I do not want to follow the stream of statements, declarations, endorsments of the latest news about this big hardware and network player. Governments and corporations will follow they little ware without anyone can do something useful.
But… in a commercial branch office in Shanghai, few years ago, Huawei was “cheaper options” to Cisco for network equipment.
I was not for both of them (I am an HPE endorser) but i were aware of the “powerful” tech level of Huawei, which is quite impressive as tech company.
One of biggest ISP/TelCO in Italy seems fully Huawei-compliant for CPE: Routers, desk phones, wannabe-cordless phones (with GSM SIM card), so i am wondering what could happen…
Phones and private LTE Routers are of course welcome
What is the point of the thread? Can you explain it, please?
PS: I’m using a Huawei mobile phone and for me android from google is a problem if the government prohibit them to give out updates for Huawei devices.
Point of the thread is the variety of applications of Huawei technology and products.
Switches, routers, firewall, CPE, LTE/3G equipment. These (in my opinion) could be a quite big issue for who’s managing ad IT environment.
Some of these are coming from ISP/Telco Operatore. Some others are buyed from anyone.
I am asking myself if my customers should contact ISP/telco for clarifications and eventually ask when the device will be replaced. Of course, not now, many Huawei commercial partners are in a whirlwind with lawyers, risk assessment, cost assessment for insurances or technology change.
As written before, the end user device as laptop, mobile phone, mobile router are quite… not interesting.
If the mobile phone was buyed during the last year, in two years will be superseeded by a new one. The mobile router will be replaced for 5G device.
The laptop maybe won’t receive help from microsoft about drivers, but will receive OS updates as usual. The issues maybe could arrive for the next speculative execution vulnerability (Spectre, Meltdown, Zombieload, the next one), but in my opinion on a laptop this could not be such a critical issue, considering that a lot of older devices will not receive bios updates for microcode or mitigation.
Android updates: I don’t know who’s using a Nougat or Oreo-based phone, mine is Marshmallow-based, android patch release is april 2018. I do not use home banking apps, or biometric authentication for any of the device. Only Smart lock for a couple of bluetooth devices.
Maybe i will change it at the end of the year, i am not concerned of the security of this device, currently. Tomorrow maybe i will change idea.
I don’t think that final customer rights will be an issue for USA. Only if a class action wins against Trade commission/USA government there will be a little hole for allow the updates access for Huawei.
Unless there will be diplomatic work between PRC, USA and Huawei to arrange something different. But i’m not relying on that…
I can understand certain people’s concern with Huawei with regards to privacy and security and the latest Huawei saga has let me asking a lot of questions and not having very many concrete answers to those questions.
Now the following statements and questions I pose may not be expressed very well, but I am trying to put things in perspective.
Having said that, I think one needs to take a step back and look at the wider picture and think a bit more broadly and one will soon realise that pretty much every piece of hardware (and one could include software in this as well) is at risk to varying degrees as the products Huawei makes.
For example: It is well publicised that recently the Feds in the USA tried to make Apple put a back door in its encryption software so the US government could gain access to the Apple products when the encryption was enabled. Publicly Apple won and the Feds lost that battle but that does not mean that Apple or any other company for that matter could out in a secret backdoor deal with whatever power that be to provide access to their hardware or software for either legitimate or illegitimate use.
This begs the following questions:
is Huawei potentially unfairly being picked on and being made an example? Potentially yes.
does Huawei make hardware and configure it to be “used or abused” by 3rd Party sources? I don’t know if we will ever know the true answer to this and the same can be said for many other hardware and software manufacturers.
I am interested to hear what others think of this.
Questions for you, @bwdjames:
Did Huawei copied a lot of network and radio technologies from well known USA products and brands?
If the answer is yes, could this be a part of the reasons why the first case (Iran) of friction between USA and Huawei?
How this event could be a part a complex nerve-fight between PRC and USA?
Well… none of the answers for your and mine question will be answered here. And will be an answer for risk assessment and making decisions for concerns about safety, vulnerability, personal data management, strategic choices for IT.
For now, i have only questions for my next customer:
are you a “Huawei-connected” ISP customer?
are you considering the change of provider?
did you think that some of these Huawei devices could bring issues for your next Privacy and Risk Statemens?
3 really great questions. We’ll never now the real truth to question 1. For question 2, if the US believe the answer to question 1 and 3 is “yes”, then it would bolster and add weight their arguments.
Bu I think you are right in that individuals and companies do have to do a risk assessment and make the best decision they can make based on the information that is publicly available for their given situation.
