US hints at state support for domestic ORAN push

The US government is thinking of subsidising US tech companies to help them get better at 5G software, in the hope that will solve the Huawei problem.

The rumour comes courtesy of the WSJ, which actually has a named source for once. White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow told the Journal that the White House is ‘working with’ tech companies to help them raise their game when it comes to networking software. This would enable the US to be self-reliant on 5G in the advent of the Open RAN movement getting to the point when it was actually useful.

Presumably US tech companies have previously tried to take on Huawei in the networking market but failed. What a few top tips from President Trump will do to tip the balance in their favour is unclear, but a shed-load of public cash never does any harm. Among the companies involved in the initiative are AT&T, Microsoft and Dell, apparently, but Ericsson and Nokia also seem to have been adopted by the US for the purpose of this exercise.

Unsurprisingly Dell and Microsoft are especially keen to get involved, cognisant as they presumably are of the massive new market available to them if networks can be run by software sitting on any old server. Apparently Michael Dell has even gone on the record as saying “software is eating the hardware in 5G.”

While we would never suggest that some US tech companies might exploit the current use of Huawei as a pawn in the trade war with China to benefit themselves, we can imagine the likes of Dell exaggerating the short term prospects of ORAN in order to tell budget-holding politicians what they want to hear. For further analysis, check out this and this from Light Reading.