Vodafone CEO Says Huawei Scrutiny Is Holding Back Europe

Vodafone Group CEO Nick Read said that scrutiny of Huawei is holding back European technology development. He added that this will ultimately result in jobs migrating away from the continent.

At at a Vodafone 5G event in Brussels, attended by the members of the European Parliament and Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri, Read has said that the US had little to lose by excluding Huawei because the vendor’s kit is not deployed “in any large scale in any of their networks“, while its domestic market of China “is of a scale of itself“. As a result, Europe is “the only region that’s severely held back“ by scrutiny of the vendor. Read warned that European technology jobs would be lost if companies aren’t allowed to take a vendor agnostic approach to 5G.

“This is competitive. We have to strengthen our ICT and digital capabilities to enable our fantastic leading manufacturing and research and development base. We have to enable in this window of opportunity to compete against the US and China, or the moment goes. Then, in the end jobs and the opportunities will move to the US and China. Let’s make sure we don’t hold back 5G. This is enabling Industry 4.0 and if we want to compete against China and the US we need a range of diverse technology,“ Read said.