Huawei Report

Respect for Ryan Ding

Huawei and its people have earned enormous respect from the top tech people at carriers around the world. I first reported Huawei in 2004 after Paul Reynolds of BT shared his enthusiasm. As other telco leaders worked with Huawei, many found a strong partner.

“Huawei vice-chairman Ding Yun – better known to the worldwide industry as Ryan Ding – died of a suspected heart attack within hours of completing the Beijing marathon on Thursday,” Alan Burkitt-Gray writes. He reported an outpouring of sentiments from Europe.

Olaf Swantee, former CEO of Orange and EE in the UK, and of Sunrise in Switzerland, wrote on LinkedIn: “We met for the first time in early 2012 when we laid plans to transform the UK’s mobile infrastructure by launching 4G. From the beginning, he inspired me with his incredible energy, technical know-how, and project management skills.”
Enrique Blanco, director of systems and networks at Telefónica, wrote: “A huge professional. I received with sorrow and astonishment his death. My condolences to his family and the Huawei family. The world of telecommunications is today in mourning.”
BT’s CTO Howard Watson added: “Really sad to hear of Ryan’s premature passing. I agree that without the amazing early relationship the EE network would not be where it is today.”
https://www.capacitymedia.com/article/2aqgrgxwz0hfw7z8ji8sg/news/industry-leaders-mourn-death-of-huawei-vice-chairman-ryan-ding

I share their sorrow.

Britain’s Spy Chief Says Europe, US behind Huawei

A big boost to Huawei although not quite true. Ericsson, by concentrating on 5G, has equally good equipment. Many people think Apple phones are better than Huawei because of the software. Nokia, Cisco, and Juniper make fully competitive switches and routers. The Hong Meng operating system is remarkable, but so is Android. Sir Jeremy Fleming is the Director of the Government Communications Headquarters, England’s spy agency.

From the New York Times:

The United States and its European partners have yet to offer truly competitive alternatives for much of the company’s networking equipment, officials from many countries say. “We have to be able to provide alternatives,” Mr. Fleming said. When pressed on whether Europe and the United States had provided those alternatives in the years since the campaign against Huawei gained traction, he acknowledged, “No, we don’t.”
David Sanger interview

“Africa & Latin America, it’s all Huawei”: End-to-end manufacturing drives the cost down

A rival tells me how hard it is to compete with Huawei because they manufacture so many products. “We had a good opportunity at one customer. Our software is just right for them.

“They wanted to buy a complete system. We bundled our software with $4 million of equipment and bid aggressively at $7 million. Huawei came in with a bid of $4 million for hardware and software combined. They manufacture their own servers at a much lower cost than he could buy servers.

Huawei Report Stupidly Shut Down by Facebook

Without any cause, Facebook took down the page for Huawei Report. There was no indication of how we “violated Facebook’s terms of service,” and there is nothing there that would seem to.

There’s no evidence that a human being even looked at the page. Presumably, some algorithm saw many references to China or something similar and did this automatically.

10G PON: Huawei, ZTE $700M Win at China Unicom

Although the Chinese telcos are thinking ahead to 25G & 50G PON, the workhorse system is 10G EPON and XG PON. Huawei is already building advanced optical lasers and has a strong position. ZTE’s lower cost structure keeps them in the game. They slightly underbid Huawei for the Unicom contract. (CWW)

China connected 400 million with FTTH in four years a while back. Most of the country is already covered, although at less than 10 Gbps. I don’t know how much of this is for new construction (huge in China) and how much for upgrades. AT&T, Bell Canada, and other Western companies are now installing 10G by default. The saving with slower 2.5 GPON is small.

10G is enough for the 5G wireless build. The Chinese have already built 1.6 million 5G cells, more than the rest of the world combined.

Brit Minister Says Huawei No Threat, banned at US request

Huawei 5G equipment and services “had nothing to do with national security,” said Vince Cable, who served as Business and Industry minister for five years. He added that the decision against the Chinese tech giant was taken “because the Americans told us we should do it.”

I’ve heard the same in other countries, including Brazil and Germany

Chinese Suggest England is Spying on Huawei

The evidence is so weak I normally wouldn’t report something like this. But this is exactly the kind of thing spy agencies do. MI5 is not going to officially confirm anything.

The official China Daily quotes Kishore Mahbubani, a former Singaporean diplomat who was President of the United Nations Security Council:

According to a business executive from the UK said his country had planted its intelligence officer in Huawei and “scrubbed everything”, and confirmed “Huawei was not a threat to us”.
China Daily

Bloomberg: Huawei Infiltrated, Used By Chinese Spies

Most of the claims against Huawei are fabricated, as you’d expect when spies are involved on both sides. But a Bloomberg article by Jordan Robertson and Jamie Tarabay has enough intriguing details to suggest at least a plausible claim.

A decade ago, a software update from Huawei contained malicious code that worked much like a digital wiretap, reprogramming the infected equipment to record all the communications passing through it before sending the data to China.

It only worked for a few days and then self-destructed. That’s consistent with a spy agency testing an exploit.

The careful reporting, based on 7 sources within allied security agencies, concluded

China’s spy services were behind the breach, having infiltrated the ranks of Huawei technicians who helped maintain the equipment and pushed the update to the telecom’s systems. … American intelligence agencies that year confirmed a similar attack from China using Huawei equipment located in the U.S.,
Bloomberg

From which I infer that Huawei’s corporate management did not approve the action. The Bloomberg headline, Chinese Spies Accused of Using Huawei in Secret Australia Telecom Hack, suggests the same conclusion.

Huawei’s leadership has repeatedly said they have not and will not cooperate with Chinese spying. Ren and others have almost certainly lived up to that; the $100 billion Five Eyes security apparatus would have found evidence.

Cisco was similarly involved in espionage, apparently inadvertently.

Routers built for export by Cisco (and probably other companies) are routinely intercepted without Cisco’s knowledge by the National Security Agency and equipped with hidden surveillance tools.
https://www.infoworld.com/article/2608141/snowden–the-nsa-planted-backdoors-in-cisco-products.html based on Snowdon leaks

John Suffolk, Huawei’s global cybersecurity officer, told the reporters, “no tangible evidence has ever been produced of any intentional wrongdoing of any kind.”

Bloomberg noted that

The NSA had already penetrated Huawei’s corporate networks in China, looking for evidence of any links between the company and China’s military, according to documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and published in news articles in 2014. Under a program called Shotgiant, the U.S. monitored e-mail accounts belonging to Huawei employees including Ren, the company’s founder. NSA also looked for ways to exploit Huawei products in Chinese-built networks in countries considered high-priority intelligence targets, including Afghanistan, Cuba, Iran, Kenya and Pakistan, according to the documents and articles.
https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/nsa-spied-on-chinese-government-and-networking-firm-huawei-a-960199.html

We live in a world with spies, few if any as ubiquitous as the United States

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