A huge risk for Nokia and the other firms collaborating with O-RAN Alliance has appeared. Nokia has decided to stop 5G because of the high risk of penalties they could face if they continue collaborating with some Chinese firms, which have been blacklisted by Washington. Last month, Biden blacklisted other 34 Chinese technology companies. Now, since Nokia is part of the O-RAN Alliance, they had to inform the group they cannot continue working.
O-RAN is the alliance created in 2018 by China Mobile, Deutsche Telekom, and Orange to collaborate as a worldwide community of mobile network operators, vendors of Radio Access Network. This network would help the smaller companies to compete in 5G markets with the most important competitors.
The main issue concerning this collaboration is that among the participants of this group there are Chinese companies that can be a menace for U.S. safety: Kindroid, Phytium, and Inspur. It is true that O-RAN did not answer the request for clearance and this creates even more doubts.
The American-issued licenses gave a break to Nokia’s collaboration with O-RAN until the situation isn’t fully resolved. However, the risk of penalties is high for also other companies such as Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica. According to the last news, the European Commission is verifying whether O-RAN could entail a risky collaboration for the firms in question.
