context on what’s happening, without passing judgement or inflections my opinion.

I guess I would rephrase it as “it’s not a totally unreasonable argument”, i.e. you can understand why it would be persuasive to small c conservatives and libertarians who would otherwise be pro-any-policy-that-attracts-business.

It depends on whether you see access to high bandwidth internet as a public utility or not. Arguably it is, because the economics of it don’t make usually make sense for private companies unless that private company is a monopoly.

You really don’t want the state being the practical arbiter of whether or not you can connect to the internet.

Sure, you might have legal recourse if they decide to unplug your entire political party’s ports one month before an election, but in the meantime, you’ve lost the election.

Right now you just go get a different SIM.

The state being in direct control of who and how to censor is a loaded gun aimed at the head of a free society.

Also it's important to keep in mind trade with China is not "free trade" since it's a one way street. China has massive barriers to entry, with high tariffs and restrictions making it extremely difficult to compete.

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