European telecom industry to take $62 bn hit if Chinese cos banned from 5G

Excluding China’s Huawei Technologies Co and ZTE Corp from the next generation of mobile networks would lumber European phone companies with 55 billion euros ($62 billion) in extra costs, the wireless industry’s main lobby group said.

A global ban advocated by US President Donald Trump would also delay the rollout of the high-speed 5G networks by at least 18 months and deprive the European Union of around 45 billion euros in productivity growth, according to a preliminary report drafted in April by the GSMA trade association and seen by Bloomberg.

“The need to replace network equipment and the capacity constraints on the remaining mobile equipment vendors would disrupt current rollout plans,” the report said. “Such a delay would widen the gap in 5G penetration between the EU and the US by more than 15 percentage points by 2025.”