Huawei has had a tricky 2019 thus far and the outlook for the rest of the year looks to be just as bumpy as the Trump administration continues forward with its August deadline on imposed China tariffs while UK and US-based tech companies look for workarounds to provide technology to their customers.
While the US and China remain in a standoff with Huawei in both their crosshairs, the UK has quietly cleared the company to provide 5G technologies to the outskirts of their country’s network according to a report from Venture Beat.
The House of Common’s Science and Technology Committee recently joined a small chorus of organizations who are looking beyond the state-funded espionage accusations that have plagued Huawei over the past few years and published a letter acknowledging that there it has found “no special reason to suspect Huawei’s products of being especially insecure.”
Despite a seemingly receptive letter, the UK is going into its decision with extreme caution and stipulating the terms of its Huawei access as an almost at-will agreement. In allowing Huawei access to its network, the company will enter accept a formal exclusion be made on a non-discriminatory basis which will highlight “clear criteria that could be applied to another organization in the future.”
The move by the UK to grant Huawei access to its network is in stark contrast to the current position the US presidential administration has taken towards the China-based company. Throughout much of 2019, United States President Donald Trump and his administration have waged a commerce war with China and used Huawei as a figurative political and economical scapegoat for some of their policy against the country.
However, over the past few weeks, Trump and his administration have begun to ease their stance and are planning to grant select US companies provisional allowances through licenses of permit for transactions with Huawei.
As of today, it is unclear when the provisions will be granted and which US-based companies are on the shortlist, but presumably, companies that have already found workarounds such as Google, IBM, Qualcomm, and Microsoft will among them.