For those question which you raise for your next customer, these are questions I asked myself in different ways when evaluating whether I should purchase products known to have Huawei technology in them. My conscious personal decision was sadly not to purchase these products due the perceived security and privacy reasons.
It is not to say that Huawei do not make bad products, it appears they make good products (although I haven’t tried any yet so I can’t personally confirm this), it is the perceived security and privacy risks which is the issue at hand. I say perceived as there is currently no hard evidence which can be used in court to confirm what is being said about Huawei.
If these products were android devices, my final question to you is: do you think that any android device is more privacy and security concerned than Huawei? My personal perception is that only BlackBerry is putting an higher level of security options than other brands, but i have to remind myself that the phone is manifactured from TCL, not from anyone else.
So Android phones are mostly using USA software on China-built hardware using USA, Taiwan, Korea and UK technologies (currently all Android devices on shelf are using ARM-Based SoCs). HiSilicon is the only exception about CPU Design.
But again: not the point of the thread, i do not want to feed an (interesting) chat on Android devices, but something a bit more comprehensive.
Pretty much all of the devices will do what is required of them, which one you will use is derived based on the follow set of requirements:
Does the device have all of the features that you require?
Do all of the features work reliably and consistently to your level of satisfaction?
Is the cost of the device acceptable and within your budget?
Given you have configured the device correctly, does it maintain a level of security and privacy that you expect it to?
I know that trust is a human factor and not a computer one, but you can’t entirely remove trust from the equation because the known facts will only get you so far and at some point you need to trust that what is written on the box and that it will do as advertised.
It is like you are presented with a chair for the first time in your life. You are told that this thing which has 3 or 4 legs and a flat top is designed for you to safely sit on and won’t fall apart as soon as you put your weight on it. True belief in the product and proving that the information said about the product requires you to have faith in what is said about the chair and to sit on it.
The same analogy can be said about any of the electronic devices.
… (cut the rant…)
They do the same with some antivirus some years ago… it was Kaspersky?
And I’m not using Huawei, not because I don’t want it, but because the prices here are artificially inflated.
Regards
Note.
I’m not anti|pro-(USA, China, Russia, NK, SK, EU, or whatever); I’m just a citizen of the world and that I want is to see our world sane and safe: for our children, love ones and all of us.
Which is a total-huawei shop for CPE, networking and broadcasting gear!
(my last meeting with Vodafone and Huawei CPE was this puppy)
At least in Italy, within certain obligations and costrains, Vodafone won’t need to create a separate infrastructure for managing and monitoring 5G BLE from another brand.
And maybe this authorization will be use as legal aid to have same kind of allowance among others European Countries.
Hi all, going to take the opportunity to share an other perspective on this.
It is the ownership of the intellectual property of 5G (GSM/LTE). After a lot of litigation the ownership of the intellectual property 3G and 4G seems to belong to Qualcomm (search for Qualcomm Apple modem or Qualcomm vs Broadcom as examples).
In the hardware 5G space there are 3 players who could offer this technology: Ericsson, Huawei and Qualcomm. (Althoug it seems Qualcomm has not done it’s RND, getting used to buy this…) In the end of the day no one can buy Huawei…
If we want a free 5G protocol and do not want to end up in the 3G/4G (patent) mess, one should not exclude Huawei as a major player…
Thanks for your insight, but i must ask: are you sure that Nokia (not HMD) has no part or patent into 5G networks?
Also, like GSM, WCDMA, LTE, 5G was design with interoperation in mind. Therefore…
Is the standard, subject to copyright/patent or technologies and implementation realized by every member of the 5G consortium?
As I look at it, this is the battle behind the scenes…
The EU wants a industry standard and every player can make it’s own implementation.
I think the reason 3G is phased out in the EU and 2G (=free industry standard) is the protocol (in EU) which all mobile devices should be able to fallback too.
At least in italy, 3G is going off for three reasons:
it’s cheaper to run 3 networks (5G, LTE, GSM) instead of 4
a change of frequency plan is going to happen not only on mobile communications but also on TV for allowing more frequencies for 5G
compared to LTE and 5G, 3G cells are less energy, frequency and bandwidth efficient. It’s like use an older, heavier, bigger and more polluting lorry for carry the same goods
I don’t agree with shutting down 3G, which currently seems the data transfer technology with more coverage on the italian territory. But i can’t argue, technically at least, with the last point.
Also, decommissioning 3G BTE will allow newer, more (energy) efficent LTE and 5G BTE. Less bucks spent by providers, i know, won’t reflect on better mobile tariffs.
The greatest downside is the massive creation of eWaste coming from decommisioning the older (and still not replaced) hardware.
