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Hobbling Huawei: Inside the U.S. war on China’s tech giant

reuters.com

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Re: Hobbling Huawei: Inside the U.S. war on China’s tech giant

#71

Post by fmajid »

otoburb wrote: post #15
Scramblejams wrote: post #3

For me, the key quote: The United States and its allies were derelict in not developing a 5G supplier, former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said in a speech in London in March. “With the benefit of hindsight it beggars belief that the countries which pioneered wireless technology – the United States, the UK, Germany, Japan and with wifi, Australia have got to the point where none of them are able to pres…

The US doesn't have large domain players in the telecom space that supply the broad spectrum of equipment that runs what is known as the 4G EPC[1] or 5G Core[2] (data & packet processing) and RAN[3] (radio access network). Qualcomm and Intel focus and specialize on chips. Cisco focuses on layer 2, layer 3 and partially layer 7 equipment (think: routers & switches). Cisco has some products that compete against Huawei…

According to the Chief Architect of BT, Huawei's 5G technology is so far ahead of Nokia and Ericsson they are not even contenders:

https://www.lightreading.com/mobile/5g/bts-mcrae-huawei-is-t...

For Europeans, they have to balance the possibility of Chinese espionage against the certainty that the US and UK are already doing it:

* https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jul/02/wikileaks-us-s...

* https://theintercept.com/2014/12/13/belgacom-hack-gchq-insid...

In that light, Huawei equipment that the Chinese government tries to make as immune to the 5 Eyes as possible may actually be preferable.

Granted, neither Nokia nor Ericsson are US companies or subject to direct US pressure the way, say, Lucent would have been, or Cisco is, but the US has suborned equipment makers in neutral countries before, as with Crypto AG:

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-33676028

Re: Hobbling Huawei: Inside the U.S. war on China’s tech giant

#72

Post by trepanne »

freeflight wrote: post #41
likeabbas wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn’t one argue that their strength in cost efficiency was largely built on the theft of IP? Without the IP barriers western countries abide by, they were able to take the best technology from multiple companies, implement it and sell it at a fraction of the price?

Sure one could argue that, but to do that convincingly it would probably best to bring concrete evidence of what IP was supposedly stolen to facilitate the Huawei tech.

Huawei's theft of Cisco's IP is common knowledge, and well documented.

https://blogs.cisco.com/news/huawei-and-ciscos-source-code-c...

Re: Hobbling Huawei: Inside the U.S. war on China’s tech giant

#73

Post by fmajid »

likeabbas wrote: post #37
otoburb wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A modern wireless operator in its most simple terms is comprised of two very different networks: a radio access network of cell sites (aka RAN), and a data and packet processing network (aka Core). The two types of network are not heterogenous because their layer 1 characters are completely different (electromagnetic spectrum vs. wires), which has led to vendor specialization over the years as few companies are/were…

Couldn’t one argue that their strength in cost efficiency was largely built on the theft of IP? Without the IP barriers western countries abide by, they were able to take the best technology from multiple companies, implement it and sell it at a fraction of the price?

Not in the realm of 5G network equipment. As BT's McRae says, they are way ahead of their competitors, not something you can achieve by simply copying others' technology:

https://www.lightreading.com/mobile/5g/bts-mcrae-huawei-is-t...

The reality is that Huawei has been outspending its competitors in R&D by a wide margin for over two decades, because the latter are managed by bean counters in thrall to the stock market's short-term horizon. Eventually, the difference would show.

One further wrinkle is that Chinese 5G uses frequencies like 3-4 GHz that are hogged by the military in the US. US carriers have to resort to millimeter wave frequencies in the 30+ GHz range that can't penetrate a door, let alone a building, and are thus mostly useless for 5G penetration outside a very few congested open-air locations, and thus their 5G technology is at a severe disadvantage over the Chinese one:

https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/standards/how-am...

Most countries not aligned with China or the West will prefer the Huawei technology: superior technology yet cheaper, and far less expensive to deploy and operate. Any country that doesn't puts itself at a competitive disadvantage over others that do. The US may yet convince its European allies to shun Huawei, but it will come at a severe cost.

Re: Hobbling Huawei: Inside the U.S. war on China’s tech giant

#74

Post by femto »

This strikes me as a brilliant opportunity to push for a complete Free Software stack for a phone.

There will soon be a heap of 5G phone hardware going cheap. Software support will be lacking. The hardware manufacturer may well be open to publicly releasing the information independent third party developers will require to write software for their otherwise useless phones. If you're reading this Huawei, why not dump all the required information on your web site right now?

