Re: Huawei's '18-month lead' in 5G is telecom's most spurious claim
So Huawei has no 18 month advantage, according to several individuals he interviewed for the article. It was just a myth. The following line sums it up, in case you don't want to read the whole article.
"We finished with five suppliers able to roll out in Europe, namely Ericsson, Huawei, Nokia, Samsung and ZTE," Vamparys tells Light Reading. "I don't see this 18 months. Of course, you have positive and negative things in our benchmarks, but it is not so black and white."