Elephant In The Room: Over-pampered Huawei Sues NCA, Rejects Local Partnership

Chinese tech giant Huawei, which has for more than a decade, controlled an overwhelming majority of technology support services for both state and private institutions in Ghana, has dared to sue the National Communications Authority (NCA) for introducing a new license that allows local and smaller players into that space.This is what a country like Ghana gets when it chooses to cede such a critical sector to a company from a country where no African business organization can ever dream of holding such a huge share of such a critical sector, much less sue a regulator for pursuing a national interest policy.Huawei's control of the technology support services space in Ghana cuts across all major digital public infrastructure.

In fact, Huawei's dominance of that space is so big that they even outsource jobs to local entities and pay them peanuts, while they keep the big bucks.The NCA, under the auspices of the Ministry of Communications and Digitalization, has therefore tweaked the existing Electronic Communications Managed Services License (ECMSL) to allow local and smaller entities, other than the original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) like Huawei and Ericsson, to take over part of the work.

But Huawei, the leading OEM in the country is vehemently opposed to the new license, to the extent that it has sued NCA, praying the Electronic Communications Tribunal to stop NCA from implementing the license as is.The New LicenseThe new license, dubbed the Electronic Communications Managed Service License (ECMSL), assigned levels one and two managed services to non-OEMs, while level three support services will remain with the OEMs - mainly Huawei and Ericsson.[caption id="attachment_25774" align="alignnone" width="626"] Table 1: NCA's Electronic Communication Managed Services License[/caption]Levels 1 and 2 support services, which is under Category One in Table 1 above, include running the Network Operation Center (NOC), Call Center Fibre managed services, Field Level maintenance (radio and transmission), as well as Tower sites and other related services.This then limits Huawei and Ericsson to Level 3 support services under Category Two - importation of equipment on behalf of the telcos and other industry players, installation of same, and maintenance and upgrade of Hardware and Software releases.In their appeal to the tribunal, Huawei is seeking three specific reliefs:An order setting aside the decision of the Respondent (NCA)...which sought to disqualify the Appellant (Huawei) from applying to participate in Category 1 ECSML.A declaration that Huawei is qualified to apply to be licensed to perform any or all of the scope of services listed under the both Category 1 and 2 of the ECMSLAn order against the NCA to accept the application of Huawei for provision of the full scope of services listed under both Categories 1 and 2, for the grant of license either under the current ECMSL regime or under the previous dealership license.The reasons the cited for seeking those reliefs have already been captured in a previous article by this writer.Without prejudice to the honourable tribunal, this is Huawei practically telling the government and people of Ghana to sacrifice public interest in favour of Huawei’s selfish interest.Some concerned industry experts consider Huawei's move as one of an over-pampered operator, who has been allowed to control a huge part of a critical sector in Ghana, often riding on the backs of local entities to make millions of dollars for so many years.

That seems to have gotten into their heads and therefore they have the nerve to challenge a whole country for pursuing a national interest policy.When the license was first introduced to industry players, Huawei and Ericsson presented separate written protests.

That is how entitled Huawei has become, after Ghana allowed them to control an overwhelmingly huge chunk of the country’s critical digital public infrastructure.Refusal of local partnership offerThis writer also learnt that, contrary to the terms of the new license, Huawei was even given the opportunity to consider partnering local entities to deliver on some of the support services under Category 1, but Huawei flatly rejected that offer and insisted that it is against their company policy to partner local players in any country they operate in.The irony and hypocrisy of Huawei's claim is that, they outsource jobs to local entities and pay them peanuts, but they can't partner local entities on equal terms.

Huawei's posture suggests that the status quo serves their selfish interest well, so they expect the whole of Ghana to sidestep national interest in favour of Huawei.Initially, when the NCA introduced this new license, it did so without consulting the affected industry players, something which this writer pointed out among other thing in a previous article.Also Read: EXCLUSIVE: NCA imposes limitations on Huawei and Ericsson with new licensing regimeBut subsequent to the article above, NCA has engaged all industry players in an extensive stakeholder consultation, and made it clear that the license will be implemented as is because it is in the national interest.Like Huawei, Ericsson also did register some concerns about the scope of the license, but still committed to paying for the new license, while the NCA considers expanding the scope of the Category Two license to include Levels 1 and 2 support services.But Huawei, which already controls an overwhelmingly huge chunk of the telecoms managed services subsector in Ghana, and has made loads of money from the country over the years, has elected to go legalistic instead.Huawei NOC hosted outside GhanaMeanwhile, industry players have informed Techfocus24 that Huawei Ghana's Network Operations Centre (NOC) is located in Nigeria, something that experts think is not out of the norm, but is worrying because it means data belonging to Ghanaians are being hosted outside of the country, which is not ideal.

But as things stand now, Huawei can even partner a local entity or a non-OEM and still apply for the Category One license on the basis of their argument that some of the equipment they manage for telcos are not necessarily manufactured by them.