Huawei’s Australian arm has not given up developing the country’s future mobile network, saying it wants to be part of Australia’s distant 6G or 7G rollout.
In 2018, the Chinese telecommunications firm was banned from involvement in Australia’s 5G network due to security concerns.
Jeremy Mitchell, Huawei Australia’s chief corporate affairs officer, was confident though that the telco could contribute to future iterations.
“We would like to work with the government to ensure Australia has access to the best technology but do so in a way which gives security agencies confidence in terms of risk mitigation,” he said.
“6G is just at the very beginning of research development, but it’s important to get in now to understand where this technology is going,” he added.
He pointed to Ericsson’s recent lobbying efforts to force the Swedish government to reverse its 5G ban on Huawei as proof Australia made the wrong decision to ban the company.
“In Europe they’ve always had an open and competitive environment when it comes to the vendor space,” he said.
Operators have until January 2025 to remove offending parts.
Ericsson CEO Borje Ekholm has threatened the Swedish government, saying the multinational would leave the country if the bans continued.
Simon Yuen from Artificial Intelligence Technology, who has 25 years’ experience in telecommunications, said 6G was still in its infancy and undergoing research and development.
He said it was also unlikely that the Australian government would allow Huawei’s involvement in future mobile networks.
“I think there would need to be a fairly substantial paradigm shift for Australia to adopt Huawei,” he told The Epoch Times.
“Changes at the political level would need to be wholesale in nature ...” he said.
Australia was the first nation in the world to ban Huawei and ZTE in 2018 from involvement in its 5G network. The carrier was deemed a “high-risk vendor” under government guidelines for setting up 5G.
This means companies using the network for functions such as connecting handsets, laptops, and tablets, could be distanced from more sensitive core functions including access control and data routing.
5G however blurs the lines between these networks.
Morrison said in the statement that companies likely to be subject to “extrajudicial directions from a foreign government” could not adequately safeguard 5G from interference.