The biggest threat to 5G

To accommodate Huawei and ZTE, the Europeans are coming out with the idea of having a kind of lab set up where the networks bits and pieces will be quarantined. Then upon evaluation that they pose no security threat, the systems will be allowed to be deployed in networks.

It does look the Europeans are bending themselves backwards to accommodate Huawei. God only knows what Huawei is doing to bring them to their side...

Immediately, there will be a request for Nokia, Cisco, Samsung to be “Lab tested”

Huawei Offers to Create Polish Security Lab to Ward Off 5G Bans

Desperate to avoid that fate, Huawei on Wednesday made its security center pitch.

The GSM Association (GSMA) wants a pan-European security regime to test and approve 5G network equipment before it’s bought and installed by network operators.

Techies, being who they are, will talk with their countries' regulators that they want to see the tests in loco. You know very well how this will end.

Only someone who have not seen how networks were built in the age of the CCIR and the CCITT would think this is reasonable.

These labs will be installed in nice locations so the techies can enjoy the free time in the surroundings.

Of course, Huawei will place its own testbeds in Shenzhen so its customers can continue going there around Xmas, and other celebrations -depending on the country they come from- so they load up with shopping to bring home very cost-effective presents.

There will be engineers and middle managers by the plane loads going to factories and labs to do “factory acceptance tests". There will be lots of technical erudition being discussed in order to free the equipment to be deployed into the networks.

I know them very well. They will even create a label of some kind of certification to be glued to the devices. And of course, they will spend 6 months discussing how the label will look like.

To give you an idea of how this will play on:

Be careful with Scandinavians and Americans!

They fought the Sandwich War!

It took them 25 years to agree on the definition of what a sandwich is!

How the Great Sandwich War of 1958 Changed the Way We Eat

To the disappointment of sandwich aficionados everywhere, the IATA sided with PanAm. According to their ruling, a sandwich must be “cold… simple… unadorned… inexpensive,” and must “consist of a substantial and visible chunk of bread.”

Any materials “normally regarded as expensive or luxurious, such as smoked salmon, oysters, caviar, lobster, game, asparagus, pate de foie gras,” as well as “overgenerous or lavish helpings which affect the money value of the unit” were prohibited as well. Although most European carriers escaped the affair unscathed, SAS was slapped with a $20,000 fine for its blasphemous slander of indigestibles wrapped in cellophane.

Time is Money.

That idea of test systems before they are allowed to be deployed will kill 5G before it starts.

It will go like this, TIM Italia engineers depart the lab set up after completion, a new bunch arrives, the TIM Brasil to do exactly the same tests their colleagues have just done. Vodafone week, will see the Vodafone from the UK, followed by the Vodafone from Germany.

This is a trip back in time to the age of the state-owned enterprises telcos. Price were no objection and the customer was not the king and technology had a 25 year life-cycle.

Do not do it. These ideas have to be resisted by all means. It will kill 5G even before it starts.