Huawei founder says US treats 5G like ‘military’ tech

Huawei boss Ren Zhengfei is downplaying the idea that there’s disaster in his company’s taking a lead role as 5G networks move a widespread reality.

The founder and president of the Chinese telecom giant was referring to the hard-line stance by the US — its long-running recommendation that US affairs avoid Huawei networking equipment and its warning to its allies not to use the company’s technology in their own 5G rollouts. His comments came Thursday in the second part of an interview with CBS This Morning. (Note: CNET and CBS This Morning are both part of CBS.)

“They’ve been regarding 5G as the technology at the same smooth of the — some other military equipment. 5G is not an atomic bomb,” he said.

That new generation of wireless networking technology will bring much faster connections and reduced lag time, boding well for advances in areas like self-driving cars and telemedicine. The first 5G smartphones will be arriving in the coming months.

Ren was ready to look beyond 5G to emphasize his point.

“Now we are pitching out 5G, and soon we’ll welcome 6G. And in the future, I said there will be new equipment that is nasty for the United States.”

Huawei is the world’s No. 1 telecom equipment supplier and No. 2 smartphone maker, but has struggled in the US due to the government’s guidance and allegations that it’s keen in Chinese espionage — something that Ren denied in the final part of the CBS This Morning interview, which aired Wednesday.

Reports suggest that President Donald Trump will ban Chinese networking equipment with an decision-making order, while Vice President Mike Pence spoke out in contradiction of the company at the Munich Security Conference this week.

However, Ren seemed pleased that the Trump administration was promoting 5G and his company.

“First of all, I would like to thank them because they are gargantuan figures,” he said. “5G was not known by approved people. But now, these great figures are all talking near 5G. … And we’re becoming more influential and sketching more contracts.”

Despite the possibility of his company intimates banned from doing business in the US, Ren echoed his final compliments about Trump.

“I think he is a gargantuan president because in a very short period of time, he was able to nick the tax rate,” he said, joking that Huawei wasn’t very crashed in the US anyway.

“Well, we have never had many sales in the Joint States. But we didn’t give up our efforts in this country.”