Huawei tells the FCC it can't force US carriers to scrap its gear – that's Congress's job

Huawei has argued that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) cannot force US carriers to remove its equipment from their networks, and can only reimburse those that voluntarily choose to do so. The filing [PDF] made by the Chinese giant to the FCC is yet another salvo in the ongoing fight for Huawei's survival in the US …

[ecofeco]

It a strange way, they are both right and wrong

All U.S. "watchdog" agencies have the power to act as they need to. Their power derives directly from the Federal government, be it Congress, the President or the Supreme court.

At the same time, the GOP have spent decades weakening all of these watchdog agencies in the name of "less regulation" but whose real purpose was to make criminal activity, mainly fraud and extortion, easier for companies. This has resulted in many companies thinking they are exempt from oversight.

A U.S. federal judge has already rejected Huwei's previous claims. They can say what they want. They can also go pound sand.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: It a strange way, they are both right and wrong

it does seem like Huawei is trolling the FCC for being toothless

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: It a strange way, they are both right and wrong

No they aren't. Huawei is right that the powers of the FCC are set by law. They have no more authority to force companies to remove Huawei equipment than they have authority to force consumers to turn in any Huawei phones they own.

[anonymous boring coward]

“ Instead, the company has committed to focusing more on cloud and software products,”

The irony... From a security perspective.

[Grease Monkey]

Stories around the US ban on carriers using Huawei still make me snigger.

Laugh number two was that it was very obvious form the outset that one major intended outcome of this was they US manufacturers would get the business so it was quite amusing when at least one major carrier decided to switch to Nokia kit.

But laugh number one (and the much bigger one) was when Trump suggested that carriers should buy their network kit from Apple. Yes there are US manufacturers who make carrier grade network kit, but Apple isn't a name that would spring to anybody's mind when discussing those manufacturers. Well anybody except Trump that is.

[CrackedNoggin]

"Laugh number two was that it was very obvious form the outset that one major intended outcome of this was they US manufacturers would get the business ..."

I think you are mostly wrong about that. As expected it was Ericsonn and Nokia who would pick up most of the hardware business. It was reported by Reuters that

"June 12 [2020]- The United States is in talks with Brazil and local telecommunications companies on funding the acquisition of 5G gear produced by Ericsson and Nokia."

[ Factbox: Deals by major suppliers in the race for 5G, June 2020, Reuters ]

The "Open RAN coalition" is active in defining standards for modularity so that components are interchangeable. This is a good thing for the industry and smaller players, and a (short term) bad thing for Huawei whose existing systems are monolith in design. One result of that is the ability to swap in software modules where it makes economical sense - and that is where US and UK companies may get some business.

For example --- "[UL Company] Metaswitch has a 5G product for handling network traffic that can run on public cloud infrastructure. Customers could rely on the company’s software atop cloud infrastructure rather than adding capacity in their own data centers to support additional network use at higher speeds. ". Metaswitch was recently purchased by Microsoft.

Open RAN is international group of companies with US center of mass. Members Vodaphone, ARM, Nokia, NEC and non-US. Oddly, Ericsonn is not listed - perhaps that is to avoid offending the CPP or Huawei. See [ " Who’s Coming to Huawei’s Support? Its Biggest European Competitor

Even though Ericsson is benefiting from sanctions, CEO Börje Ekholm felt moved to lobby for Chinese rival to ward off a backlash from Beijing ", WSJ ].