USA vs Huawei: The fear of having a hostile network control the 5G Superpower

Its not too often do we see a nation pick a fight against a private company. With the trade war between USA and China increasing under the Trump administration we also sense a cyber war brewing.

Ever has your privacy been invaded? did it tick you off? Well, the United States government certainly resented the invasion of its privacy! shocking! Considering that’s the first time the world's most powerful country, USA has a problem with invasions.

With the war between USA and Huawei, the world technology and data security is put at stake.

 

To give you'll a brief background about Huawei, NO its not a vacation destination (that's Hawaii) 

Huawei is a 33-year-old Chinese multinational company. It was one of the fastest growing brands in the telecom industry creating the state of the art products and flooding the market (just how the Chinese businesses work) It is the largest telecom equipment manufacturer in the world (followed by Nokia and Ericsson) and also the 2nd largest mobile phone manufacturer overtaking APPLE globally and next to Samsung in its production, Huawei entered the American telecom market and was planning to influence it drastically. 

    

But off late, there’s been a lot of scrutiny over Huawei’s operations after the US banned the sale of Huawei products and services domestically. The US has also been urging other countries to do the same considering it believes Huawei has been spying on behalf of the Chinese government. USA expressed its stand on the issue clearly when they got the CFO of Huawei, Meng Wanzhou arrested in Canada in Dec 2018. And Huawei is desperate not to lose its international business. So it’s been making subtle threats about the implications of banning the company overall. US intelligence and law makers believe that Huawei's hardware provides a back door for China's massive and sophisticated state surveillance apparatus.

 

The allegations were very deep and caused a ruckus within the American telecom market, the United States government had openly accused the Huawei CEO, Ren Zhengfei of violating cyber-security protocols and leaking data to the Chinese government. One indictment accused Huawei of trying to steal trade secrets from T-Mobile, and of promising bonuses to employees who collected confidential information on competitors while a second indictment claimed that the company worked to skirt US sanctions on Iran. Although Huawei completely denies these allegations, they had to break shop. The current POTUS, Mr. Donald trump felt completely violated and betrayed by The Chinese telecom giant and therefore banned the usage of any products created by Huawei and ZTE, another Chinese technology company caught in the crosshairs in the pentagon or any USA government office. So USA not only started urging companies but also its ally nations to ban the usage of Huawei products. In response, American tech companies severed their links to the multinational, including Microsoft, Google and Intel and also countries like Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Taiwan put a ban on Huawei products.


One important fact to understand here is that 5G is not merely a technology, it holds the strength of making a country one of the most powerful countries in the world due to its unlimited uses. With its lightening fast speed, data is collected, processed, bots interpret the data, the processed information is put to use by the algos, the data is stored, and much more only in a blink of an eye. With data being the most precious resource on Earth currently, the company first in the race to commercialize 5G makes its place in the most influential countries in the world. They get to decide the 5G standards, terms of trade, exclusive IPRs etc.

  

Huawei is considered to be a top 5 company all across the globe and with all the progress they are making in the telecom and technology field they were set to create and launch 5G technology to revolutionize the world. 5G technology is the biggest project undertaken by quite a few companies many of whom are working collectively to achieve it but there is virtually no company in even The Great USA to be able to set up production of 5G technology at the scale at which Huawei does.

 

The 5th generation of technology is meant to simplify our whole life as we know. Light speed internet being the sole focus, 5G can be used to deliver a number of services not only in the telecom industry or the IoT (internet of things) but the smart home technology can be improved massively, the driverless cars can be affected and improved, immersive experiences in AR and VR and many other technological gaps can be filled. While Huawei was planning on achieving the next level of technology, The USA's DOJ sanctioned a bill banning them and accusing them of malicious intent and espionage against The United States Of America for breaching the privacy of the common and innocent United States’s Citizen.


But what about India? 

Well as a matter of fact Vodafone and Airtel still use Huawei’s network services to provide data connectivity and it would be rational to assume that they would continue to use Huawei for their 5G network solutions as well.

But then we have our desi hero, our Mota Bhai  ;)

Mukesh Ambani’s Jio uses Samsung and when they roll out 5G, these other companies will have to follow suit since there seem to be fair chances that Huawei isn’t allowed in the country. Well, Airtel and Vodafone will simply go out and find someone else. So it would be naive to think if Mr. Mukesh Ambani is going to wait for Huawei in order to rollout 5G in India. Ambanis do it when they want it and how they want it.

Readers are highly recommended to watch this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ylleTbizgU 

-This article was written in association with Sales-O-Gram