The Wall Street Journal reported that unnamed US officials were contacting their opposite numbers in a number of countries to ask them to stop using the Chinese company’s equipment in their networks, citing security risks.
The same report said that the US was thinking of increasing financial aid for telecoms development in countries that block the use of Huawei and ZTE equipment.
Huawei retorted that it is “shocked by the behaviours of the US government detailed in the article. If a government’s behaviour extends beyond its jurisdiction, such activity should not be encouraged.”
Asked by Capacity, company officials at the headquarters in Shenzhen and in London pointed out the difficulty of enforcing such a policy: “Huawei’s products and solutions are widely used in more than 170 countries worldwide, serving 46 of the world’s top 50 operators, Fortune 500 companies and hundreds of millions of consumers. So many companies and consumers choose Huawei because they trust fully and
recognize the value Huawei delivers.”
The US report came as Huawei was winding up its annual mobile broadband forum in London, a conference and exhibition in which executives from a number of international telecoms carriers took part, including Bell Canada, BT, Orange, Three, Telefónica and Vodafone. Other Huawei events have included participants from Deutsche Telekom, Sunrise, Telus and TIM.
SoftBank of Japan, which owns Sprint of the US, also uses Huawei equipment and is trialling the company’s 5G equipment.
The Huawei executives told Capacity: “Huawei firmly believes that our partners and customers will make the right choice based on their own judgment and experience of working with Huawei. We will continue to serve our global customers with our innovative solutions.”
The US report, which cited unnamed people familiar with the situation, said the US government was particularly concerned about the use of Chinese equipment in countries that host US military bases, such as Germany, Italy and Japan. Reports have said that the Pentagon uses commercial networks in many countries to carry its sensitive military data.
