Tech Tent: 5G, Huawei and a question of confidence

It was the turn of the Mobile World Congress star with a folding phone ready for 5G. But in this week's Tech Tent, we're asking the mobile phone industry to trust Huawei?

When I first attended the giant mobile phone rally in Barcelona more than a decade ago, Nokia, Samsung and even Microsoft, with their Windows phones, made the headlines.

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Huawei was an obscure Chinese manufacturer of telecommunication equipment that occupied a large shed on the show but was striving to generate great interest from the media.

This year, the company's press conference on Sunday was the hottest, with swarms of journalists lining up for an hour to enter.

The Huawei Mate X, a phone with a foldable screen that, according to the presenter, was bigger and better in all respects than the Samsung Galaxy Fold, unveiled a few days ago, was at the heart of the strong and slightly awkward presentation.

Despite the fact that at $ 2,600 (£ 1,960), the price was also higher, most analysts agreed that it exceeded the Samsung device. I even managed to get my hands on the next day, but Huawei 's executive, who produced it in an inside pocket of the jacket, seemed terrified at the thought that I could fold it too far and break it.

But if Huawei was a bit more open on its new device than Samsung, there was a problem that did not fit the agenda at all. The company did not want to talk about the US allegations that it poses a threat to the security of the new 5G networks. .

US government officials were in Barcelona to voice their message that Huawei owes its allegiance to the Chinese Communist Party and that mobile operators should not be trusted to provide secure equipment to their new networks.

Europeans wanted to be seen as sharing some of these concerns. The security consultant, David Rogers, tells Tech Tent that the operators realize that they may have become too dependent on Huawei's cheap equipment: "Mobile networks have paid dearly for many equipment and some equipment may not be of the same quality as other suppliers and now they are harvesting what they sowed. "

But the operators also seem to share Huawei's view that the United States has not brought evidence of wrongdoing in the form of backdoors in their equipment.

The consensus is that all suppliers, from China or elsewhere, must be subject to increased surveillance as 5G networks are deployed and integrated into vital infrastructure.

With 5G demonstrations everywhere in the vast halls of the Mobile World Congress, it was clear that this technology was at the center of this industry's ambitions and the importance of security.

We have seen how, in Toronto, 5G sensors were installed on the water supply system to identify water pressure and improve efficiency by spotting any leaks. A team from the University of Surrey, UK, presented a McLaren sports car equipped with 5G technology, capable of receiving live information about other cars and the dangers of sensors mounted on them. roads.

In both cases, you want to be sure that the networks and devices connected to them can not be hacked.

In addition to all these safety concerns, operators and manufacturers face another thorny question: can they really make money with 5G? As we emerged from the event where the Chinese company Xiaomi unveiled a 5G handset for $ 679, I came across the leading mobile phone analyst, Ben Wood of CCS Insight.

He described this award as "dazzling" – and he meant low, not high. With the Chinese firm offering a state-of-the-art 5G phone at a lower price than the flagship brands Samsung and Apple 4G, Ben believes that manufacturers in the middle market, such as Sony and LG, will struggle to stand out .

The 5G is expected to cause a new wave of disruptions in the mobile phone sector. And whatever the issues of trust and security, Chinese companies such as Xiaomi and Huawei seem likely to thrive.