This is less surprising if you view telecom patents as a mutual-assured-infringement system rather than a moat for any single company. As others noted, Qualcomm (~$5B/yr in licensing), Huawei, Samsung, Ericsson and Nokia all hold overlapping SEPs for 5G — polar codes, massive MIMO, OFDM variants — so nobody can ship a compliant radio without infringing someone. Cross-licenses are the equilibrium: litigating everywhere Huawei actually sells (outside the US) would be ruinously expensive for Qualcomm, and Huawei needs Qualcomm's portfolio for handsets and IoT.

The interesting questions for me: 1) what FRAND rate they settled on, since that becomes a comp for future deals with smaller OEMs who don't have a portfolio to trade, and 2) how Entity List / regulatory approvals shape the structure — the announcement says closing follows regulatory approvals, which suggests carve-outs around what's actually transferable vs. pure patent peace. For startups the takeaway is sobering: the "patent wall" effect mentioned here means you're licensing from an oligopoly whether you build infrastructure or devices.