The US announced that it has amended its ban on US companies working with Huawei. This means that US companies will now be able to work with the Chinese technology giant in setting standards for technologies . US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, however, said that the policy change does not soften the government’s stance on Huawei, which is still on the US blacklist called the “Entity List”. Instead, the amendment was made to ensure that US companies will be able to contribute to important activities in which Huawei has a strong participation, such as 5G technology, artificial intelligence AI and other technologies.
Ross said the United States will not lose its leadership role in global innovation. This action recognizes the importance of leveraging American ingenuity to advance and protect the country’s economic and national security. He added that the Commerce Department is committed to defending U.S. national security and foreign policy interests by encouraging American industry to fully participate and support U.S. technologies as they become international standards. The announcement follows Washington’s decision last month to restrict supply of semiconductors, requiring companies to obtain a license to sell products to the Chinese tech giant.
Canadian telecoms companies have also blocked Huawei from building networks , signing deals with rivals of the Chinese giant. The Chinese network equipment provider has also been blocked in Australia and New Zealand after the GCSB blocked Spark from using Huawei kit in November 2018. Meanwhile, Huawei rival Nokia has been selected by China Unicom to help build a standalone 5G network in China. Nokia said it has been awarded about 10% of China Unicom’s 5G core network. The Finnish network equipment provider will help build connections, provide bandwidth management, scale and secure networks, and open up the 5G network to support new use cases such as network sharding. The two companies had previously signed an agreement for Nokia to provide a cloud-based VIMS platform for China Unicom’s VoLTE network. Nokia currently has a 17% stake in China Unicom’s VoLTE network. Nokia also announced that it has partnered with Broadcom to develop chips for 5G equipment. This is Nokia’s third such agreement, following those with Intel and Marvell. The two companies will develop new custom system-on-chip processors that will be integrated into Nokia’s “5G Powered by ReefShark” portfolio and deployed in several of Nokia’s network solutions. Like Nokia, Ericsson announced that it has signed agreements with all three major telecommunications organizations in the country: China Unicom, China Telecom and China Mobile. Ericsson did not provide details of the deals, however. Announcing its 5G contracts, Ericsson added that it would experience a “hit” of about 1 billion Swedish crowns in the second quarter from the write-off of pre-commercial inventory for the Chinese market. Ericsson said that results in the second quarter of 2020 are expected to be negative due to high upfront costs for new products.
