Weighing the risks in building a 5G network

The global debate has shifted beyond why we shouldn’t trust Chinese telecommunications company Huawei to why we can’t trust any equipment vendor. How can we trust US companies after the Edward Snowden disclosures? Doesn’t the US also spy?One way to look at mobile telecommunications networks is to divide them into two parts: a ‘core’ where sensitive functions such as billing and subscriber management occur, and a less sensitive radio access network, or RAN, which manages how towers talk to handsets.In the RAN equipment sector, Huawei’s competitors are Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung and NEC. Beyond the RAN in the rest of a 5G network there are many other vendors, including US companies such as IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Juniper and Cisco.