city than to electrify thousands of square miles of rural area. why are so many rural areas depending on huawei equipment? it is cheaper, 20 to 30% cheaper than equipment from other providers, european providers. it just makes the business plan work to deliver it to fewer customer in a more rural area. i guess when these cheaper things from huawei were being bought, we weren t aware there could be security issues or the government will take action. that becomes part of the problem with making a decision to replace this. what if all of a sudden we re not anti-huawei and the stuff isn t useless? it is not at the forefront as we are talking now. for years, large providers, verizon, at&t haven t been using huawei equipment because for years the government said we
customers, but you can put out fraudulent ideas on the social media platforms, and nobody found a way to solve this problem. thank you for your reporting. we ll follow it closely. president trump s ban on huawei was initially praised as a way to secure u.s. communication infrastructure amid rising tensions with china. but this comes at a serious cost as the ban could cut off cell and wi-fi service for some rural americans. the ban would force wireless providers in those areas that don t tend to be the nation s big wireless providers to deal with the astronomical costs of replacing their huawei equipment or they might go bankrupt. while a bipartisan group of senators proposed 700 million in relief to soften the blow, industry leaders say that s not enough. this is a remarkable story. ben popkin joins me. folks that live in highly
what did we do back in the 1930s? we had a rural wireless sorry, we had a rural electrification act which subsidizes the building out of these systems. we don t have but we don t have that now, so a lot of these major companies that make lots of money by providing wireless in cities don t do it in rural areas. it s hard to make the business argument for them. which is why they ve gone to huawei, because they re so much cheaper. what they re looking for is a subsidy. there have been $700 million put up as a possible subsidy. from whom, the government? it s part of a bill put forth by several senators to bipartisan bill. but people in the industry are saying, it s short of what they need. this may be somewhere between 800 and a billion dollars to get rid of all the huawei equipment because apparently we don t make
we have more on these latest developments. reporter: good morning. so this is a story we ve been watching very closely. according to the wall street journal, as you mentioned the u.s. ambassador sent ambassador sent a letter to germany s economic ministry on friday explicitly warning or threatening germany, a key ally of the united states, against using huawei equipment. this would be the first time they are officially warning an ally. the german government in the past has taken a different approach to the u.s. in terms of handling huawei and said they have seen nothing to indicate that huawei is actually using customers equipment to spy for beijing. certainly a story to continue watching. i want to give you an update in the aftermath of the boeing super max 737 crash on sunday.