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German draft proposal would subsidize smaller firms to enter 5G market
- iagovar 6y agoSo you want OpenRAN, that's cool, but who is exactly going to build the hardware for that in Europe if it isn't Nokia and Ericsson? Infineon? IDK man, I lack information here but I'd say that be careful with what you wish.
- tpmx 6y agoNokia Networks used to be called Nokia Siemens Networks - it was a joint venture between Nokia and Siemens before Nokia bought out Siemens in 2013. They still have lots of employees in Germany. Nokia Networks recently announced Open RAN allegiance/support. I guess this is about forcing Ericsson to do the same for some added competition. If they don't, who cares, lots of money will still flow back into the german economy. > The German draft proposal includes over €300 million of investment in Open RAN technology, This is sort of a (possibly) legal way for the german government to subsidize the company formerly known as Nokia Siemens Networks.
- liotier 6y agoI'll believe OpenRAN when I see the interop party. Telco suppliers loath open standards - in practice they are usually only implemented as far as necessary to tick a RFP checkbox. Better than nothing though.
- tpmx 6y agoYeah, I'll tend to agree. I think this is Germany being Germany. As a Swede: I've long thought that EU will split up in northern/southern parts. Germany is in the middle - this is a stab in the back of Sweden. Before this I thought Germany might end up in the northern part. Now they have forged an alliance with Finland/Nokia.
- bilekas 6y agoStab in the back of Sweden ? How so? Because of lower barrier for entry that might hurt Ericsson's bottom line ? Ericsson will still be at the forefront of EU infrastructure, they have the money to do it and will earn from that, their reputation too is already favoured in the EU over Huwawei.. Which is the whole point. But sure.. Swexit, lets 'extrapolate' that out then, Ericsson will then be under increased tarrifs and excluded from initial EU contract proposals. They have not forged an alliance with anyone, they are leveling the market to allow for other competitors and not have a bottleneck on suppliers.
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- marsokod 6y agoAnd Nokia bought Alcatel Lucent in 2017 so they've got a presence in France as well.
- abledon 6y agoFor More information... I enjoyed this sites articles on the O-RAN matter[1]. There is an entire subsection with articles on the recent industry movements. [1]https://www.lightreading.com/open-ran/nokia-is-making-risky-bet-on-open-ran/d/d-id/766168 https://www.lightreading.com/open-ran/nokia-is-making-risky-...
- herewegoagain2 6y agoIt doesn't matter, the German government hardly ever finishes their big projects. They just want to look good on paper and spend some tax payer money.
- throw2102032112 6y agoThe Berlin Brandenberg Airport comes to mind: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20181030-what-happened-to-berlins-ghost-airport https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20181030-what-happened-...
- JAlexoid 6y agoThe idea is that you don't need one fully vertically integrated specialist manufacturer, like you do now. You can have multiple different components.... Think of like building your desktop PC today - you can have CPU from AMD, the motherboard from ASUS, GPU from MSI, SSD from Intel, etc...
- the-dude 6y agoWasn't Merkel's phone tapped by the NSA?
- asien 6y agoYes she fired the diplomat of the US Embassy for a few months IIRC. But it’s irrelevant to this post , the goal is for Germany to get sovereign 5G Telecom Infrastructure, today it’s either China with Huawei or American antenna ( NSA + CIA ) with Ericsson.
- zekica 6y agoBuy they have no issue with Microsoft's vendor lock in.
- guipsp 6y agoI'm sure you'd agree that vendor lock in on client endpoints is a much lesser issue than the critical infrastructure those endpoints are connected to, specially because not all endpoints are Microsoft
- sorenjan 6y agoWhy would it be easier for the Americans to spy on Ericsson networks than some German network?
- sudosysgen 6y agoIndeed. As a Canadian too I'm agnostic to Chinese or American-backed equipment - they both pose a similar threat. If there is an option for domestic equipment then that is of course wildly preferable to either.
