Huawei and ZTE may face barriers to competing for 5G contracts in further countries, after having been effectively banned from these deals in the USA and Australia. Now reports indicate that India, and even South Korea, could follow suit, which then raises a question mark over how the European Union might respond. While Nokia, Ericsson and Samsung may rejoice at the removal of these competitors, especially the mighty Huawei, from some markets, there may be bad consequences for them too. It seems likely that China will encourage its own telcos to favor homegrown vendors to a greater extent than usual for 5G, in retaliation for the US sanctions – and the scale of early stage deployment in China looks to…