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Huawei, Failing to Crack U.S. Market, Signals a Change in Tactics
- godzillabrennus 9y agoThe article mentions that WISPS will be impacted. Aren’t they all using Ubiqiti?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ferongr 9y agoHuawei's equipment is almost too cheap to be able to ignore it. Here in Europe most telecommunication equipment (DSL, GPON, LTE radios, CPEs etc) installed in the past 5 years comes from Huawei and ZTE. I don't know whether Huawei and ZTE carry Chinese state backdoors in them, but if China had a plan to widely distribute equipment around the globe to be able to tap into any connection, it would have already succeeded.
- rdlecler1 9y agoMaybe consumers can ignore it, but governments won’t. Whether or not there are valid security threats, the US can use this to their benefit in the same way that China has used media control to their benefit. I see a bifurcation if two non-comadible but competing political systems which will include different hardware, operating systems and applications. It will be interesting to see which system has the ultimate Darwinian advantage.
- Narkov 9y agoGood point. The Australian government banned Hauwei devices from being used in the large scale National Broadband Network. https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/chinese-firm-huawei-banned-from-nbn-supplying-phones-to-australia-defence-20170616-gwsne4.html https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/chinese-firm-huaw...
- kiwijamo 9y agoMeanwhile over the ditch in New Zealand we have no such restriction. I'm not sure if our equivalent to the NBN (the Ultra Fast Broadband [UFB] network) has much Huawei gear but I suspect there will be at least some depending on the LFC (Local Fibre Company). At the least many RSP (ISP) supplied CPE gear is Huawei and their gear at POPs is likely to be Huawei as well. Our wireless NBN equivalent (the Rural Broadband Initiative [RBI]) has one major telco using Huawei for 4G base station gear. I would hazard a guess that at least a third (if not more than half) of all traffic in New Zealand passes over at least one Huawei gear.
- kiwijamo 9y agoHere in New Zealand, two of our major mobile carriers use Huawei gear. One uses Huawei for the entire mobile network (from UMTS/LTE base stations to the core network) while another is migrating from Alactel-Lucent (which mostly powers their legacy 3G gear and I suspect their core network still) to Huawei (their entire 4G network as well as 3G at some of the new base station sites). The latter carrier apparently pitted Alactel-Lucent and Huawei 4G gear at a difficult rural test site to decide whether they'd go with AL (whose UMTS/3G gear had been fairly unreliable) or try their luck with Huawei. I presume Huawei must have beat out Alactel-Lucent to win the contract to deploy 4G—a decision that has proved to be successful so far. One major landline telco uses Huawei gear. Many RSPs (ISPs) deploy Huawei DSL/Fibre CPE routers—with some getting good reviews for Gigabit Fibre (which many other branded routers struggle with). Many cheap phones sold by the various mobile carriers (either own-brand or Huawei brand) is Huawei. While I can understand the distrust for Huawei, I can't deny they have done well when given the opportunity to do so. Alactel-Lucent (an US/EU company) in particular dropped the ball when one of our major telco had a major outage and it turned out they had a maintenance contract (so was AL themselves, not the telco responsible for maintenance of the network). Still took Alactel-Lucent's own experts a full week to restore telco services to a big chuck of our country. Severely dented our telcos' trust in US companies and thus encouraged the telcos to try Huawei instead. So far no major outages attributed to Huawai incompetence which has been a good plus so far.
- graton 9y agoI read it as small telecoms. Not WISPs (Wireless Internet Service Providers). So companies which provide cell phone service. I don't think Ubiquiti is in the cell phone service market.
- leesalminen 9y agoThe WISP in my area is all Ubiquiti.
- spitfire 9y agoWhat's the deal with ubiqiti? Do they use Huawai parts or what? I had understood them to be a fairly competent company delivering good products.
- grahamburger 9y agoSome of the WISPs I've worked with (I've worked with quite a few) use Ubiquiti (or similar) wireless equipment with Huawei switches.
- coldacid 9y agoI would be happy to see us follow suit up here in Canada, but given that JT is at least part-owned by the PRC, I doubt it'll happen. I miss the good old days when we had our own telecoms equipment manufacturer. Northern Telecom, for all its faults, put out good stuff.
- mabbo 9y ago> Northern Telecom, for all its faults, put out good stuff Yeah and then suddenly a Chinese company called Huawei started releasing very similar products with a fraction of the R&D budget. I wonder how they pulled that off. http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/former-nortel-exec-warns-against-working-with-huawei-1.1137006 http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/former-nortel-exec-warns-aga...
- gaius 9y agoModern Western culture says buy the cheapest now and don’t bother to think about the long term consequences. Including chucking into a landfill and buying a new one a year later. On every level, be hollowing out our economies, pollution, loss of national autonomy, Western citizens have dug their - our - own graves.
