White House Burnishes Big US Tech Firms for 5G Battle

The White House’s efforts to position American companies for leadership in 5G appear to be inexhaustible.

President Donald Trump, some of his advisors, and agency heads have been talking about empowering U.S.-based technology companies to take the lead on 5G for about 18 months, but the market realities are largely unchanged. The latest pitch comes from White House economic advisor Larry Kudlow, who told The Wall Street Journal the administration is working with large U.S. tech firms to create software for 5G network operations.

Mavenir CEO Pardeep Kohli told SDxCentral that his company is trying to get the attention of the federal government, but it hasn’t talked to the White House directly yet and it doesn’t have the resources to lobby politicians. “I think we probably should be doing more, but not much at this point. We are starting to at least talk to some agencies to show them we are here,” he said.

“If you look at the portfolio of these companies in which they mentioned, none of them have the software,” Kohli said, noting that the government’s effort appears to be focused on providing components of cloud computing that can run networking software. He also argued that Mavenir is the only U.S.-based company that can provide end-to-end software for mobile networks on all the necessary layers.

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