The federal government continues to dither over whether to allow Huawei Technologies to supply equipment for Canada’s 5G wireless network, despite an ongoing trade war with Beijing and a growing consensus among our allies that China constitutes a threat to world order. But this week, Canada’s major telecommunications companies made it clear that Ottawa’s seeming inability to make a decision is not going to slow down their plans to roll out their next-generation networks.
On Tuesday morning, on the heels of a B.C. court striking down Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou’s attempt to have her extradition case thrown out, Bell Canada announced that Ericsson, which is based in Sweden, will provide equipment for its 5G network. The announcement came four months after the company revealed its first 5G network equipment contract with Finnish tech giant Nokia. A few hours later, Telus also disclosed that it had chosen Nokia and Ericsson to provide it with 5G networking equipment.
What was notable in the announcements was not that the telcos had chosen the two Scandinavian suppliers, but that Huawei was conspicuously absent from the list. The Telus announcement was particularly surprising because it has an existing relationship with the Chinese telecom giant, which supplied much of the equipment for its 4G network, and has previously stated that Huawei should be included.
Given that Rogers Communications announced back in 2018 that Ericsson would be used as its equipment supplier and Quebec’s Videotron is partnering with Samsung, the Chinese have been virtually shut out of this country’s next-generation networks, without Ottawa ever having to lift a finger.
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