Chipmaker Qualcomm is lobbying the U.S. government to revoke restrictions on the sale of technology components to Huawei. The Chinese telecomm giant was blacklisted by the United Sates last year because of what the administration deemed to be national security concerns.
Qualcomm would like to sell microchips to Huawei that the company can include in its next-generation 5G phones.
The blacklisting of Huawei has handed Qualcomm’s foreign competitors an estimated $8 billion per year business, the company says.
The U.S. gov’t has attempted to persuade allies to drop Huawei from its 5G network planning.
5G is expected to power everything from smartphones to driverless cars to power grids once implemented broadly. As a result, granting a foreign company access to critical network infrastructure is seen as a security risk.