United Arab Emirates’ telecommunications giant Etisalat announced a deal with Huawei on Tuesday, signaling a blow to the Trump administration’s efforts to curb the company’s global influence in mobile broadband.
The new partnership between the UAE state-owned company and Huawei will allow for 300 new 5G towers to be built around the gulf nation within the first half of 2019. The effort will make the UAE one of the nations with the highest percentage of 5G coverage in the world.
The move signals a continuing trend of Middle Eastern nations cozying up to Beijing economic prowess in the hemisphere.
Peng Xiongji, president of the Huawei-Etisalat account, applauded the partnership between with the two companies, expressing excitement for Huawei’s new venture in the Middle East. “5G offers great potential for Etisalat to offer enriched broadband experiences, new services, and explore new B2B markets,” Peng said.
The deal comes as the latest blow to the White House’s global effort to dissuade allies and partners from contracting Huawei for the development and deployment of 5G network infrastructure. Both the United Kingdom and Germany are reported to have Huawei under contract consideration for building out their 5G wireless networks on a nationwide scale.
The Trump administration has dubbed Huawei a threat to its national security infrastructure. With the UAE being one of the most critical allies for the U.S. in the gulf region, Huawei’s presence in the nation adds a new level of complexity to the U.S. security apparatus in the region.
Federal officials, pushed by Trump’s eagerness on the issue, have been ramping up development and deployment of 5G mobile broadband connectivity. Last week, Trump expressed that he wanted more U.S. companies to move towards the adoption of 5G technology or risk “getting left behind.”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his team has been on the forefront of the effort to convince the international community to ditch any Huawei contract proposals.
“If a country adopts this and puts it in some of their critical information systems, we won’t be able to share information with them,” Pompeo said during an interview with Fox Business. “In some cases, there’s risk. We won’t even be able to co-locate American resources, an American embassy, an American military outpost.”
