CoBank: Planned $700 Million May Not Cover Cost of Replacing Huawei Gear

As the US gets set to ban certain Chinese manufacturers from selling telecommunications equipment to US service providers, CoBank is warning that rural Americans’ access to communications services could be damaged if insufficient funding is available for rural service providers to replace prohibited equipment already installed in their networks. CoBank is a key lender to rural service providers, who are the main users in the US of wireless network equipment from Chinese vendor Huawei. CoBank estimates that the cost of replacing Huawei gear may be higher than the funding the government is expected to provide. Legislators have introduced a bill that would provide up to $700 million to help carriers remove Huawei equipment from their networks and replace it with equipment from other sources. But a CoBank analysis estimates that cost at more than $1 billion for the 30 service providers identified as using Huawei equipment.