- AndrewKemendo 9y agoEvidence that Huawei has deep ties to the Ministry of State Security and Third People's Liberation Army - the CIA and NSA respectively for China - is public and well documented [1][2][3][4]. The argument goes, that if widely adopted in the US, Huawei/ZTE would pose a national security risk. As a result, the US wants to put barriers to the adoption of their technology in the US. It's worth having the debate about the merits of this argument, and resulting stances/actions taken by the USG. [1] https://intelligence.house.gov/sites/intelligence.house.gov/files/documents/huawei-zte%20investigative%20report%20(final).pdf https://intelligence.house.gov/sites/intelligence.house.gov/... [2] http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/11/30/feds-quietly-reveal-chinese-state-backed-hacking-operation/ http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/11/30/feds-quietly-reveal-chin... [3] https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/oct/11/chinese-telecom-firm-tied-to-spy-ministry/ https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/oct/11/chinese-tel...
- bshepard 9y agoDo you think the same argument, if applied more generally, would lead towards the exclusion of all foreign tech companies from all nations? Thinking here of the deep ties between Google, Amazon, Facebook, PayPal and the US military-industrial complex.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago> the deep ties between Google, Amazon, Facebook, PayPal and the US military-industrial complex False equivalence. Google et al exist in a system where private actors can challenge the government. ZTE and Huawei are arms of a government which recently devolved into a dictatorship. One can be trusted to, most of the time, follow commercial logic; the other, geopolitical logic.
- BlindGod 9y agoNoone can challenge the government on the basis of laws, as they can be changed as needed or mechanisms introduced to ammend the law (e.g. FISA courts). You can never win against someone who can change the rules. You can base your challenge on the constitution, but amendments show that although harder to change it isn't rock solid either, and you challenging the government is based on the interpretation of the constitution by judges (e.g. current US gun law constitution interpretion of militias). You can base your challenge on human rights, but the US might leave the UN and doesn't care either way. The situation is a little bit better in Europe with the ECJ, where goverments can be challenged outside the framework where they make the rules. Companies are always maximizing profits in an environment, if this means playing by the intention of the law makers, then that's it [1]. If standing up to the government because it enhances its brand (Apple security) companies will do that. Granted, China pushes companies more then the US does, but it's not a difference in quality but quantity. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/nov/01/nsa-tapping-cables-document https://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/nov/01/ns...
- bookperson 9y agoOn a related note, the other Chinese telecom devices provider ZTE looks to be half dead - ZTE will probably lose Android licensing soon. https://www.cnet.com/news/zte-may-lose-android-licensing-from-google-report-says/ https://www.cnet.com/news/zte-may-lose-android-licensing-fro... And lose access to vital parts for 7-10 years. Huawei will most likely try to focus its attention on Europe and Asia. However, other countries might follow suit with US soon, following FCC's proposal to withhold money from suppliers (such as Huawei). https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/huawei-moving-from-u-s-market-following-fcc-vote https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/huawei-moving-from-u... South Korea, for example, has started questioning Huawei's close ties with the CCP https://venturebeat.com/2018/04/03/south-korean-carriers-face-5g-dilemma-due-to-huawei-security-issues/ https://venturebeat.com/2018/04/03/south-korean-carriers-fac... looks like Nokia, Ericsson, and Samsung will be the winners here, with Samsung most likely winning the 5G race in US, and Nokia/Ericsson in Europe
- wegwerfbenutzer 9y agoHuawei has lots of big customers in Germany and invests big money into 5G. I think nobody can compete with Huawei in Germany. Huawei themselves see ZTE as a big competitor in China and they also think they already "won" the race in Germany. You need lots of money to change the infrastructure to some other hardware provider. And I think noone can compete with Huawei's prices.
- dogma1138 9y agoIronically the UK let Huawei to build and run it’s most secure networks it even has access to the doughnut. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2018/02/20/uk-cyber-security-agency-sticks-chinas-huawei-despite-us-spy/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2018/02/20/uk-cyber-s... This is despite multiple failures including the inability to verify the source code and binaries that end up running on the hardware that is supplied, operated and managed by Huawei. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/626110/20170413_HCSEC_Oversight_Board_Report_2017_-_FINAL.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... (Page 15 is a gem so are many others).
- chrischen 9y agoUS issues national security letters to US based cloud companies for access to data, and has tried to force a US company (Apple) to create back doors to its encryption. This is perspective on at least one major reason companies like Facebook and Google were blocked in China. If all Chinese people developed a habit of using Facebook it would essentially (in theory at least) allow the US government to spy on Chinese citizens.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago> This is perspective on at least one major reason companies like Facebook and Google were blocked in China There is zero correlation between security and being blocked in China. There is a strong correlation between competing with politically-connected Chinese entities and getting blocked / being forced to surrender key IP. The backdoor argument is a red herring.
