Huawei’s CEO going off-script to rage at US carriers was the best speech of CES
theverge.com
theverge.com
Is privacy the big reason? The article cites privacy as one of the pressures that caused AT&T to abort the deal — US companies don't want to let the government eavesdrop on their products, and Chinese government doesn't want US products and services that prevent the Chinese government from eavesdropping.
- Spy, eavesdrop wherever they can. Forcing vendors to turn over server controls to them.
- Constantly duplicate, steal other companies work.
- Create unfair advantages of China companies vs US companies.
- Can't forget the Great China Firewall!
Huawei is untrustworthy anyway, good riddance. [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huawei#Espionage_and_security_...
Dude called out the US for generally lacking on the mobile front, and I don't think he's wrong. Our mobile broadband speeds are terrible for a developed country largely because of the mobile carrier (and wired broadband) oligopoly.
If the CEO of Nokia said the same thing, would it be any more or less valid just because of the policies of the country that they're based in?
edit: typo
Yes. This is Communist China we're talking about here. They take eavesdropping to the next level.
> Dude called out the US for generally lacking on the mobile front, and I don't think he's wrong. Our mobile broadband speeds are terrible for a developed country largely because of the mobile carrier (and wired broadband) oligopoly.
You don't know what you're talking about. China's mobile network is a frigging state-owned oligopoly that, the favored carrier of which uses a weird and inferior TD-SCDMA protocol purely for political reasons. We've got it good compared to them. Source: https://www.samizdata.net/2012/06/here-is-the-rac/
Whoa there. That escalated quickly.
You're absolutely right about the protocol, but protocol does not a complete wireless ecosystem make. You could have a shitty protocol and happy customers, or a great protocol and upset customers.
Also, just because two industries are dominated by oligopolies doesn't mean that consumers in both are suffering the same. One can put the customers' interest slightly ahead of another. It's like having the assumption that authoritarianism automatically means people are suffering. It's just unhealthy and unstable. Every once in a while you can still get benevolent dictators doing something nice ;)
Just from personal experience, I know the cell phone fees in China are a lower % of people's incomes than here. The speeds aren't amazing (but that's probably because I rarely browse any domestic sites while in China). But I've also never had a dropped call or lack of signal until I got waaaaaaaay out in the mountains / rural parts of China, where as here I will still occasionally get my calls dropped or have spotty reception near a well-populated suburb.
Rather, US companies get pressure from the government to make it so that only the US eavesdropping works on devices. ATT has quite a history here. I don't think he's wrong; why are most devices here only available through carriers?
http://time.com/money/4808996/fastest-internet-countries-mob...
We’re #28. Among the 62 countries included in the latest
State of the Internet Report from Akamai Technologies, the
United States ranks 28th for average mobile Internet
speed.
I don't believe that trying to look at this through the lens of ~what country is more hypocritical is very useful. US mobile broadband sucks, US mobile carriers suck, and the market for phones here for consumers isn't as good as it could be.
This is a rather facetious argument backed by the unsubstantiated premise that if most devices are “only available through carriers,” that it must be a ploy to integrate more citizens into the surveillance apparatus.
It may indeed be true that consumers relying on phone contracts to purchase their devices unavoidably become trapped in a net of surveillance. However, attributing that to malice on the part of the carriers is intellectually irresponsible.
The carriers offer “discounted” phones, quite simply, because they make more money that way, due to financing agreements and contractual lock-in. Perhaps a side effect is consumers locking themselves into surveillance. But it’s irresponsible to posit that this result, a side effect, is also the motivator behind the contractual schemes. The carriers offer these options for one reason and one reason only: because it makes them money.
It's like if Kid A complained about how getting bullied by Kid B's older brother sucks and you're like HA your complaint is laughable and insane because Kid A's brother is a bully, too!
If you presented evidence on why it's reasonable to suspect Huawei for being complicit in espionage in their hardware devices (and why other countries don't seem to be that worried about it), then you'd have a compelling counterpoint.
[1] Former head of CIA: Huawei engaged in espionage for Chinese state:
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2013/0719/Former-head-o...
[2] Huawei spied, US federal jury finds:
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/19/huawei_spied_us_jur...
[3] U.S. Suspicions of China's Huawei Based Partly on NSA's Own Spy Tricks
https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/hardware/us-su...
I agree entirely with your point that there is fault on both sides here. That's precisely what makes it ironic (see [3], in particular!). A better analogy would be that Kid A is bullying Kid B, and in response, Kid B starts bullying back. Ideally, this causes Kid A to "get a taste of his own medicine" and stops bullying Kid B.
That's how I hope the situation will end up, at least.
The Kid A vs Kid B isn't really the situation here as it's the CEO of a company from country A complaining about country B influencing the decisions of a company from country B. That's why injected the bullying older brothers to help with the analogy. If Huawei actually screwed over AT&T in the past and now AT&T pulls out of a deal with Huawei and Huawei complains, then the Kids A/B bullying each other would be an accurate analogy.
Incidentally I've seen the Chinese government basically hype up problems or impropriety of foreign companies (e.g. Apple) in the past in order to bully them in to compliance. I'm not saying that the US government is doing the same thing to Huawei here, but the cynic in me also isn't ruling that angle out either :/
In all honestly from the few products I see that come across the various tech review outlets I follow, Huawei seems to do some decent work. But the whole economic situation with China is complicated...mostly due to their own heavy handed protectionist policies.
From a cursory following, it certainly seems like the Chinese market in particular is biased at regulatory levels against foreign companies.
This decision does affect US consumers, but not in a significant way...we still have access to cheap smartphones.
Chinese companies can't have their cake and eat it too!
