5G and the digital imagination: Pacific Islands perspectives from Fiji and Papua New Guinea

Abstract

This article explores the ways in which 5G networks are imagined in the Pacific Islands nations of Fiji and Papua New Guinea. What promises, anxieties and futures have the prospects of 5G provoked, and for whom in particular? To answer this question, we consider how current mobile network users, corporate techno-elites and state actors such as regulators and politicians imagine 5G futures. We argue that 5G deployment is challenged by the cosmological orientations of those who do not share the vision of a modern, secular state driven by economic development. In addition, any attempt by national governments and mobile network operators to build the infrastructure necessary for 5G are subject to the geopolitics of China and the US and its allies. Reflecting upon the tensions between cosmopolitics and geopolitics, this article demonstrates how both sociocultural and political economic forces have come together to frame digital imaginations of 5G networks.