U.S. sanctions turn up heat but Huawei serving European 5G clients
Chinese telecom giant Huawei is finding it harder to counter U.S. sanctions designed to choke off its access to semiconductors but can continue to serve European 5G network clients, a senior European executive told an Austrian newspaper.
The world's biggest maker of mobile telecommunications
equipment and smartphones was still "looking for a solution" to help
millions of Huawei phone users after Google GOOGL.O was banned from providing
technical support for new Huawei phone models using mobile operating system
Android.
“Since the U.S. sanctions last year, U.S. manufacturers of
semiconductors are no longer allowed to supply us so our previous U.S. partners
can no longer work with us. Since August it has become even more difficult,”
Abraham Liu, Huwaei’s vice-president for Europe, told the Kurier paper.
He said Washington was “blackmailing” chipmakers into
shunning ties with Huawei, which denies U.S. allegations that Huawei equipment
could be used by Beijing for spying.
“Nevertheless, we are confident that we can continue to
serve our European customers in the 5G sector because of many preparations and
upfront investments with the most advanced technology,” Liu was quoted as
saying without elaborating.
“As for private customers, cell phone owners, we see great
difficulties. There are 90 million European Huawei users. Google is no longer
allowed to work with Huawei, so Google will no longer publish updates for
Huawei smartphones with the Android operating system,” he said. “We are still
looking for a solution.”
Amid U.S. pressure to exclude the Chinese firm from
supplying key telecoms equipment, Orange ORAN.PA and Proximus PROX.BR last week
picked Nokia NOKIA.HE to help build 5G networks in Belgium.
EU members have been stepping up scrutiny of so-called
high-risk vendors. This subjects Huawei’s governance and technology to critical
examination and is likely to lead other European operators to strip it from
their networks, analysts say.
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