Intelligence agencies across the English-speaking world are in widespread agreement about the race to roll out next-generation mobile networks. Top officials from Australia, the UK, Canada and the United States have all said recently that using Chinese telecom giant Huawei’s equipment poses a national security threat.
For service providers in those countries, going along with that assessment comes with a catch. There is no good alternative.
The United States, for its part, offers no competitive fifth-generation wireless network equipment. Europe’s Nokia and Ericsson, meanwhile, are both struggling to catch up to Huawei. South Korea’s Samsung is investing heavily in the area but has come to the party late.
Huawei has been able to offer equipment and services at a fraction of the price of its competitors – a feat that has prompted accusations from both the United States and the European Union that it benefited from unfair government subsidies. The firm has grown exponentially in the process to leapfrog Nokia and Ericsson and become the world’s largest telecommunications equipment supplier by a wide margin.
This is despite the fact that they have long been almost entirely cut out of the US market.
UK executives summed up the sorry predicament of the US-led effort to boycott Huawei, per The Wall Street Journal:
“Executives at one major British wireless carrier say Huawei can deliver products nearly a year before Nokia and Ericsson can offer hardware with comparable technology. They said they were telling U.K. officials, who plan to decide by spring 2019 whether to exclude major Huawei equipment from the country, that blacklisting Huawei could delay by nine months the U.K.’s launch of 5G, the coming generation of superfast wireless technology.”
Nokia and Ericsson, the report says, are also wary that they may be shut out of China’s market if they take advantage of Huawei being shut out of other markets. Indeed, at 15,000, Nokia’s workforce inside the China region is about double that in its home base of Finland. Ericsson, meanwhile, has 12,000 employees in northeast Asia.
Australia and New Zealand have already signed on to the US boycott of Huawei’s 5G gear, leaving their service providers with no choice but to wait for lagging and more expensive alternatives. But there still appears to be resistance in the UK, France and Germany. 2019 will be the year when companies in those countries either hit the ground running with Huawei or are reluctantly forced to save other firms from a terminal decline into irrelevance.
Rik Ruiters Chinese haven’t yet landed n the Moon…. but they will make excellent astronauts…. small, no hair, not big limbs to be floating about and plenty to send up in case the first ones dont come back…. after all the CCP dont care about human lives.
WM Wong Your allusion is to W culture….. just like the CCP stole ideas from K Marx, was he Chinese ?
WM Wong Your allusion is to W culture….. just like the CCP stole ideas from K Marx, was he Chinese ?
Rick Hassan Chinese arent producing enough cannon fodder (I mean babies) either
Rick Hassan Chinese arent producing enough cannon fodder (I mean babies) either
Samit Basu
As you said Samsung is the consumer of 5G equipment.
Samit Basu
As you said Samsung is the consumer of 5G equipment.
Raimundo Ferreira very true
Raimundo Ferreira very true
I would rather let china steal my personal info than the US so Boycott apple
I would rather let china steal my personal info than the US so Boycott apple
Just the same shit like Supermicro being accused by Bloomberg having malicious hardware on their motherboard.
Just the same shit like Supermicro being accused by Bloomberg having malicious hardware on their motherboard.
Ramon David Yes, they will dominate the hell!
Ramon David Yes, they will dominate the hell!
Ramon David Yes, they will dominate the he’ll!
Hope this is not another WMD story came up from USA and supported by the same allies. They destroyed Iraq by creating WMD story! They walked away without saying Sorry!
Hope this is not another WMD story came up from USA and supported by the same allies. They destroyed Iraq by creating WMD story! They walked away without saying Sorry!
There are essential differences between 3G and 5G, 5G will enable ultra low latency high bandwidth connectivity for almost all devices in the future (cellphones, home internet connections, phones, cars, and so on), has a much higher precision which can locate any device anywhere, therefore, an undetectable hardware attack via 5G would be something similar to an existential national security threat in a future smart world based on 5G infrastructure.
There are essential differences between 3G and 5G, 5G will enable ultra low latency high bandwidth connectivity for almost all devices in the future (cellphones, home internet connections, phones, cars, and so on), has a much higher precision which can locate any device anywhere, therefore, an undetectable hardware attack via 5G would be something similar to an existential national security threat in a future smart world based on 5G infrastructure.