The US has eased restrictions on Huawei to allow American companies to participate with the Chinese telecoms firm in developing 5G standards.
In a press release, the US Department of Commerce stated: “This action is meant to ensure Huawei’s placement on the Entity List in May 2019 does not prevent American companies from contributing to important standards-developing activities despite Huawei’s pervasive participation in standards-development organizations.”
Debate continues over whether Huawei’s equipment presents national security risks, but its technical expertise and innovation are widely acknowledged.
Huawei is one of the world’s largest telecommunications vendors and plays an active role in setting new standards. A report from Strategy Analytics indicates Huawei has submitted more overall contributions to end-to-end 5G standards than any other company.
“According to our assessment, leading infrastructure vendors – Huawei, Ericsson and Nokia – made more significant contributions to 5G standards than other studied companies,” said Sue Rudd, Director of Networks and Platforms Service at Strategy Analytics.
“Huawei leads in terms of overall contributions to the end-to-end 5G standards, while Ericsson leads in TSG [Technical Specification Groups] / WG [Working Groups] chairmanship and Nokia in approved/agreed ratio of 5G contribution papers.”
US Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross said the decision to relax limits on working with the Chinese vendor is intended to ensure American firms can continue to shape global standards.
“The United States will not cede leadership in global innovation. This action recognizes the importance of harnessing American ingenuity to advance and protect our economic and national security,” Ross explained.
“The Department is committed to protecting US national security and foreign policy interests by encouraging US industry to fully engage and advocate for US technologies to become international standards.”
The change does not signal a complete reversal in US policy toward Huawei, but it does permit collaboration between American and Chinese companies on the technical work that shapes global 5G standards.
(Image Credit: Wilbur Ross by Gage Skidmore under CC BY-SA 2.0 license)
Interested in hearing industry leaders discuss topics like this? Consider attending industry events where standards, security and emerging technologies are explored in depth, including conferences focused on 5G, IoT, blockchain, AI, big data, cloud and cybersecurity.