US Congress unhappy with Google’s deal with Huawei over RCS

With the United States government's ever-evolving war on Chinese-based companies, Google's deal with Huawei over RCS has now come under scrutiny. Congressmen are unhappy about the deal, people close to the matter confirmed to The Wall Street Journal. Google joined with Huawei earlier this year to preinstall Android Messages with RCS support on all Huawei phones, with Huawei also offering support in expanding the Jibe RCS cloud and hub solution. Jibe is Google's RCS platform and has seen relatively slow carrier adoption so far. Huawei is helping them to change that.

The nature of the deal has left Congress unhappy with the level of information that could potentially be shared between the two companies. Neither company is currently in trouble as the first plan of action is to question Google about the nature of the deal. Should any of the answers raise suspicions, then investigation may broaden to the overall relationship between Huawei and Google. The aim of the deal is to replace SMS with RCS, but US Congress wants to rule out if anything sinister is also taking place. If it is, then it's possible that we may see action taken against either company.

This isn't the first time the US government officials have taken a closer look at Huawei. Lawmakers pressured mobile carrier AT&T to cut ties with the company in fears of the Chinese company becoming involved in constructing 5G networks. The US government has also already passed a bill that would prevent government officials from using devices made by ZTE and Huawei. Also,  AT&T famously dropped the Huawei Mate 10 Pro before Huawei could announce the product at their Consumer Electronics Show 2018 keynote. Huawei has had a rough time in the United States, and it seems that their troubles are far from over. We don't know what may come of this investigation, but we've already seen just how much influence the US is exerting on Chinese electronics companies—Huawei's rival ZTE is still clawing itself back from the brink of collapse.

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