Huawei woes are expected to continue after reports that its primary telecoms and communication equipment and services will be stripped by Vodafone. The development was made official the other day in a process that is said to cost the UK carrier 200 million Euros.
Mainly, Vodafone, which owns 40 percent of Safaricom, will remove Huawei systems from its core network. The exercise will take up to five years to complete owing to the complexities of replacing the systems in Vodafone’s critical network.
This move is preceded by an announcement by the U.K. government that Huawei will not have more than 35 percent market share in the deployment of 5G in the Kingdom. Huawei has also been banned from participating in the core system installation that includes systems that process customer data.
Huawei has not been receiving any love from the West, especially the US, that has since gone to press that the Chinese corporation should ‘not be trusted.’ The US has also been mounting pressure on its allies not to use Huawei systems.
On the other hand, Huawei has defended these bans as a move to shadow its superiority in the telecoms space. Huawei founder has since said that the company’s 5G technologies are years ahead of the competition.
During the growth of 3G and 4G, Huawei was sought extensively by European carriers for critical installations. Huawei systems were lauded for their superiority, and they were cheaper than their rivals.
Vodafone’s move to undo the work by Huawei is, according to experts, a wrong play because it will delay a wider 5G rollout. The carrier, which has, for a long time, used Huawei parts, is now one of the primary operators in Europe that has caved to external pressure that will see disruptive 5G deployment.
Whether the exercise is an optimal solution for the risks posed by Huawei is something that will take a while to substantiate.
