“After facing a congressional battering over security concerns, Huawei’s carrier networking group is no longer focused on the U.S. market, and instead expects to find ample business in other parts of the world.” Let’s all not buy Chinese-made products from Huawei so we can buy Chinese-made products from every other brand ever! That totally makes sense!
Your sarcasm implies that you consider all Chinese made products to be dodgy – which I think is a bit of stretch when you consider just how much manufacturing is done over there. Let’s just take Foxconn for example, they have the likes of Apple, Nintendo, Sony and Amazon on their books. So if you’re trying to tar the whole of the Chinese industry with the same brush (and let’s be clear about one thing, the US government have never been able to prove their claims against Huawei to begin with. So there’s a chance this whole saga is America exercising their usual paranoia towards eastern countries).
I didn’t mean to imply any such thing. I wanted to highlight how silly it is to ban Huawei equipment for security concerns – valid or no – only to then buy them from a non-Chinese brand which has its products made in the same factory by the same people.
Ahh my apologies then.
Thom, it’s not about where they are made or who puts them together. It’s about all sorts of dodgy practices that Huawei is involved in. Maybe other vendors are as well, who knows, but in no other cases is it as obvious as here. Stolen OS code clumsily put together, stolen designs, security backdoors… I would stay miles away from their routing and telco kit. I am not American but I do work in communications. US are not the only country turning away from them.
Edited 2013-04-26 08:56 UTC
Hi Laurence, that’s not how I read it. Thom simply points out that we would be buying Chinese products anyway.
Given the state of computer security, I doubt that, if the Chinese were interested in some US concerns, they can get it anyway. And if the document is really hard to get, they can just ask the NY Times to print it.
We probably have more to worry about from Intel (SMM, UEFI, TPM, etc.) Maybe the only truly comforting answer is open-source network hardware/software. One can dream.
Hi,
The only thing worse than potential problems from companies that can be sued, don’t like bad publicity and tend to document everything well; is potential problems from random strangers that can’t be sued, don’t care about bad publicity and typically fail to document anything well.
– Brendan
The concerns regarding Hauwei’s security is just protectionist nonsense from the country that so often complain when other countries restrict, correctly or not, american companies. It’s incredibly easy to prove if Huawei’s equipment does something unduly or not but yet no-one has provided any solid proof. Gee, wonder why that is.