Huawei Australia: ‘There is no plan on the table to deliver truly nationwide 5G’
Huawei Australia has criticised the Federal Government’s 5G
roll-out, claiming it will leave rural and regional areas without any coverage.
The Chinese giant -- which was excluded from the local 5G
market last year -- claimed that “there is no plan on the table to deliver
truly nationwide 5G” unless network operators are given Federal funding.
According to Huawei’ submission to a committee inquiry into
the deployment, adoption, and application of 5G in Australia, rural communities will miss out on 5G without
“decisive action” from the government.
Although Huawei said it supported the committee’s
recommendation into rural 5G trials, it claimed farmers in particular will risk
losing out “in the same way they missed out on 4G”.
“The reality is that 5G represents a chicken-and-egg
situation for our farming communities, until they know for sure that they are
going to be able to access 5G technology then there is no way that they can
start planning to invest in new technologically advanced equipment that can
boost their productivity,” the submission said.
Huawei also pointed out that the government had staked $50
billion on building the National Broadband Network that “may deliver better
internet than was previously available in the bush” but claimed that data-caps
and speed limits of 25Mbps are “not sufficient” for agricultural technology
innovation.
Further, the network builder referred to an earlier
parliamentary submission whereby it claimed the cost of 5G deployment would
rise by 30 per cent to between $700 million and $2.1 billion by reducing
“critical vendor competition”.
“These additional deployment costs for 5G are going to make
it even more difficult to deliver 5G coverage in rural and regional Australia
and it is critical that the Federal Government finds ways to lower the cost of
deployment for operators,” Huawei added.
It noted, however, that it
supports infrastructure sharing in regional areas in order to lower
costs but claimed there would be resistance from some stakeholders to this.
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