Will MWC Bring Better Days or More Trouble for Huawei and ZTE?

Heading into MWC Barcelona this year, Chinese equipment vendors Huawei and ZTE have a lot to prove after months of accusations and speculations that have escalated all the way up to some countries moving to ban the use of equipment from those vendors due to security concerns. And as operators from around the globe gather in Barcelona, Spain, next week, will the vendors reconcile these negative images or will it spell further trouble? Mere weeks ahead of the conference, reports surfaced that the GSMA, which puts on the annual mega-show, was considering setting a crisis meeting with its members tied to the brewing issues, and as potential bans of its equipment threatened to set back operator’s 5G network rollouts by years. However, in an email to SDxCentral, Gareth Davies, communications director for the GSMA, said that these reports were “not strictly true.” Davies noted that the meeting in question is regularly scheduled.