SAN DIEGO — Cisco never considered building its own radio access network equipment for 5G, and the U.S. government never asked the company to do so, said Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins today during a press briefing at Cisco Live.

The state of geopolitics hung like a stubborn marine layer over Cisco’s event in San Diego, and Robbins addressed the issue on stage during his keynote and again during a gathering with journalists. “We have trade wars, we have debates about 5G, we have tariffs — and most of those discussions have an element of technology associated with them,” he said. "There's so much confusion in the marketplace about 5G."

When asked for his take on the U.S. government’s widening campaign against Huawei, Robbins responded with equal measures of deflection and a flavor of integrity that’s largely missing in corporate operations. “I don’t do business with Huawei, they’re my biggest competitor,” he said. Robbins also added that he doesn’t want Cisco’s sales teams to capitalize on Huawei’s struggles.

“This is not a sales strategy,” he said. “I do not want our teams to go in and leverage the geopolitical situation to try to advantage us.”

As for whether the situation with Huawei has improved Cisco’s position in the market, Robbins said: “We haven’t seen a material shift, but we’re focused on our innovation, and the trust that our customers desire of us.”

He explained that the geopolitical dynamics and tariffs could have an impact on Cisco’s business, and the vendor’s prospects in China could certainly decline if the Chinese government takes action against U.S.-based technology companies there, but Cisco is trying to stay above the fray. “Our job is primarily to focus on the things we can control and do the best we can on the other issues,” Robbins said. 

He also noted, what he called a “huge misconception” that the U.S.-China trade war could seriously impact or slow the deployment of 5G around the world. “There’s a high degree of ignorance about 5G around the world. It’s not like there’s one vendor that can build 5G networks. This is a fallacy. The reality is that Ericsson, Nokia, and Samsung have great 5G macro radio technology and we have virtually everything else you need to build 5G networks.”

In other words, Huawei is not critical to the future of 5G in his view.

“Right now there’s this big focus on the macro radio side of it, which there are four traditional players in the space today,” Robbins said, adding that virtualized players like Altiostar and Rakuten are also making moves in the space. “Once you get past the macro radio then we have our packet core technology, and we’re building our entire portfolio around robust next-generation core platforms that actually deliver the performance” that service providers need to provide applications at the edge, he explained.

Most network operators expect to drive the bulk of 5G revenue from enterprises, and that’s music to Robbins’ ears. “If anybody knows how to build enterprise services with carriers it’s us,” he said.