- f430 6y agoThe absolutely do not compare!!!! As Canadian I am appalled at the constant CCP apologists in our country and on HN. One is a totalitarian regime devoid of basic human morality such as ripping out organs out of people for profit while they are alive , responsible for genocide of Uighurs and suppression of information and many many other stuff that is devoid of any dignity for humanity. The other is a democratic hyperpower that Canada is also part of under the Five Eyes agreement. If I had to choose between the CCP, Russia or America, it's America every fucking time. edit: I took a look at your comment history and when you talk stuff like this I see where you are coming from: A significant reason why Stalin was able to successfully rise to power and why the Bolsheviks were able to secure total power is because of foreign violence and interference. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26013882 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26013882 the other commentators replying to you are correct. Your ignorance is quite disgusting.
- JustFinishedBSG 6y agoI don't understand why Huawei is suddenly the networking devil when it comes to 5G when it didn't (and still doesn't) bother anyone when most of the GPON/EPON/XGPON/NGPON hardware is full Huawei... I bet the fibre connection to the not-Huawei 5G towers is going to be Huawei anyway.
- bigpumpkin 6y agoThe NSA needs to hack into everything. Huawei everywhere makes it difficult to do so. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/jan/27/nsa-hacked-huawei-routers/ https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/jan/27/nsa-hacked-...
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- jdsnape 6y agoYou do have a point, but I think from a risk perspective there is a difference. When Huawei was chosen for those fixed line projects it was providing relatively ‘dumb’ pieces of kit (switches etc.), with controller software that could be looked at and ringfenced. The 5G stack has been implemented using much more virtualisation, and the vendors are providing much more general capability which makes it a lot harder to risk assess and probe for weaknesses etc.
- martinald 6y agoThe UK has tens of thousands of Huawei VDSL2 DSLAMs installed, I imagine most countries have similar (Portugal seems to use Huawei for nearly all of their FTTH equipment). They are not dumb pieces of kit at all in terms of computing power. Regardless, even if it was, it is still a huge potential problem. Imagine Huawei had some backdoor code that looked for a certain pattern of data across any of the network interfaces and corrupted the firmware so it wouldn't load without being physically replaced. China then buys a load of ads and as users browse the web, they load the image with the secret string in, triggering it (one example). Within a couple of hours enough users have seen it that the vast majority of western infrastructure is down, and needs replaced (and I would assume in this case, China wouldn't be willing to sell more!). I think this sort of attack would likely take down most 5G anyway - as it's incredibly likely that the backhaul has some sort of Huawei fibre product in it somewhere along the line.
- dathinab 6y agoI know it's the title of the article but I still would rename it to "Germany...". Berlin is a city state in Germany with is own local government.
- dewey 6y ago> Berlin is a city state in Germany with is own local government. Germans will know that Berlin city doesn't have this kind of money lying around ;)
- BillyTheKing 6y agoand calling it a 'government' really does seem like a stretch :)
- dathinab 6y agoGermans will still get confused as it's not really common practice for a large part of Germany to refer to Berlin when referring to the government. The reasons for this are many fold, including that the Berlin government is pretty bad and as such the city has monetary and other problem all the time. Also in difference to e.g. the US the capital city has not the same kind of special position, besides some small area in it the rest of it is fully self governed by the city state in the same way e.g. Bavaria is self governed by it's local government.
- Nagyman 6y agoAFAIK, it's common to use the capital of a country when referencing government decisions in news articles. e.g. Washington, Beijing, Ottawa, Delhi, Brussels, etc.
- solarkraft 6y agoOh, yeah. I thought it was about the city of Berlin.
- tschwimmer 6y agoThis is an english linguistic practice called metonymy. This practice involves referring to a whole entity by something that it is part of it. For example, Berlin is part (the capital) of Germany. This is a very common practice in discussing international politics, with other examples being Washington, Moscow, and Beijing to refer to the US, Russia and China respectively. More info can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metonymy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metonymy
- nix23 6y agoThe devices will be as great as the almighty Airport, if it comes to build something...berlin is as good as it gets.
