It might seem like an ambitious plan; to understand what 5G network is and why it is such a big deal whether or not Huawei provides it for EU member states. Right from the get-go, we ran into difficulties, because even though 5G is on everybody’s lips, very few actually want to be quoted on, well, anything relating to 5G, Huawei or China.
By Andreas Friis & Magne Kaae
To start this entire journey off, we wanted to figure out what 5G actually is. Why is 5G the new big thing? We already have a ton of network solutions. How is 5G different? This took us through an extensive journey consisting of scientific papers, reports and YouTube-videos. To save you from having to go through the same, we have comprised everything down to a one minute video. You are very welcome.
So to sum up: 5G is awesome and will revolutionize how society functions. This conclusion lead us to the next step on our journey: who is this multinational company, that the president of the United States has called “very dangerous”? Who is Huawei?
This is where it gets tricky again. See, we could easily list off facts on how Huawei is one of the biggest tech companies in the world, how Huawei is the world’s second-largest smartphone supplier, how Huawei has been involved in numerous cyber security controversies and how Huawei is closely tied to both the Chinese government and the Chinese military. But what we really wanted was to talk to someone from Huawei.
We therefore tried to get an interview with someone from Huawei. Over the last year we have both interviewed loads of important people from organizations, companies and the government, but this was all in Denmark. To get an interview – as a journalism student – with a Chinese official or really anyone from Huawei is utopian.
Even without an interview, we could conclude that Huawei is a highly controversial company in the Western world. We could write pages up and down on Huawei’s controversies, but for now we will settle with this.
At this point we were baffled. Why would the EU allow a company such as Huawei to build their network infrastructure? To answer this, we reached out to ENISA.
ENISA stands for European Network and Information Security Agency, and is an agency founded the same year that Forbes’ wrote, that “Bluetooth … is set to have a big year” and “there are cell phone networks fast enough to move streaming video onto a cell phone.” In other words: ENISA is the EU’s watchdog on cyber security and has been around for quite some time.
We contacted ENISA, but we once again hit a brick wall. They declined our request for an interview, and instead sent a few short answers to selected questions. Most of the answers were quite banal like: “ENISA believes it is vital that 5G networks are cyber secure. ”They did however point out, that they “…have rules in place in the EU to mitigate security risks. Any company who complies with these rules can access the European market.”
ENISA directed our attention to the EU 5G Security Toolbox, announced in January 2020. Here, it states that “the cybersecurity of 5G networks is … essential to protect our economies and societies … It is also crucial for ensuring the technological sovereignty of the Union.”
So ENISA have rules to sort out bad companies. Understood. This is to secure the technological sovereignty of the union. Right. So, Huawei follows the rules, and they are therefore a valid option, sure, but surely other big tech companies follow the rules as well. We were still very interested in figuring out why then Huawei was the best choice of the lot. To answer this question, we went on a hunt for some standpoints from the big guns in the EU. And where better to start, than in the EU powerhouse of Germany?
Chancellor Angela Merkel and the German government have expressed concerns over Huawei several times, but the official standpoint is, that Germany “opposes excluding individual companies.”
France’s President Emmanuel Macron has also voiced his concern over Chinese encroachment into the economy of the EU, but will not discriminate against any particular company, as long as they can pass a screening by ENISA. As of now, it is rumoured that France will not allow the approval of Huawei gear in what they describe as “non-core parts of the network.”
The story repeated itself where-ever we looked. Everyone seemed concerned about Huawei, but not really enough to write them off as an option. This led us to the final question: why is Huawei the best option?
The answer to that question is the same old answer to everything in the bureaucratic world: because it’s the cheapest.
Huawei offers the cheapest solutions for the nations, while still meeting the requirements for the infrastructure. A report by GSMA, a British telecoms group that represents 750 mobile operators, has estimated that the rollout of 5G networks in Europe would cost 55 billions euros and delay the process with 18 months, if Chinese firms were banned.
So what can we conclude from our little journey down the 5G rabbit hole?
Well, we can conclude that 5G is arriving soon, and it will change how the infrastructure of our society works. We can also conclude that Huawei is a controversial company, that could maybe do with just a tad more transparency. The final conclusion we can make, is that very few are ecstatically happy about Huawei supplying this infrastructure for European nations, but that no one really wants to disqualify them. With very few officials from European countries, agencies and Huawei actually willing to talk, we can only speculate why they don’t want to disqualify Huawei, but maybe the price point has just a little bit to say about that. Just maybe.