2018 for Huawei hasn’t been the best for the company. The company initially had plans to officially partner up with carriers in the US to launch their phones, but those plans were cancelled at the very last minute as US lawmakers had warned carriers about the potential security threat that Huawei posed due to them being from China.
However it seems that not only is the US trying to reduce their reliance on Huawei’s technology as much as possible, but they are now actively encouraging their neighbors to do the same. A letter written by Senators Mark Warner and Marco Rubio (via TechCrunch) to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau saw them advise the country to keep Huawei out of their 5G plans.
It reads in part, “While Canada has strong telecommunication security safeguards in place, we have serious concerns that such safeguards are inadequate given what the United States and other allies know about Huawei.” Interestingly enough the US isn’t alone in thinking that Huawei could pose a potential threat as over in Australia, it seems that Huawei and ZTE have been banned from supplying 5G hardware to the country.
That being said whether or not Canada will take advice from the US seriously remains to be seen, but given that both countries are pretty close allies, we wouldn’t be surprised if they did.