Re: Hobbling Huawei: Inside the U.S. war on China’s tech giant

#75

Post by fmajid »

megous wrote: post #52
likeabbas wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn’t one argue that their strength in cost efficiency was largely built on the theft of IP? Without the IP barriers western countries abide by, they were able to take the best technology from multiple companies, implement it and sell it at a fraction of the price?

One could also argue that IP hampers innovation and that this is a self-inflicted wound.

Huawei doesn't share its IP with others, and is a very different beast to the gongkai entrepreneurs profiled by Andrew Huang.

Re: Hobbling Huawei: Inside the U.S. war on China’s tech giant

#76

Post by fmajid »

adventured wrote: post #13
Scramblejams wrote: post #3

For me, the key quote: The United States and its allies were derelict in not developing a 5G supplier, former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said in a speech in London in March. “With the benefit of hindsight it beggars belief that the countries which pioneered wireless technology – the United States, the UK, Germany, Japan and with wifi, Australia have got to the point where none of them are able to pres…

I think there was substantial skepticism among those nations and those companies that anybody was going to beat them to the punch, specifically that China would present such a credible offering. China went from barely having any tech in 1999, to showing up for the race by 2009, to competing to lead in 5G by 2019. If you asked Intel, Cisco, Qualcomm, or the European suppliers, about that in 2005 or 2010, they would ha…

There was no doubt. Even 20 years ago when I worked for France Telecom it was clear Huawei was going to eat Western telecom equipment manufacturers' lunch. They were outspending them 2:1.

Re: Hobbling Huawei: Inside the U.S. war on China’s tech giant

#77

Post by 0815test »

femto wrote: post #74

This strikes me as a brilliant opportunity to push for a complete Free Software stack for a phone. There will soon be a heap of 5G phone hardware going cheap. Software support will be lacking. The hardware manufacturer may well be open to publicly releasing the information independent third party developers will require to write software for their otherwise useless phones. If you're reading this Huawei, why not dump…

Huawei is not known as an open company, if anything they're the very opposite. They stopped providing unlock ability for their mobile devices some time back, and even before that they were known for having by far the hardest system to work with for phone "modders" - bricked hardware was exceedingly common, and zero outside support was provided. That's incredibly harsh even by CN standards.

Re: Hobbling Huawei: Inside the U.S. war on China’s tech giant

#78

Post by femto »

Scramblejams wrote: post #3

For me, the key quote: The United States and its allies were derelict in not developing a 5G supplier, former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said in a speech in London in March. “With the benefit of hindsight it beggars belief that the countries which pioneered wireless technology – the United States, the UK, Germany, Japan and with wifi, Australia have got to the point where none of them are able to pres…

And is the Huawei ban also about giving the competition a chance to catch up?

Re: Hobbling Huawei: Inside the U.S. war on China’s tech giant

#79

Post by ETHisso2017 »

throw20102010 wrote: post #70
ETHisso2017 wrote: post #24

If this is a war, then did Google, Broadcom, Microsoft, the rest of the US tech sector, and the worldwide Android community just get forcibly conscripted into service by the US government?

Every American company is at the beck and call of the US government at all times, with their existence in peril if they disobey. The US government has been regulating trade like this since before we were born, and most of the time we don't even notice. This is not the first time that Silicon Valley had to obey US government regulations. Notice that there are hardly any Iranian or North Korean tech companies doing bus…

So why does the US government accuse Huawei of being a risk for being at the beck and call of the Chinese government?

Re: Hobbling Huawei: Inside the U.S. war on China’s tech giant

#80

Post by femto »

0815test wrote: post #77
femto wrote: post #74

This strikes me as a brilliant opportunity to push for a complete Free Software stack for a phone. There will soon be a heap of 5G phone hardware going cheap. Software support will be lacking. The hardware manufacturer may well be open to publicly releasing the information independent third party developers will require to write software for their otherwise useless phones. If you're reading this Huawei, why not dump…

Huawei is not known as an open company, if anything they're the very opposite. They stopped providing unlock ability for their mobile devices some time back, and even before that they were known for having by far the hardest system to work with for phone "modders" - bricked hardware was exceedingly common, and zero outside support was provided. That's incredibly harsh even by CN standards.

And now it will be possible to get one's hands on truckloads of potential bricks for almost nothing. If the community makes enough bricks it will eventually learn how not to make bricks. Those lessons can then be applied to other phones with similar architectures.
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