Amidst all the problems Huawei could be facing now, the biggest could be the Trump Administration persuading countries not to allow the Chinese telecommunication network to roll-out its 5G in their respective countries. Well! South African Pres. H.E. Cyril Ramaphosa, sees this otherwise.
Ramaphosa during the 4IRSA digital economy summit in Johannesburg, South Africa on Friday last week, backed Huawei where he outlined his government’s strategy to unlock economic opportunities in the digital era.
During his speech he turned his attention to multilateral relations, which he said should also reflect an enabling posture for the global digital economy.
Ramaphosa said the U.S. action against Huawei was an example of protectionism which would affect South Africa’s telecommunications sector.
“This standoff between China and the U.S. where Huawei is being used as victim because of its successes is an example of protectionism that will affect our own telecommunications sector, particularly the efforts to roll out the 5G network, causing a setback on other networks as well,” he said.
He claimed a number of telecom companies wrote to him to express their concerns about trade restrictions that had been imposed on Huawei by the U.S. government.
“Telecom companies got together and wrote to me a letter saying that this tussle between the U.S. and China around the company called Huawei is going to hurt us because we can’t go to 5G and only Huawei can lead us to 5G,” he said.
With the trade discussions between the U.S. and China set to resume, Ramaphosa said the Chinese telecom giant was a victim.
“We support a company that is going to take our country and indeed the world to better technologies, and that is 5G,” read the speech.
He concluded saying the country can’t afford to have their economy held back because of the fight between the U.S. and China.
During the G20 summit held in Osaka, Japan, Pres. Donald Trump met with the Chinese Pres. Xi Jinping where they agreed to relax on some of the rules that were imposed on the Chinese firm.
“We are pleased that at the G20 Summit, China and U.S. were able to meet and they said they will relax some of the constraints being imposed on Huawei, so that it can continue to deal with other various companies,” Ramaphosa said.
To recall, Huawei was put on an entity list that bans it from conducting any business with U.S. companies. The most that would affect the company was Google, since all Huawei phones run on Android operating system.
Huawei claimed they saw this coming and in some of its statement said, it was working on its own mobile OS, it called Hongmeng for nearly 7 years. Huawei says it saw it’s reliance on Google as a ‘bad’ thing and resorted to develop its own mobile software.
Meanwhile, president of Huawei’s carrier business group Ryan Ding on Tuesday at an industry conference, said the company’s equipment is now behind two-thirds of the commercially launched 5G networks outside China.
TechCrunch reports, Huawei has nabbed 50 commercial 5G contracts outside its home base from countries including South Korea, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Finland and more.
