Huawei and ZTE seeking to ease Indian government security concerns
Working to assuage any concerns the Indian government could have of them posing a security threat, Huawei and ZTE are reportedly willing to provide all necessary software source codes of their products.
The move by the Chinese telecommunications giants, who currently have a big stake in the mobile and wireless data infrastructure sector in India, comes after the United States’ Congress earlier this month announced that the two are considered to be associated to China’s administrative and military interests, and can no longer be a part of acquisitions and mergers in the U.S.
Speaking to the Economic Times, John Suffolk, Huawei’s global chief security officer, said:
“The source code of Huawei is the crown jewels of Huawei. In any country, where we give access to the source code, we work hard with the security people to protect Huawei’s crown jewels. Yes, we have already done this with other governments… We encourage governments and operators to come and see us in China and we show them everything – source codes, testing, manufacturing, how we train people, how we sell – nothing is hidden from them… We use products of all leading companies such as Microsoft and Cisco, and I have to worry about that too. Trust has to be earned – we will work with the Indian government. We realise there is a risk to Huawei in sharing source codes, but our belief is that the more intimate we are with the government, the more they will trust us.”
ZTE India’s CEO, Cui Liangjun, also spoke about the issue to ET, saying:
“If we do something wrong, we have no future. We want to be a long term player both in India and globally. India is setting up a lab to test all mobile equipment and we are willing to test all our products there. We are also open to sharing our source code. In fact, we already share the source code with our vendors here such as Bharti Airtel and BSNL”
The two companies are currently in talks with the Department of Economic Affairs and the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB), who are assessing the risks outlined by the U.S Congress Panel findings, and deciding whether to modify investment policies.