Huawei 5G “Wireless to the Home” Trial with Telus in Canada + U.S. Sales?

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Huawei and Canadian telco Telus will work together on a trial for providing 5G wireless connectivity to residences in Vancouver, Canada. The companies will use tested millimeter-wave technology with 800 megahertz of bandwidth on the 28-gigahertz spectrum.

The end-to-end trial is based in the “5G Living Lab” — a downtown co-venture between the two companies — and conducted in the homes of Telus employees based in the city.

Officials said the system could provide 5G service similar to fiber networks while helping reduce operator costs and bolster accessibility. Initial trials conducted in December saw download speeds of more than 2 Gbps.

“This trial represents continued progress toward the launch of 5G as we start to replicate both the in-home experience and network footprint we will see when 5G becomes commercially available in the near future,” Telus CTO Ibrahim Gedeon said in a statement.

The latest trials are based on successful 3GPP-compliant millimeter wave specification tests conducted by the companies last June.  They operate with 800 MHz of bandwidth on 28 GHz spectrum and utilize Massive MIMO, F-OFDM, Polar Code and other technologies. The tests also use a specially-designed 5G Customer Premise Equipment unit and a 5G gNodeB built at the Living Lab.

The companies said the “Wireless to the Home” trial is believed to be the first of its kind in North America and among the first in the world.

“Millimeter wave technology will be an important tool in ensuring widespread deployment of 5G technology in Canada,” Huawei Wireless CTO Wen Tong said in the statement. “Huawei’s 5G solutions and terminals will enable 5G coverage over a neighborhood or small community cost-effectively, while providing more convenient and high-speed home broadband internet access services.”

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Separately,  U.S. intelligence officials said “don’t use Huawei products” in testimony last week before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

“We’re deeply concerned about the risks of allowing any company or entity that is beholden to foreign governments that don’t share our values to gain positions of power inside our telecommunications networks,” FBI Director Chris Wray said. “That provides the capacity to exert pressure or control over our telecommunications infrastructure. It provides the capacity to maliciously modify or steal information. And it provides the capacity to conduct undetected espionage.”

NSA Director Michael Rogers added, “This is a challenge I think that is only going to increase, not lessen over time for us. You need to look long and hard at companies like this.”

Based on the information leaked out of the agency by Edward Snowden, the NSA conducted an operation dubbed Shotgiant, which resulted in U.S. intelligence operatives hacking into Huawei source code to conduct surveillance. As the New York Times reported in 2014, “The agency pried its way into the servers in Huawei’s sealed headquarters in Shenzhen…It obtained information about the workings of the giant routers and complex digital switches that Huawei boasts connect a third of the world’s population, and monitored communications of the company’s top executives.”

According to reporting, as well as the documents Snowden made public, the NSA hacked into Huawei’s networking equipment “so that when the company sold equipment to other countries–including both allies and nations that avoid buying America products–the NSA could roam through their computer and telephone networks to conduct surveillance.”

To put that another way, the agencies that conclusively hacked into Huawei equipment to conduct cyber espionage are warning against using Huawei equipment because it may be used by the Chinese to conduct cyber espionage.

In response to the Senate testimony, Huawei said in a statement that the company “is aware of a range of U.S. government activities seemingly aimed at inhibiting Huawei’s business in the U.S. market. Huawei is trusted by governments and customers in 170 countries worldwide and poses no greater cybersecurity risk than any ICT vendor, sharing as we do common global supply chains and production capabilities.”

Both Verizon and AT&T recently backed out of deals to sell Huawei mobile devices in the U.S.  Furthermore, there are bills in the House and Senate that would prohibit the U.S. government from using gear sold by Huawei and ZTE (the other major Chinese telecom equipment vendor).

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References:

https://www.wirelessweek.com/news/2018/02/huawei-conducts-5g-wireless-home-trial-canada

Huawei, Telus launch 5G fixed wireless trial in Canada

 

 

Intelligence chiefs blast Huawei in Senate testimony

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/13/chinas-hauwei-top-us-intelligence-chiefs-caution-americans-away.html

 

 

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