- niklasd 6y agoActually the title of the article is kind of misleading. "Berlin" stands in this context for the German federal government (the announcement is from the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy) not for the state of Berlin. Living in Berlin myself I can attest that very few people would believe that the state of Berlin could pull off such a feat, however, the federal government is (somewhat) better positioned for that.
- JAlexoid 6y agoCity of Belin cannot enforce smoking ban, let alone anything else.
- systemvoltage 6y agoI am going to put it in the most blunt, politically incorrect and frankly offensive way: I don't want my communications to touch any Chinese services, hardware, applications or processes. This is what my gut feelings are. I have surveyed over 200 suppliers in China, I've got zero trust in their professional ethics. EU should develop its own infrastructure for communications. No one would hesitate to use German communication infrastructure because it's reasonable to expect strong ethics and professionalism. It's completely opposite with Chinese companies. Really. This is a broad generalization to help navigate. Of course there are exceptions, many, in fact. I find it totally ironic that the CCP is recently cracking down on low level corruption in mid-sized firms in China (a good thing), while ignoring their own deeds.
- joering2 6y agoWhen you mentioned Germany, I chuckled a little. Worked there for many years and corruption and lack of professionalism I witness in IT section was astonishing. At least here in US corporate corruption is not blunt; nobody here - like it happened to me in Germany - will meet you for the first time, listen to your case and then ask for $15,000 Euro bribe. Here is a good start how terrible German ethics are: https://www.dw.com/en/image-problems-mount-in-corporate-germany/a-16460233 https://www.dw.com/en/image-problems-mount-in-corporate-germ... And then my favorite case of corrupted to the core Siemens: https://theconversation.com/lessons-from-the-massive-siemens-corruption-scandal-one-decade-later-108694 https://theconversation.com/lessons-from-the-massive-siemens...
- systemvoltage 6y agoThanks for the contrast. We also know the VW scandal. As I said, this is a broad generalization from my own experience with mid-sized firms in China. I can only expect larger unethical behavior with CCP members in the board meetings. At least in EU/Germany, you don't have the Government asking you to do shady things without due process. Worse, unspoken threat and chilling effect executives and leadership team would have to appease the CCP members. There was a recent example of this - Jack Ma.
- pelasaco 6y agoAlways when I read about it, I remember this darknetdiaries episode https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/64/ https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/64/
- supercon 6y agoThis is really puzzling. For once we actually have not one, but two ’hi-tech’ companies in Europe, that can be considered significant competitors in a global market, yet instead of embracing this opportunity, Germany thinks its better to further segment the market to smaller players? A market that to be honest, is not as lucrative as many might think and has huge upfront R&D costs everytime the next G is coming up, especially on the RAN side. I guess if its not airplanes or cars, we can leave it to Silicon Valley to handle. Or is it only airplanes now? /rant from Finland
- heisenbit 6y agoThe reasons the network equipment suppliers consolidated was that the network service providers had consolidated and were starting to buy in bulk. That forced the prices down and gave advantages to the larger players who stayed larger players by gobbling up the other players before a competitor could. The key problem is differentiation for network access providers. The business is highly infrastructure intensive and at the end of the day you take an IP packet, ship it to an interconnect and collect monthly payments. It is hard to see how such an industry where innovation is centered around bundling of tariffs for different access technologies is able to run more fragmented network technologies in cost effective ways. So this is imho. all support PR to justify funding general EU tech investments. The US has venture funds the EU has research grants.
- bilekas 6y ago> two ’hi-tech’ companies in Europe, that can be considered significant competitors in a global market And they still will be, this just lowers the barrier for entry on smaller companies who might have some beneficial R&D but dont have to sell/lease their intelectual property to the big two. I have worked at Ericsson and they're extremely patent hungry. Thats not a bad thing in and of itself, but it reduces significant competition when you can buy smaller companies IP or block them out of the market.
- schoolornot 6y agoEasy. Hire Fabrice.