The world’s leading telecom equipment maker Huawei has finally been given green signal to participate in India’s 5G network deployment trials. The update has been confirmed by telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad at an event.
At the same event, the telecom minister also emphasised on the importance of 5G deployment and committed to a speedy deployment of the new technology, after affirming that Huawei will indeed play a role in India’s 5G technology initiation.
This is a major relief for Huawei which has been facing stiff resistance from practically all countries in recent times after suspicions of state-sponsored surveillance surfaced alongside an allegation that Huawei installs backdoors in its networks, allowing the Chinese government to spy on critical information of other nations.
The allegations were first surfaced by the Trump administration of the United States, without providing any proof to back the claims. Although Huawei has been denying such claims, it has been barred from doing business with any of the U.S.-based firms without explicit permission from the government.
In India, Huawei will rival network infrastructure providers Ericsson and Nokia in the 5G rollout process, which will cater to leading operators Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea offering 5G connectivity to consumers.
Nation-wide 5G rollout in India is also expected to boost India’s push for smart cities and connected infrastructure, and Huawei has, through due course of 2019, made promises of a no-backdoor network infrastructure deployment.
5G network trials are expected to be hosted in early 2020, and 5G spectrum auction may be held by the early second half of 2020. Thus, the 5G network rollout for consumers is expected to happen in early 2021, and by the looks of it, Huawei will have a role to play in it.
