The FINANCIAL — Huawei Technologies, the world’s top telecom equipment maker, on Thursday said it had secured more than 90 commercial 5G contracts worldwide, an increase of nearly 30 from last year despite the relentless pressure from U.S. authorities.
According to NIKKEI Asian Review Huawei’s announcement is an apparent attempt to rebut Ericsson, the Chinese company’s biggest rival, as the Swedish manufacturer last week said it leads 5G commercialization with 79 contracts as of the end of last year. “We have 91 commercial 5G contracts worldwide, including 47 from Europe,” Ryan Ding, president of Huawei’s carrier business group, told a press conference in London on Tuesday.
“One year ago, I said we are leading by 18 months ahead of our competitors in 5G technology. Now, we still maintain that leadership.” Huawei also said it would invest $20 million in 5G innovation projects in the next five years in the U.K., which recently defied U.S. objections to grant the Chinese company partial involvement in building the nation’s 5G infrastructure.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo described Huawei and other tech companies backed by China as “Trojan horses for Chinese intelligence” and Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Beijing is carrying out a “nefarious strategy” via Huauei, according to CNBC.
US Department of Justice is charging Huawei and two of its US subsidiaries with racketeering and conspiracy to steal trade secrets. Germany is the next battleground between the U.S. and Huawei after the U.K. decided to allow the Chinese firm a partial role in its 5G networks.
Germany has yet to decide whether to exclude Huawei.
It’s not Huawei’s version of 5G that is different: 5G standards are set by international agreement and Huawei and others must adhere to them, wrote Godfree Roberts, Ed.D. Education & Geopolitics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst (1973) on QUORA answering question about difference between 5G Huawei version VS other companies. It is Huawei’s implementation of 5G that sets it apart. It’s the lowest-cost provider and the only provider of end-to-end solutions for national telecoms: from servers to cell towers to handsets, all designed to perform perfectly with each other.
Unless it approves Huawei the US will be forced to integrate more costly, less functional, less compatible, less upgradeable components and pay twice as much, take twice as long and endure years of inferior service. Huawei is literally unrivaled in enhanced mobile broadband. Only Huawei produces every element of a 5G system and assembles turnkey networks–from antennas to the power stations to chips–at scale and cost. It’s just what busy telcos want: one-stop shopping at a fraction of the cost of competitors. And Huawei manufactures its own stuff, too.
Here’s one of their many production lines: Much of the cost of implementing 5G (and much of its benefit) stems from the fact that it requires 5 times more cell sites than 4G. Cell sites are heavy and expensive to install because they need a crane operator to lift them into place and technicians in cherry-pickers to hook them up, Roberts wrote. So Huawei shrunk cell sites’ dimensions by 50% and cut the weight of its 64T64R 5G base station to 70 pounds so two people can install them without expensive cranes
Huawei truly does provide mature and cost-effective equipment. It is one of the few players offering an end-to-end 5G solution, with particular strengths in radio access networking. However, it’s unclear how well the company’s systems integrate with existing 4G infrastructure from other vendors. The security of Huawei’s products has been assessed to be subpar, and the long-term performance of its 5G networks also remains questionable. Countries that choose this low-cost option for fear of losing out in the 5G race risk creating an unstable and insecure foundation for their future societies and economies, Elsa B. Kania and Lindsey R. Sheppard wrote in Foreign Policy magazine.
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