Huawei Shows Growth Despite U.S. Ban
It’s been seven years, already! The Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act of 2019 was enacted to purge U.S. telecom networks of equipment deemed a national security threat, primarily from Chinese manufacturers, Huawei and ZTE. The Act was also intended to prevent future federal funds from being used to buy such equipment. Since becoming law, the Act has reshaped U.S. telecom policy, triggered a massive “rip-and-replace” program, and contributed to Huawei and ZTE’s global decline, though implementation challenges have slowed the Act’s full effectiveness.
At the U.S.’ behest, Huawei and ZTE equipment also were banned or heavily restricted in the U.K., Australia, Canada, Sweden and parts of the EU. Certainly, Huawei lost major 5G market share in Europe after 2020. Faced with a pushback in many key markets, Huawei pivoted to develop cloud and software services and to meet the growing telecom network equipment demands in domestic Chinese markets. At the same time, Huawei continues to build 5G networks in developing countries in Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia.
Today, Huawei is still the world’s largest telecom equipment manufacturer. The company reported consolidated revenue of $126 billion for full-year 2025. That compares $24 billion for Ericsson and over $22 billion for Nokia, now the world’s two leading independent telecom equipment suppliers. There is no American equivalent. Huawei reported that telecom infrastructure accounted for 43 percent of its 2025 sales. Consumer equipment sales such as smartphones and mobile devices contributed another 39 percent.
However, the Act seems to have been less effective than originally intended. Certainly, it restricted use of public funds, namely Universal Service Fund dollars, to buy “covered” or banned equipment, effectively shutting Huawei and ZTE out of the U.S. market entirely.
On the downside, it has taken a lot of time and money to remove the banned equipment from U.S. mobile networks. Congress originally appropriated $1.9 billion to reimburse smaller regional and rural carriers under a “Rip-and-Replace” program to specifically remove Huawei and ZTE equipment. Eligibility was later expanded to mobile network operators with up to 10 million subscribers and for certain educational networks, Inside Towers reported.
In December 2024, Congress authorized the Commission to borrow up to an additional $3.08 billion from the U.S. Treasury to reimburse small carriers. The FCC said it had that money in-hand to distribute to carriers in April 2025.
Yet some of the affected MNOs have said that without more funding they cannot finish the removal, leaving them left with large amounts of banned equipment still operating and risking service outages if forced to remove equipment without reimbursement.
On a personal note, I visited Huawei at its headquarters in Shenzhen, China, in 1995. I was retained for a consulting assignment to advise a client in the power supplies business on whether they should buy Huawei’s telecom power equipment division, which was up for sale.
Though this visit was a decade before the security concerns became an issue, as an engineer, I was quite impressed by Huawei’s extensive R&D facilities and technical staff, and its state-of-the-art manufacturing operations. Moreover, the people at Huawei were very welcoming to me and the executives from my client’s company that were on the trip.
It was also the first time I was in meetings using translators. That’s a novel experience!
By John Celentano, Inside Towers Business Editor
