U.S. considers ban on all Chinese-made 5G hardware | TECH(feed)

Hey everyone welcome back to tech feed i’m juliet beauchamp. I have a huge story for your today regarding the future of u-s 5g networks--and yes, it does involve huawei. Stick around.

Over the weekend, the wall street journal reported that the trump administration may potentially bar any 5-g equipment made in china from being used in the construction of united states’ 5-g networks. This potential--emphasis on the word potential--move could become a major roadblock in making widespread 5-g a reality in the u-s.

And equipment--physical, tangible hardware like switchers, routers and cell tower electronics--are necessary to deploy 5-g. While huawei being banned from 5-g network construction in the u-s probably won’t hinder 5-g construction--very few telecom providers in the united states use its equipment to begin with--building networks without chinese-made parts could be near impossible.

So the huawei ban really opened the door for competitors like nokia or ericcson to be some of the top providers for 5-g network construction in the u-s. Quick recap: the trump administration banned business transactions with huawei due to an alleged security risk under the assumption that, as a chinese company, huawei must cooperate and potentially share data with, the chinese government. Huawei has repeatedly denied these claims. Nokia and ericcson are not chinese companies--nokia is finnish and ericcson is swedish--but that doesn’t mean they don’t rely on chinese-made goods somewhere in their supply chain.

So this proposal would require these 5-g network providers to totally alter their supply chains and ensure any piece of equipment headed to the u-s was not manufactured in china. This is part of a one hundred fifty-day cybersecurity review that president trump called as part of his huawei ban executive order. These talks are in the beginning stages. It would be very difficult, probably pretty expensive and take a lot of time to actually shift supply chains in such a dramatic way. And, as usual--i cannot mention anything regarding the u-s and china without noting the trade war going on between the two countries. So, it’s possible this may never happen if the u-s and china reach some sort of agreement soon--especially ahead of the g-20 summit this week. As always, i’ll keep you up to date with this whole huawei/5-g/united states story.

Thanks for watching this episode of tech feed. If you liked this video be sure to give it a thumbs up and subscribe to our channel. I’m sure you guys have thoughts about this proposal--so leave them in the comments below. Is it warranted? Is it overkill? Let me know. See you next time.