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.

Dell Technologies, Microsoft, and AT&T were all named as potential contributors to this effort. The goal, as with most economic policies and proposals out of the White House of late, is to limit or eliminate the need for equipment from Chinese vendors like Huawei.

AT&T and Microsoft declined to comment. In a prepared statement, Dell Technologies said it and VMware “work with governments around the world in support of many modern technology solutions. We are actively supporting 5G and the rapid deployment of 5G services, and are excited about the opportunities it presents.”

Kudlow told the newspaper that “the big-picture concept is to have all of the U.S. 5G architecture and infrastructure done by American firms, principally,” adding that Ericsson and Nokia could also be involved because they have a large domestic presence too. “Dell and Microsoft are now moving very rapidly to develop software and cloud capabilities that will, in fact, replace a lot of the equipment.”

His comments follow a bill proposed in the U.S. Senate that would funnel more than $1 billion into 5G-related research and development in open radio access network (RAN) technologies in a bid to elevate U.S. companies as an alternative to vendors based elsewhere.

In April 2019, Trump said 5G networks will be a “vital link to America’s prosperity and national security in the 21st century.” He added that “5G is a race that America must win... It’s a race that we will win.”

Roger Entner, founder and lead analyst at Recon Analytics, noted that many smaller American-based companies already provide software for the wireless network core, edge computing, open RAN, and virtualization. Companies like Altiostar, Mavenir, and others should be involved “because they’re actually doing very important stuff there,” he said.

“It would be very difficult for an Oracle or a Microsoft to build an infrastructure core services platform unless they buy somebody,” Entner said. “We should have everybody at the table, and that includes small companies that are actually punching way above their weight.”

Many U.S.-based companies are "heavily focused on enabling the software layer, which will exist around virtualized 5G networks," Patrick Filkins, senior research analyst at IDC, wrote in response to questions. "It can't be said enough, 5G is about much more than just the RAN layer. Virtualized networks, particularly those that invoke cloud-native principles, will be deployed in tandem with 5G RAN." He added that opportunities for VMware and others will broaden as operators move closer to the webscale model of SDN.

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.

"I'm not aware of any efforts by these companies to develop software for 5G networks, but [Microsoft, Dell Technologies, and others] will very likely play a key role in the years to come when 5G coverage ramps up and multi-access edge computing (MEC) matures," Phil Solis, research director at IDC, wrote in response to questions.

While the amount of funding proposed by the Senate pales in comparison to the amount of money RAN vendors are investing in 5G, “everything helps,” Entner said, adding that it’s not too late for American companies to catch up on 5G.

“This is the first iteration” of 5G, he said. “We’re doing 5G with a 4G core so all of this is an iterative process… We should play to where the puck will be, not where it is.”

The flip side of this U.S. government-led effort, of course, is that the cellular RAN market is now tightly controlled by a small group of vendors, including Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia, along with Samsung and ZTE to a lesser extent. Some large U.S. companies have tried and failed, and others like Cisco have repeatedly said it has no interest in building RAN equipment for 5G.

Last summer, Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins said it never even considered entering the RAN market and the U.S. government hadn’t asked the company to do so up to that point.

"Generally, I don't think that this will change things too drastically for the RAN... The shift from function-specific systems to more open and generic server-like architecture in mobile networks is already occurring slowly regardless of this," Solis wrote, adding that the companies that control the market for baseband and radio units prefer to create proprietary software.

“It’s a highly, highly competitive industry,” Entner said. “It’s a business for big companies or for smaller companies to be acquired.”

Kohli, of Mavenir, underlined that point: “The problem with us is not technology, the problem is the money to roll it out.”