The USA and the People’s Republic of China have been in economic warfare for some time. According to Donald Trump’s credo “America First”, import duties were threatened and American companies were urged to relocate their production to other countries or preferably to their home country. But this is not enough for the world police and so the Chinese network supplier and smartphone manufacturer Huawei has been taken to the front.

US authorities suspect that the second largest smartphone manufacturer in the world is being used as a gateway for the Chinese secret service. All in line with the NSA model. Now there is no law in the USA that forbids Huawei hardware. However, network operators who use Huawei hardware in their networks are excluded from government tenders.

As a result, all major network operators in the USA, including T-Mobile US, are now dispensing with the use of Huawei. The two remaining network suppliers, Nokia from Finland and Ericsson from Sweden, have a duopoly there. But the influence on their own territory is not sufficient for the United States of America and so they have already convinced Australia and New Zealand to do without Huawei hardware. BT, which owns one of the largest network operators in the UK, has also recently announced that it will ban Huawei hardware from its core networks and switch to other suppliers.

So far, however, the US has failed to find any strong evidence to support their claims. The BSI — Federal Ministry for Information Security — has found no backdoor to China’s secret service either in the hardware delivered by Huawei or in the source code provided by Huawei.

Situation in Germany

In Germany, all three network operators use Huawei alongside other suppliers. Deutsche Telekom has a 50:50 policy. 50% of the network elements are purchased by Huawei, the other 50% are currently being converted from Nokia to Ericsson. The other two providers are also pursuing a similar strategy.

Now it seems as if the US authorities are trying to blackmail Deutsche Telekom. Deutsche Telekom wants to take over Sprint, the fourth largest network operator in the USA, and merge it with its subsidiary T-Mobile US.

As part of the security review of the $26 billion transaction, the U.S. government imposed a condition that the merger would only be approved if Deutsche Telekom AG withdrew its cooperation with Huawei. The United States of America is thus exerting a blunt influence on the corporate policies of companies in Germany, Europe and Japan.

In order not to jeopardize its business, Deutsche Telekom has already announced that it will reassess its “procurement strategy. In the past, there were even more network suppliers who guaranteed fair competition: Nokia Siemens Networks, Huawei, ZTE, Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson. After Nokia had bought Alcatel-Lucent and ZTE had already disappeared from the market, Huawei could slowly withdraw from the western markets with actions like these. This left only Nokia and Ericsson.

Huawei is currently one of the leading providers of 5G. There are test networks with Chinese technology in Berlin, Hamburg, Switzerland and many other European countries.

If you would kick out Huawei hardware, you should do the same with products from Cisco, which are still used with pleasure. In the context of the Snowden affair it was proven that Cisco hardware communicates cheerfully with the USA and their secret service NSA.

With material from Golem

Originally posted in German on: WindowsUnited