Europe will have to spend $62 b more on 5G if Chinese vendors are banned: Report

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

A global ban advocated by U.S. 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 in productivity growth, according to a preliminary report drafted in April by the GSMA trade association and seen by Bloomberg.

5G rollout plans

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 U.S. by more than 15 percentage points by 2025.