Trump tweets about 6G

Somebody seems to have told US President Donald Trump there’s a mobile industry trade show coming up so he’s using his favoured medium to get involved.

Trump opened a two-part Tweet by saying “I want 5G, and even 6G, technology in the United States as soon as possible.” This laudable wish was presumably prompted by the imminence of Mobile World Congress 2019 and some kind of need to be seen to be aware of it, but it’s not at all clear what Trump expects them to achieve.

We’re not avid followers of Trump’s Twitter output but he generally seems to use the platform to do one of the following: trumpet his political achievements, defend himself from perceived attacks, insult people he doesn’t like, criticise the media, or just try to wind up as many people as possible. His telecoms tweets don’t seem to fall into any of these categories, however.

In his second Tweet he said “I want the United States to win through competition, not by blocking out currently more advanced technologies.” This is intriguing but again it’s not clear what he’s referring to. On the surface he seems to be berating domestic telcos for lagging behind in the 5G race, but another interpretation could be some kind of olive branch to Huawei, which offers some of the most advanced technologies. Who knows?

Whether that’s his primary intention or not, anything Trump tweets seems to trigger a legion of Twitter obsessives apparently just waiting to take offense. Some of the more ‘liked’ responses are worth paying attention to, if only to get a measure of how the message is being received. Be warned though, the Twitter rabbit-hole can be a very dark place.