Huawei Technologies Co Ltd has made it difficult for European network operators to eliminate the company from list of equipment suppliers for their next-generation 5G wireless service, said Randall Stephenson, AT&T Inc Chief Executive on Wednesday.
The companies who used equipment from Huawei in their 4G deployments are now required to use Huawei’s equipment for 5G networks too as Chinese firm’s equipment for 5G networks lacks interoperability with equipments other than Huawei. And that is the real problem facing the European operators when they say they got a problem as they are out of options for 5G equipments vendors, said Stephenson at a speech in Washington.
U.S. government, which remained urging other ally countries to eliminate Huawei from their 5G network roll outs, could perform well to explain security risks associated with the equipments provided by the Huawei, Stephenson said.
In the years ahead, 5G network technology will be driving all utilities, factories, traffic management and refineries in the United States and it also will be helping to strengthen technology to be used in the autonomous vehicles. And the biggest risk related to the use of Huawei equipment is not that it might provide Chinese government with backdoors to listen to our conversations or collect our data, but it will be the core company providing equipment for the technology with which so much of our infrastructure will be attached, and it is deemed necessary for us to be cautious about that, Stephenson said.
Experts in the telecom industry see the next-generation 5G equipment more exposed to came under attacks by hackers than the previous technology, and the United States time and again warned that the equipment if provided by the Huawei is more likely to be exploit by Chinese government for spying. For the reason, the United States not only said that there are safer options available to replace Huawei but also most of the 5G networks to be build in the country will be using equipments from Nordic equipment makers Nokia and Ericsson.
