New reports indicate that “Belgium’s federal police raided Huawei’s EU office and the homes of lobbyists for the Chinese tech company on suspicions of bribery, forgery, money laundering and criminal organisation.” The episode surrounding the state-backed telecom vendor lends new urgency to warnings that the U.S. cannot fall prey to the Chinese government’s push for other nations to adopt exclusive licensing in the mid-band spectrum.  

As Telecoms.com reports, “Huawei, of course, is barred from operating in many EU countries due to concerns about its ties to the Chinese government and the resulting implications for telecom network security. Nonetheless it continues to have a major presence in Europe as it seeks to mitigate those restrictions and persuade politicians it’s not the ‘high risk’ vendor they assume it to be. Huawei once more had a major presence at the recent Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona, where it continues to do business in countries it’s not barred from.” 

Top tech analyst Dean Bubley recently shared similar concerns about China’s bid to host the next World Radio Congress (WRC) in 2027. As he noted, “China’s government and domestic manufacturers such as Huawei and ZTE are almost always aligned on matters such as spectrum policy, as well as on their strong preference for cellular 5G / 6G rather than Wi-Fi or other co-existence technologies.”

That is because a top-down, command-and-control spectrum playbook creates a bigger market for companies like Huawei and ZTE. Of course, some big wireless carriers agree with China’s approach because it gives them exclusive access to finite spectrum resources, boxing out other commercial users.

In contrast, spectrum sharing is an American innovation, developed to meet American needs, and led by American companies. It makes more spectrum capacity available for new uses and needs but without the need to remove and rework sensitive military equipment used by the U.S. and its allies. 

Spectrum sharing also increases the number of users that can harness the power of the same spectrum band, which means U.S. national security needs remain protected AND U.S. businesses get the new bandwidth they need to meet growing consumer demand, create American jobs, and boost our economy. 

In short, American-led spectrum sharing means the U.S. remains the global wireless leader.