Huawei assures it has no backdoors

Chinese telecoms equipment supplier Huawei sought to calm worries in the industry on Tuesday about security concerns that the company is using its telecommunications equipment to allow the Chinese government to spy on other countries.

Making a rare public reference to the issue, Huawei rotating chairman Guo Ping took to the stage at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and even joked about it.

"There has never been more interest in Huawei, we must be doing something right," Ping said.

The US has led the campaign to ban the company's products in the West claiming that Huawei products have built-in backdoors that could facilitate spying. Australia and New Zealand have followed suit and banned. The UK has said it does not consider Huawei's equipment a threat to security and Germany has hinted it will go the same way.

Addressing the concerns directly, Ping said "Huawei has not, and we will never plant backdoors, and we will never allow anyone to do so in our equipment."

Ping said that 5G equipment is more secure than previous generations of networks. He said that the US has "no evidence, nothing," and even added "the irony is that the US Cloud Act allows their entities to access data across borders."

In several tweets last week, US President Trump seemed to soften his tone slightly on Huawei and express his concern that the US would get left behind in 5G.

"I want 5G, and even 6G, technology in the United States as soon as possible. It is far more powerful, faster, and smarter than the current standard. American companies must step up their efforts, or get left behind."

He added, "I want the United States to win through competition, not by blocking out currently more advanced technologies."

Ping emphasized Huawei's claims to be the leading vendor in 5G but said that the responsibility for security should be shared between vendors, carriers and the industry as a whole.

"We need to build a system we all can trust, we need aligned responsibilities, unified standards, and clear regulations," he said, adding the responsibility of technology providers is to comply with standards and build secure equipment.

"What we promise is that we don't do anything bad, we don't do bad things," he said.

Ping said that carriers have the responsibility to implement technologies that prevent external and internal attacks, while the industry has a "shared responsibility" to standardize cybersecurity requirements.

Huawei supports the Network Equipment Security Assurance Scheme (NESAS) - a voluntary security scheme created by the GSMA and 3GPP for the mobile industry, Ping emphasized.

5G LEADERSHIP

Huawei has announced a number of global operator partnerships and products surrounding 5G at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona.

This week the company has announced a partnership with Indonesia operator Telkomsel and it signed an agreement with Malaysia operator Maxis to work on 5G trials in the region.

Huawei has also highlighted this week the innovation behind its 5G equipment, which includes the launch of its 5G-ready converged transport network platform that will allow operators to develop 5G services with simplified 5G transport and deployment. The vendor claims it already has more than 40 commercial 5G transport contracts.

The US and Asia are the most advanced in terms of 5G rollout, while Europe has fallen behind. That has been one of the main talking points at the MWC. Some European operators have expressed concern that a ban on Huawei equipment could set Europe's 5G rollout back by several years.

But Nokia's CEO Rajeev Suri said during a press conference on Sunday that notion was incorrect and that Europe was constrained by lack of consolidation of operators and uncertainty surrounding spectrum allocation.

That opinion was seconded by Ericsson's CEO Börje Ekholm.

Both CEOs said, however, that it wasn't up to the vendors to address security, but is a matter for individual countries to decide.

LATIN AMERICA

This week, Pamela Gidi, head of Chilean telecoms regulator Subtel told BNamericas that the country was monitoring the Huawei situation but that for now it was business as usual. Huawei has an important infrastructure contract to build a submarine cable connecting Chile's south and is considering building a datacenter.

Sylvia Constaín, Colombia's ICT minister for told BNamericas that a decision on a ban is not under her authority, but were for the presidency and security branches to decide. Colombia already has data privacy legislation in place.

Esteban Iriarte, COO of Latin American telecoms operator Millicom told BNamericas that consumer privacy was of the utmost concern for the operator. He said that the company would comply with the laws of each country it operates in but that a decision to ban a vendor would be a government issue and not one to be taken by an operator.

He added that Millicom uses Huawei technology in some of its networks.