Telecom operators Orange Belgium and Proximus have decided to progressively replace Huawei Technologies Co-made (華為) mobile equipment in Belgium and Luxembourg with Nokia gear, two sources close to the matter said.
The operators, which share their mobile network, had faced political pressure to drop Huawei as a supplier following US accusations that Huawei’s gear could be used for spying by Beijing, the sources said.
Orange and Nokia declined to comment. Proximus did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday evening, while Huawei had no immediate comment.
Photo: Reuters
The move by Orange and Proximus represents one of the first cases in Europe where commercial operators have dropped Huawei from their 5G networks in response to political pressure.
China and Huawei deny the spying allegations, but Belgium’s capital, Brussels, is home to the EU’s executive body and parliament, making it a strategic location and a matter of particular concern for US intelligence agencies.
“There’s a profound insistence on the need to push Huawei towards the exit,” one of the two sources said.
“There’s also a growing concern about Huawei’s capacity to produce its equipment,” the source added, referring to the US’ decision to cut off Huawei’s access to vital computer chips.
Nokia last month announced that it had clinched a deal with Britain’s biggest mobile operator BT Group PLC to supply 5G radio equipment.
Proximus and Orange’s Belgian division last year signed an agreement to share their mobile network, which is why the decision to shift to Nokia was a collective one.
Orange Belgium has partnered with Huawei since 2007 for the deployment of its mobile network in Belgium and Luxembourg. Proximus chose the Shenzhen-based company in 2009 for the progressive upgrading of its network.
Other European countries are moving toward greater restrictions on Huawei.
The German government is planning tougher oversight of telecom network vendors that would make it harder for Huawei to keep a foothold in Europe’s largest market.
France, the EU’s second-largest economy, would de facto ban Huawei’s mobile equipment by 2028, sources close to the matter said in July.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to