Amidst the global campaign launched by the United States against Huawei and the Chinese company’s 5G technology, nearly 60 percent of the contracts signed by Huawei for its 5G products are with European partners and service providers.
Huawei said that 28 out of 50 contracts are with companies from Europe amidst Trump’s threats to European allies to cut them off of US Intelligence if they push through with plans of allowing Huawei to operate in their countries especially with regards to its 5G technology.
Chen Lifang, president of the telecoms giants public affairs and communications department, said in Brussels on Thursday said that the company was able to secure the contracts in Europe, but he refused to name their partners.
“Huawei is following closely the 5G framework of the EU, and fully supports this framework,” Chen said at the Brussels round table on Thursday, according to the transcript on Huawei EU’s official Twitter account.
European businesses and governments have been very resistant to Trump’s call to ban Huawei’s 5G technology. Trump launched a global campaign to warn governments of Huawei saying that the Chinese government can use it as a Trojan Horse to carry out its plans for espionage and economic sabotage.
Nonetheless, Huawei earned 204.5 billion yuan (US$29.8 billion) from Europe, the Middle East, and Africa – its biggest overseas market region – in 2018, according to its annual report. That accounted for about 28.4 percent of its total revenue and more than the combined contribution from the Americas and Asia-Pacific, excluding China regions.
A few weeks ago, four major mobile service providers already made deals with Huawei to develop their 5G infra projects. Huawei is already involved in building 5G networks in six of the seven cities in the UK where Vodafone has gone live. It is also helping build hundreds of 5G sites for EE and has won 5G contracts to build networks for Three and O2 when they go live.