>Huawei engineers and executives also make regular visits to U.S. carriers to show off new technology, and the potential cost savings are “significant”—sometimes even half off competitors’ prices, says one former U.S. telecom executive.
>U.S. wireless service costs $41 per month per customer on average, according to the data and analytics firm—second only to Canada, which also largely discourages Huawei equipment. In the U.K., where Huawei is allowed but closely scrutinized, the average wireless bill is $23 a month.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/huawei-long-seen-as-spy-threat-...
No, this is something that doesn't exist in reality, or doesn't work to be precise. China is capitalist, in fact more capitalist than pretty much any western country, but only when it comes to domestic market. Towards the west they're ultra protectionist.
Lots of its companies are state-run or otherwise state-owned. It definitely takes some "capitalist" practices to the next level compared to the rest, but it is its own weird thing.
This is especially true of tech companies. Chinese Internet censors degrade the quality of major US corporations so much that their products are nearly unusable, thus opening opportunities for domestic competitors. We’ve seen this play out with Google/Baidu, Facebook/Weibo, Uber/Didi, Amazon/Alibaba, etc.
Most people see the Great Firewall (GFW) as a tool for suppression of political dissent. However it also serves as an effective tool for economic control, protectionism and favoritism. In college I took a class called “The Next China,” where I argued in my final paper that the GFW serves primarily as a tool for economic control, and only secondarily as a political tool. Realistically, there are arguments to be made that maintaining the GFW is in the best interest of the Chinese state, its economy and its people. It has certainly benefited them so far, as China now has a thriving domestic economy that is becoming more vertically integrated and service-driven every day.
Before anyone gets too upset about this, consider that the US often does the same, albeit on more of a regulatory level than a political one. Some examples are import taxes, financial compliance requirements, and upcoming data regulation. These all serve as tools that implicitly favor domestic companies over foreign ones.
They also dangle the carrot of access to their market in front of Western companies in order to encourage up-front technology and skill transfer. In the end, it's only to benefit their domestic companies as the western ones are eventually hobbled and shut out.
Skip to page 7 for the investigation.. or bottom of page 12 where it starts talking about Huawei.
Some of it could be political cover.. but some of it sounds quite solid. Like the part about their business in Iran, which they admit having and refused to discontinue, possibly violating US sanctions.
And let's not forget NSA's Juniper router NSA backdoor hack [2].
So the NSA banned Huawei since they wouldn't play ball with them and decided to spread FUD about Huawei instead... so that companies buy hacked/backdoored routers instead.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa...
[2] https://www.wired.com/2015/12/juniper-networks-hidden-backdo...
* It'd probably be more difficult for them to get at a Huawei, since the routers don't go through US export inspections, just like everything else made outside the US. However, the could still have the cooperation of or agents working for the shipping companies to help them in those cases.
America has to act now to prevent this kind of stuff, not just place a bandaid. Huawei is now cheaper and better than competitors but their model has been something Chinese and let's be honest most other countries have tried to implement. Props to them though
It's not really a secret. The history section of their wikipedia article explains they were founded as a way to reverse engineer foreign technology and are state sponsored. I guess many people don't know this?
https://www.networkworld.com/article/2223272/cisco-subnet/60...:
> Folklore within the routing and switching community was that Huawei stole router product secrets from Cisco, down to the chassis, IOS and all the way down to the spelling errors in the manuals. Many have said it for years, but 60 Minutes put it on worldwide television tonight for everyone to know. Cisco did file suit and it was settled out of court, so we will never know what really happened. But Huawei did it, they know it, we know and Cisco knows it. Otherwise they would have never settled the court case.
In fact, they pay more than MSRP if you consider the fact you're forced to attach a phone plan which costs more than the equivalent plan from an MVNO using the same network.
We’re not talking about a house or a car, it’s a 1,000$ phone that can have 90% of it's features replicated by a phone that cost as much as the down payment on the 1k phone that someone with maxed out credit will have to pay.
Consumers gonna consume.
The monthly discount that Canadian carriers offer for bringing your own phone is generally lower than the value of the phone. So why would I pay upfront if the model I want is available from the carrier?
It's also nice to have an unlocked retail phone. Much cheaper to get a SIM from a vending machine at the airport anywhere outside North America than to suffer Canadian carriers' insane roaming charges.
Cultural momentum. In the US, phones used to be heavily subsidized by carriers via contracts. Even if you brought your own phone, and don't think the carriers gave you a big enough discount to make it economically justifiable, so the practice of buying "unlocked" phones never took off and was more of a niche thing.
That's all changed recently, with the death of long-term contracts, but old habits die hard.
Luckily LTE means we're seeing the back of all this, though I think you still need a CDMA phone for areas that do not yet have LTE.
At 0% interest, why wouldn't you?
What am I losing, whatever I would have made by investing that $500 over the same time period ? We're talking less than $50. I'm very lucky to be at a point in my life where I'd gladly give away "$50, 2 years from now" in exchange for "don't have to think about it, ever again".
Are the payments for those "loans" included in the buyers cell phone bill? So no extra payment to remember.
To be pedantic, that's wrong. Most people make $300 to $500 purchases with a credit card, which is a type of loan.
There are phones that are quite a bit cheaper than that.
Now it's "pay X dollars a month 24 months".
But sure, it's Huawei who are the victims in all of this.
[0] http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/former-nortel-exec-warns-aga...
China is halfway around the world and many of us will never go there.
On the other hand using phones provided by US carriers means the government here is probably spying on you.
China, however will probably never send people to knock your door down based on intel they gather from your phone.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-10/china-off...
Seems to me that the US should use more of it’s leverage ($400b annual trade deficit) to ensure better market access to China.