Comment by MomsAVoxell

Come on, it’s the BBC - which has a much wider spectrum of audience than you and me.

Think with it a little - the statement “in the 5G tower” is intended to bring the context of this event closer to those who are not knowledgeable about this technology, but would nevertheless read the article. You and I may understand that the economies of scale don’t make sense yet - but they could, some day, if this technology succeeds, be relevant to the local neighborhood.

To many, the 5G tower is the most mystical, mysterious technology in their neighborhood - and indeed, the silicon ingots being manufactured this way would, eventually, find their way to the local neighborhood if this technology is successful.

It would probably have been more appropriate to say “some day these ingots will power the supercomputers in your pocket”, which would be an accurate statement - but that is a whole order of magnitude of different economic scale than in the industrialization of cell networks. Maybe it’d be more appropriate for the BBC writer to have said that satellites might one day benefit from space-grown silicon wafers - but that is still to distant to the Mom and Pop readership they’re targeting in these articles…