More countries considering Huawei ban

A man walks past a Huawei phone retail shop in Beijing, China, Dec. 19. Reuters

By Jung Min-ho

Huwei's hopes to “dominate the market” for the next generation of mobile communications networks are threatened around the world as more countries see the company's devices as national security threats that must be removed.

So far, the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Japan have barred the Chinese telecom equipment provider from taking part in their 5G infrastructure build-outs amid concerns of its links with China's government.

As Huawei nervously watches other countries' moves, Germany's Deutsche Telekom

said

last week that it would “re-evaluate its procurement strategy” in regard to Huawei. The company also said it took “the global discussion about the security of network elements from Chinese manufacturers very seriously.”

The statement came after Alex Younger, director of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, reportedly

that Britain needed “to decide the extent to which we are going to be comfortable with Chinese ownership of these technologies.”

A few days later, British Telecom

it was removing Huawei equipment from the core part of a U.K. communications 3G and 4G networks for police and other emergency responders.

Meanwhile, the European Union's (EU) head of technology policies, Andrus Ansip,

all EU members “have to be worried” about security risks that Chinese companies posed in European 5G and driverless car projects.

“They have to cooperate with their intelligence services,” he said. “This is about mandatory backdoors. I was always against having those mandatory backdoors … (It is) about chips they can put somewhere to get our secrets.”

The list goes on.

Canada

and Belgium are also studying the security risks of using Huawei devices.

Huawei, founded in 1987 by Ren Zhengfei, former engineer at the People's Liberation Army, denies that it has close ties to the Chinese Communist Party or has any intention to design equipment to facilitate eavesdropping.

But many experts say no Chinese company is fully independent of its government, which can legally require companies to assist with intelligence gathering.

Apparently, in its core markets, Huawei is losing the argument.