- pavs 9y agoAs much as its fashionable to hate on China and its government, it's important to understand that Foreign government social manipulation of citizen and instigate chaos is real and it's not limited to US or western countries or only through the internet. As someone who owns and runs an ISP, I see governments in many countries, through my peers in the industry, (including developed, developing and poor countries), go through great lengths to tighten the screws on the internet in their respective countries. While very few countries do it as intrusively as China - most countries do it at some intrusive degrees, with laws and regulations. Political destabilizing through the internet is a real thing and has been for many years and as more companies rely heavily on the internet for their business - stability of the internet infrastructure is very much tied to individual countries economic health and faith. Does China go too far in regulating their internet? Most probably yes. Is China's internet policy completely unreasonable on unfounded security grounds? Abso-fucking-lutely not. The problem is no one really knows what the middle ground between the openness of the internet and policing it just the right amount. So we end up with an extreme case like China.
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- ec109685 9y agoTrusting networking gear to not eavesdrop on data is quaint. Moving to a world of end to encryption should keep at least everyone besides the carrier / device manufacturers themselves out of your conversations and data transmissions. Then worse that could happen with a rogue vendor is a denial of service.
- cm2187 9y agoBut if for instance your electricity grid or 911 calls rely on the service, a denial of service can be a pretty big deal.
- xchip 9y agoGot a Huawei phone, it sucks, they have disabled lots of software features (OTG, MHL, miracast) just to make you pay for them in a more expensive model
- pbhjpbhj 9y agoSounds like your phone sucks because you paid the amount a sucky phone sells for in your market? I've got a cheap Huawei ("Honor"), so far it seems no better or worse than other same price phones. Probably slightly better value than most tbh. It does miracast, which is default in Android since 4.4 I think (?), no idea about USB-OTG or connecting to HDMI. Only problem I have is how to pronounce the name "ho-nor"? Always makes me think "hold the nor-gate". #britishproblems
- xchip 9y agoI had a worse phone years ago and it had OTG and the camera was great. Why 7 years later Huawei phones don't have OTG?
- nsxwolf 9y agoHave they considered a name change for the US market?
- pbhjpbhj 9y agoMy Huawei is branded "Honor" (sic) in UK.
- mlok 9y agoOh. That is why we hear lots of Huawei ads on French radio all of a sudden. (I don't have a TV but I guess it's the same there) I noticed it, and it felt weird. Now I understand better : The US market is gone, so they target the EU market more aggressively now.
- Fjolsvith 9y agoI once bought a Chinese brand tablet and it turned out to have a malicious root installed. Why would I even think of buying a Huawei phone when there are rumors that they have spyware installed?
- levosmetalo 9y agoBecause if you live in the your government, companies and individuals in your country will have much harder time getting your data from the Chinese, than from the US or other western companies you can "trust". /s
- pbhjpbhj 9y agoBecause you're in the 99% of the population who don't care? GCHQ are already spying on me, along with every bank, social media company, large business, ... China can know about my inane existence too. Chinese companies probably made all the network infrastructure already. My ISP uses Chinese made routers.
- Fjolsvith 9y agoYou may not care who knows, but I bet you would not put up with the slowness of the device because of the spyware feeding everything to the other side of the planet. And when China starts doing something with your credit card info, I bet you drop your Chinese devices.
- bclemens 9y ago> buys a chinesium tablet with a rootkit > assumes all chinese devices are compromised China's a big country with a lot of companies, I wouldn't lump them all together.
- Sangermaine 9y ago>China's a big country with a lot of companies owned and controlled directly or indirectly by their government, an authoritarian dictatorship. It’s disingenuous to pretend Chiba is just another market of competing private companies.
- barrongineer 9y agoI'm really disappointed by this. To my knowledge, the upcoming Matebook X Pro was the only non-Apple device that has a taller than 16x9 aspect ratio and Thunderbolt 3. These are two criteria that are fairly important to me.
- manishsharan 9y agoQQ: If I were to wipe a Huawei latptop and install Ubuntu, is my device still vulnerable to malicious rootkts etc. what if I swapped out the harddrive. The Matebook X looks very tempting . and someone has already got this work to with Debian https://github.com/lidel/linux-on-huawei-matebook-x-2017 https://github.com/lidel/linux-on-huawei-matebook-x-2017
- Lionsion 9y ago> If I were to wipe a Huawei latptop and install Ubuntu, is my device still vulnerable to malicious rootkts etc. what if I swapped out the harddrive. If the rootkit is in the firmware or BIOS, you'd still be vulnerable.