Page 5 - EE Times Europe Magazine | February 2020

1.8+ million articles from
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EDITOR’S LETTER 500+ renowned
manufacturers
Europe Confronts

a New World Order

Europe shouldn’t be in this mess.
Technology is supposed to be agnostic,
but today, the entire continent must
make a hard choice on 5G. Europeans
must choose between two partners: one a
suave, sweet-talking, and more recent and
decidedly non-traditional suitor (China)
and the other an aggressive, tough-talking,
long-term partner who eschews subtlety in
favor of the carrot-or-stick school of diplomacy (America). This is the
new world order.
The United States is forcing its partners globally to choose a side. It
wants to box Chinese telecom equipment maker Huawei into a corner
by excluding it from the global communications market. The fi rst
move was to lock Huawei out of the bidding process for U.S. govern-
ment contracts. Later, American telcos were ordered not to install
the Chinese company’s equipment in their networks. Many of these
companies have since stopped offering Huawei smartphones to cus-
tomers. The strategy worked effectively in the U.S. and has now been
exported to other countries. However, the U.S. isn’t simply making
similar demands on foreign telcos. Rather, it is putting pressure on
national governments in Europe, Latin America, and elsewhere. Each
nation, too, must pick a side: Huawei or the U.S.
The tussle is bigger than Huawei, though. In fact, the Chinese
company is a proxy for the real fi ght over how the global economy will
take shape in the next decade. What will be the terms of engagement Our services:
among nations, and will the U.S. be able to maintain its leadership?
A new world order is emerging economically and politically. Most n 75,000+ articles in stock in Munich, Germany
nation states will remain as bit players, unable to infl uence the n 500,000+ additional articles readily available
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nerable they are to power exerted by the real combatants. Europeans
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ability to stand together as a single entity.
Don’t hold your breath. Europeans will show some attempts at n Large teams of multilingual inside sales and field sales in Germany
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the U.K.’s decision to allow limited use of Huawei equipment in its 5G Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, Brazil and the Middle East
rollout, based on a formula the country is still working out.
The battle will be bruising, but it won’t stop the march of techno-
logical innovations. When the dust settles, new advances will have
been made, but who gets to use these — and when, where, and how
— won’t be decided in boardrooms and on the manufacturing fl oors.
Political actors will most likely get the last say. ■ www.buerklin.com

YEARS

— Bolaji Ojo, global publisher and editor-in-chief at AspenCore Media

www.eetimes.eu | FEBRUARY 2020