Spanish telecom MasOrange pulling off Huawei from its 5G network: Report

U.S. Rip and Replace program for Huawei and other Chinese 5G network suppliers now reached MasOrange in Spain. As per a new report, the Spanish telecom operator has decided to pull off the existing Chinese tech from its 5G network core.

MasOrange is a joint venture of Orange Spain and MasMovil Group. It is the largest business-to-consumer (B2C) telecom operator in Spain and covers over 30 million mobile lines, 7.3 million broadband customers, and 2.3 million TV users.

MasOrange is planning to cut off Huawei, ZTE, and other vendors from its 5G network technology. The telecom operator said to remove the China-made equipment completely by 2030. As a replacement, the firm will choose Ericsson in the market.

Inputs reveal that MasOrange will eliminate ZTE from the Basque while gradually reduce Huawei’s share in its 5G network. This will ultimately help Ericsson to increase its role in the network part and benefit by 40 to 60% in the first phase.

This news is worse for ZTE than Huawei. Before the merger, Orange introduced ZTE in its network line. The company believed that it’s a good tech with 5G standalone mode and offers great results. It even replaced Ericsson in Basque in early 2020.

Huawei 5G network equipment (Image Credits: Huawei)

However, after the joint venture, MasOrange decided to remove ZTE from the Basque region. The company now aims to completely replace ZTE with Ericsson by 2027.

This will also cut off Huawei 5G equipment, but not as an immediate process. The report says MasOrange will reduce the Huawei tech from 54% to 39%. The 15% cut-off could take place in 1600 sites for Extremadura, Andalusia, and Canary Islands.

Overall, Huawei may continue with a small yet significant part while Ericsson will hold 61% of the network share. Although if Ericsson results in better network quality then MasOrange could turn the table and treat Huawei the same as ZTE.

While many foreign regions were excluding Huawei and Chinese firms from their network, Spain has been an exception. There weren’t any big hustles over this matter in the respective region to date. However, the MasOrange company seems to have initiated this process.

Removal of Huawei isn’t as easy as it seems to be. It leads to major expenses and loss of efficient network technology. This is the reason why MasOrange didn’t completely ban the company but decided to reduce it to some extent.

Spanish telecom MasOrange pulling off Huawei from its 5G network: Report (Image Credits: Huawei)

(Source – Expansion)