License allowing some trade with Huawei expires, spelling possible trouble for rural telecom companies

The reprieve, which expired Thursday night, provided some exceptions to a trade ban the Trump administration imposed last year on the Chinese tech giant, which it labeled a security threat.

That ban generally prohibited U.S. companies from exporting technology to Huawei. But the reprieve, known as a temporary general license, allowed U.S. software providers to continue sending updates and patches to Huawei so the Chinese company could disseminate them to customers using Huawei cellphones or Huawei wireless network equipment.

The Commerce Department has said the reprieve was largely meant to help rural telecommunications companies in the U.S., some of which use Huawei equipment in their mobile networks. Larger U.S. telecom companies have largely avoided using Huawei equipment, but rural providers adopted it because it was relatively inexpensive.

The Commerce Department didn't immediately respond to a request for comment Friday on the expiration. Lawyers said it was possible the agency would still renew the temporary general license in the coming days.

A Huawei spokesman said the company didn't have an immediate comment.

Jerry Whisenhunt, general manager of Pine Telephone Company, a network in rural Oklahoma that uses Huawei equipment, said he was less concerned about the reprieve ending than he was about a bigger problem - a law enacted this year requiring U.S. telecoms to rip out and replace equipment that poses "national security risks." The Federal Communications Commission this year designated Huawei and fellow Chinese equipment producer ZTE as posing such a threat.

The new law says telecom companies won't have to replace the equipment until the federal government gives them money to do so. Congress hasn't yet allocated money for the replacement effort, and Whisenhunt sees no sign of it doing so soon. In the meantime, he doesn't want to spend money to update a network he knows he needs to rip out.

"The longer they wait the more likely it is that we're going to have problems" with the functioning of the network, he said.

It wasn't immediately clear how the license expiration would affect users of Huawei cellphones, which run on Google's Android operating system.

Earlier this year, Google said the U.S. trade ban meant it was prohibited from providing its technology or apps to new Huawei phones, but that it was still able to update Huawei phones that had been on the market before the trade ban was announced in May 2019.

"We have continued to work with Huawei, in compliance with government regulations, to provide security updates and updates to Google's apps and services on existing devices, and we will continue to do so as long as it is permitted," Google said in that February statement.

On Friday, Google spokesman Jose Castaneda said it was the temporary general license that had allowed the company to send those updates. He declined to comment further.