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Malaysia vs Australia’s 5G strategy: what makes more sense? (water.house)

submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Malaysia vs Australia’s 5G strategy: what makes more sense?

During my trip to Malaysia, I noticed a Huawei store—something that’s become rare in Australia. While Huawei phones aren’t banned, they’re hard to find due to the lack of Google services and Australia’s reliance on Google them.

But it got me thinking: Australia has excluded Huawei from its 5G infrastructure, whereas Malaysia has taken a different approach by considering Huawei’s involvement in its 5G rollout. How do you view these differing tech strategies?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

How do you view these differing tech strategies?

It's not a tech strategy, its a national security strategy for Australia. Australia is a member of the 'five eyes intelligence alliance', China has been identified as a significant competitive/adversarial threat to that intelligence alliance. Something the Chinese probably should be quite proud of, in a funny sort of way. Australia's decisions on tech strategies is wrapped up in its national security and intelligence needs.

A reason, not a very good one, but a reason why Britain was maybe more open to Chinese tech is because their agencies have more bandwidth to deal with possible issues that may arise, and maybe the threat level of possible intrusion from Britains perspective was, at the time, lower.

Malaysia has a different, and closer relationship in just about all senses to China. They also don't have as close an intelligence relationship with the US as Australia. Culturally there is a significant part of the Malaysian populace who would claim some Chinese ethnicity. They are physically closer, and in a region who has been influenced by a dominant China for hundreds of years. Their relative openness should be expected.

I know nothing about Malaysia's tech strategy, but i think whatever it is, you could call their decisions more based on the possibilities of the tech itself, and their associated costs, than Australia's. Which is fine, different aims from different needs.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

How do you view these differing tech strategies?

They are not technology strategies, they are political ones.

Vodafone Australia (now trading as TPG) still use Huawei for wholesale and business fibre services in addition to still using Huawei for 3G and 4G for mobile services.

Source: ex telecommunications tech working on the towers Vodafone use.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

@slazer2au Oh, interesting. I didn't know that about Vodafone/TPG's continued use of Huawei equipment. Thanks for sharing your experience.

For context, here's the source I was originally referring to regarding Australia's Huawei ban for 5G:

https://amp.abc.net.au/article/10155438

This article from 2018 outlines the Australian government's decision to ban Huawei from the 5G rollout. It would be interesting to know how things have evolved since then, especially given what you've mentioned about existing infrastructure.

PS: Not sure how you responded to my deleted post haha, apologies in the mods in advance for the double post, not sure how I can delete it as I am on another fediverse

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

The post was cross linked to austech on aussie.social. I guess deleting isn't federated yet.

Those of us in the industry always saw this as a stupid move, ot was never about national security, it was always about politics. I don't know if this is true but there was some speculation about the bans were in response to Huawei supplying gear to Iran who are on the US "no no list".

Things really hasn't changed since then, you are still banned from using Huawei gear for your radio access network, but you can install Ericsson or Nokia but hire Huaweis managed services division to manage your non Huawei radios.