{"id":1476,"date":"2013-11-19T14:49:02","date_gmt":"2013-11-19T04:49:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/?p=1476"},"modified":"2017-03-06T20:07:18","modified_gmt":"2017-03-06T10:07:18","slug":"huawei","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/features\/huawei\/","title":{"rendered":"Huawei and the Fear of the Unknown"},"content":{"rendered":"
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That guy on the left, he’s Ren Zhengfei, founder & CEO of Huawei.<\/span> In the middle, someone who fits the stereotype of a Chinese hacker in a net cafe, but probably isn’t. The bloke on the right, NRL player Sandor Earl who had a Huawei logo tattooed on his leg. Proper tattooed, none of that henna crap. These three images exemplify Huawei. A very successful businessman, the lurking security threats that hold it back and its weird attempts to fit in with the west.<\/p>\n

Imagine you are a world leader in your field, supplying your products at a competitive price all over the world. The marketplace can\u2019t get enough of your gear, business is growing rapidly and you\u2019re becoming the largest player in the sector. But the governments of the west shun you for public sector contracts. They say your products are a threat to national security, yet do not provide any proof of incidents related to your company. You spend billions setting up R&D centres in their countries and <\/span>meet their politicians who happily talk about job creation<\/a> and further strengthening Chinese relations, but they still allege you\u2019re spying on them.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is the bizarre situation Huawei\u2014one the world\u2019s largest telecommunication equipment suppliers, with revenue close to US$30bn\u2014finds itself in.<\/p>\n

Huawei (pronounced wahway<\/em>) started in the mid 80s simply selling Hong Kong made PABX equipment into China. Wanting to do more than simply import someone else\u2019s equipment, founder & CEO, Ren Zhengfei put Huawei onto a course of research and development that has seen it grow into a telecommunications infrastructure powerhouse. It competes with companies like Nokia Solutions and Networks, Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco and Juniper for enterprise and carrier grade network infrastructure.\u00a0Huawei\u2019s main area of dominance is in carrier network infrastructure. According to its\u00a02012 annual report<\/a>, Huawei has 500 carriers using its products and has deployed over 170 of its \u201cSingleRAN\u201d networks worldwide.<\/p>\n

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In Australia, Huawei has worked with organisations like Ambulance NSW, Federation Square in Melbourne and Telehealth Networks, predominately in video conferencing and core network equipment. RailCorp<\/a> in NSW use Huawei for their radio communications system.\u00a0Optus and Vodafone have extremely strong relationships with Huawei<\/a>, providing all the core radio and network infrastructure for their respective networks. TPG and Primus use Huawei infrastructure in their ADSL DSLAMs and Huawei is also a large part of Powerlink\u2019s, Queensland\u2019s energy operator, networking needs.<\/p>\n

Most of us are probably familiar with Huawei\u2019s USB and mi-fi modems, which Optus and Vodafone sell exclusively – even Telstra have begun to selling Huawei 4G data devices. Huawei are the third largest seller of smartphones in the world<\/a>, recently out-selling LG. Albeit still far behind Apple and Samsung.<\/p>\n

With a massive carrier business, together with the growing enterprise and consumer sectors, Huawei look set to be a huge part of the western technology landscape – and this is worrying a lot of people. Particularly the governments of the USA, UK and little ol\u2019 us, Australia.<\/p>\n

Why are these governments so concerned about Huawei? Aren\u2019t we all friends with China anyways? Global economy and all that jazz.<\/p>\n

Almost everything we buy is made in China anyway, so what\u2019s the big deal?<\/p>\n

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Some people think it\u2019s pure<\/a> xenophobia<\/a>. Other commentators, particularly in America, reckon it\u2019s good old fashioned protectionism<\/a> cradling local companies like Cisco and Qualcomm. \u00a0Huawei’s company structure<\/a>\u00a0is secretive and leads to easy conspiracy theories. There\u2019s stories linking Huawei to the Chinese army<\/a> and that Huawei is just a tool of the Chinese government, operating reconnaissance on western governments and industries in order to advance a Chinese agenda. Even the former head of the CIA has stated that Huawei should be avoided at all costs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also the view amongst security professionals and networking experts<\/a> that Huawei stuff just simply isn\u2019t any good and should be avoided because it sucks. This talk from Felix \u2018FX\u2019 Lindner at the Hack in the Box security conference in 2012<\/a> is a good view at Huawei\u2019s routing product security. Basically, Huawei has a long way to go on making a professional routing product, at least.<\/p>\n