The US Government may be placing a lot of pressure on Huawei with their restrictions on the tech company, restricting them from using US software and working with those companies. The ban is also something that constantly appears to be more of a threat than anything else as the country has pushed back on the deadline for it once again as announced by the US Department of Commerce this week.
Instead of ending on April 1, the temporary general license which is what is currently allowing many US companies to still do business with Huawei, will now only expire after May 15. At the same time, the department is also asking for public input on this temporary license, including whether it needs to be changed or extended further.
This marks the fourth time the ban has been pushed back and with the US looking for more public comment, I wouldn’t be surprised if it gets pushed back indefinitely. While Google has taken a fairly hard stance in accepting the ban and not permitting Huawei to use their software and app store, the likes of Microsoft and many other companies continue to work with Huawei on the hardware front, both for their laptops and data centre servers. Not to mention the many companies that still make use of Huawei telecoms equipment for their day to day operations.
The US government has approved a bill to provide a $1 billion fund to pay for replacing the provider’s equipment, but it’s not clear if that is enough and even if they could do it in time given the complexity of changing many of these systems and the effort involved.
Last Updated: March 13, 2020
