Credit: Huawei
Huawei Australia has criticised the Federal Government’s 5G roll-out, claiming it will leave rural and regional areas without any coverage.
The Chinese giant -- which was excluded from the local 5G market last year -- claimed that “there is no plan on the table to deliver truly nationwide 5G” unless network operators are given Federal funding.
According to Huawei’ submission to a committee inquiry into the deployment, adoption, and application of 5G in Australia, rural communities will miss out on 5G without “decisive action” from the government.
Although Huawei said it supported the committee’s recommendation into rural 5G trials, it claimed farmers in particular will risk losing out “in the same way they missed out on 4G”.
“The reality is that 5G represents a chicken-and-egg situation for our farming communities, until they know for sure that they are going to be able to access 5G technology then there is no way that they can start planning to invest in new technologically advanced equipment that can boost their productivity,” the submission said.
Huawei also pointed out that the government had staked $50 billion on building the National Broadband Network that “may deliver better internet than was previously available in the bush” but claimed that data-caps and speed limits of 25Mbps are “not sufficient” for agricultural technology innovation.
Further, the network builder referred to an earlier parliamentary submission whereby it claimed the cost of 5G deployment would rise by 30 per cent to between $700 million and $2.1 billion by reducing “critical vendor competition”.
“These additional deployment costs for 5G are going to make it even more difficult to deliver 5G coverage in rural and regional Australia and it is critical that the Federal Government finds ways to lower the cost of deployment for operators,” Huawei added.
It noted, however, that it supports infrastructure sharing in regional areas in order to lower costs but claimed there would be resistance from some stakeholders to this.
