Report: HUAWEI 5G tech is by far the global leader, but Europe making gains

A new report from Global Data (via ZDNet) examines 5G networking portfolios of five of the biggest telecommunications companies in the world. Of the five companies examined — Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung, and ZTE — only HUAWEI 5G radios attained a perfect 5/5 score.

As far as Global Data is concerned, HUAWEI is far and away the best telco for 5G networking, with little competition as of right now. However, European companies are also doing very well, with Chinese firm ZTE and South Korean firm Samsung the only two companies with no score over 4/5.

Check out the score sheet below:

Each bar represents how well each company’s 5G portfolio looks when examining baseband capacity (how much data the products can transmit at once), radio unit portfolio (how varied the company’s product catalog is), installation ease, and technology evolution. The HUAWEI 5G portfolio earned a mark of five in every category, which no other company could match.

Huawei’s two closest competitors are both based in Europe: Ericsson in Sweden and Nokia in Finland. They both achieved at least one 5/5 score.

This score sheet puts countries interested in rolling out a 5G network in a precarious position. On one hand, HUAWEI 5G is clearly the best when it comes to this technology, but its mounting problems — the most severe of which being its presence on the U.S. government’s Entity List — are likely giving many countries pause when it comes to signing on with HUAWEI.

To its credit, HUAWEI pointed out on Tuesday that Ericsson’s botched rollout of Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN) didn’t prevent the country from signing on for the company to also do its 5G network rollout.

In the U.S., several carriers have already switched on 5G support in specific locations in large cities. No HUAWEI equipment is used in the U.S. at all.

NEXT: 5G isn’t available in most markets yet, but Samsung is starting work on 6G