China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) finally issued long-awaited 5G licenses to the country’s three major telecoms service providers, and it also granted a fourth license to China Broadcasting Network Corp.

China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom will now be able to press ahead with their commercial 5G deployment plans following months of testing. The three carriers received trial 5G licenses at the end of 2018. China Unicom has already signaled its intent to be among the 5G frontrunners, for instance, and has completed trial networks in seven cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Nanjing, Hangzhou, and Xiongan).

The question now is: which of the big vendors will win the largest slice of future 5G contracts? All of the major vendors — from Ericsson through to Huawei, Nokia, Samsung Electronics, and ZTE — are working with the three carriers, and competition among them is already fierce.

Meanwhile, Ericsson, Huawei, and Nokia continue to trumpet their 5G advances: Nokia recently confirmed it has won 42 commercial 5G deals worldwide, of which 22 were with named customers. Huawei is now said to have won a total of 46 contracts, while Ericsson lists 47 announced 5G operator agreements and 21 publicly announced 5G contracts including eight networks that are already live.

Huawei and ZTE’s woes on the international stage as a result of U.S. government efforts to ban them from future 5G networks have been well documented, and it might be expected that the two China-based vendors will at least pick up some significant business in their domestic market. However, other obstacles may present themselves: Jefferies said in a research note that “it will be very difficult for China to build 5G in scale” if the U.S. export ban on Huawei remains in place for some time, or is extended to other Chinese technology companies.

Certainly, the heightened scrutiny of China with regard to security and 5G has spawned all manner of reports and speculation. For example, an article published by U.K. newspaper the Sunday Telegraph, which only cited anonymous sources, claimed that Ericsson and Nokia had started drawing up “emergency plans” to move some of their most sensitive operations out of China and split up their supply chains to counter increasing national security concerns.

When asked about the report, both vendors said they did not comment on rumors and speculation. Ericsson went a little further by noting that the U.S. and China are its two largest markets, and said it is positioning itself to be a “leading participant in the 5G market in all geographic markets, and we continue to invest in both China and the U.S.”

Ericsson also pointed out that its supply chain “is flexible with production capabilities in countries on all continents, including the U.S., Brazil, Estonia, India, and China.”

Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri also told Bloomberg TV this week that the Finnish vendor has a global supply chain and is already in a position to mitigate any risks. He said there are some near-term headwinds related to trade wars and the impact on prices, but none the company cannot manage in the scheme of things.

Suri also contended that Nokia is keeping up with its competitors, noting that the “few weeks of delays” previously announced by the vendor amounted to very little in the context of a 15- to 20 -year 5G cycle.

“We expect to start recognizing revenue [from the 42 contracts] soon … We compete favorably with Huawei with or without the current security concerns,” he said, adding that Nokia wins “two thirds of the time” against Ericsson. “We have the end-to-end portfolio,” he said.