A recent EXCLUSIVE story says Huawei is in early negotiations with US firms to license its 5G business to them.
This is according to the company’s executive Vincent Pang, who is a senior vice president and board director. Although the telco companies remain anonymous as per now, Vincent Pang said some companies expressed interest in both a long-term deal or a one-off transfer.
“There are some companies talking to us, but it would take a long journey to really finalize everything,” he said.
However, this deal is still in the early stages; the future remains uncertain. Pang said even if a US telco buys the equipment, much of the investment needed for Research and development will be very costly.
To date, Huawei remains under the so-called Entity List, which bans the company from selling its telco equipment to the US. An issue that was fueled over fears that their telco equipment could be used for spying, something which Huawei has denied many times.
Huawei’s CEO Ren had expressed interest in selling part of its 5G business to a western buyer in a one-off fee deal. The deal was to give the buyer access to Huawei’s 5G patents, licenses, code, and know-how. All this package is sound enough for setting up another US competitor to take on Huawei’s 5G glory.
As good as the deal sounds, the US Commerce Department has so far expressed skepticism on Ren’s offer.
“It’s just not realistic that carriers would take on this equipment and then manage all of the software and hardware themselves,” said a correspondent to Reuters.
The commerce department sees it hard for telcos even to know whether the initial software may have been built with bugs that could allow the company to gain access even after the deal is closed.
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