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Huawei stymied by India security fears

Chinese telecoms equipment providers are suffering because of fears that their kit contains backdoors for the Chinese government to listen in Huawei is currently bidding to provide mobile network equipment in southern India. In fact, after a court case ruled out a bid from Nokia-Siemens, it is the only firm still in the running …

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Fredly
Black Helicopters

Uh oh

My broadband dongle is manufactured by Huawei. Can Vodafone guarantee it's free of Chinese bugs? If not it's going in the bin.

Michelle Knight

This'll be interesting

For a country who relies on external products to manage the Great Firewall, this does sound more than a little suspicious. Also, everything technology-wise I've bought from China so far has been dismal in its build quality and ability to last.

Specifications that don't match up to testing; equipment that falls apart, is incompatible with anything else or completely fails to perform.

The only reason I'm stuck with the stuff I buy from China is that the return postage would cost as much as it was to buy the kit in the first place.

David Gosnell

Re: Uh oh

Good luck finding a non-Huawei replacement!

Anonymous Coward
Happy

@ Michelle Knight....

....stop buying Chinese goods then!

Simples!

Fredly

Re:David Gosnell

I'll just use my BB Storm as my carrier it'll cost more but as I don't use my allowance on my dongle anyway I prob won't see any difference at the end of the month.

Anonymous Coward
Thumb Down

non

Find another buyer if you think the price is unaffordable and don't play this cheap trick to lower the price. It makes me feel sick.

Anonymous Coward
Alert

Chinese quality

I know someone who procures for a major seafaring outfit. When ordering shackles from China he was asked what weight limit he would like stamped on them. So don't moor your multi-million pound yacht or stand under any cranes when the shackle rated at 100 tonnes will break at 25 tonnes!

Ian Michael Gumby
Happy

You get what you deserve...

I believe that there were reports (Including in El Reg) where China refused American kit over security concerns.

The Chinese government opened the door to this paranoia so there is no reason why one should not reasonably suspect that China was paranoid because it was planning to do the same thing that they accused Western governments of doing.

A happy face because Karma can be a fickle bitch and bite you in the ass when you least expect it.

Dave

Open Source

If it doesn't run open-source software, then don't buy it, whether it comes from Russia, the USA or from China, they are all as bad as each other, (though none as bad as Wacky Jacqui)

Ramazan
Pirate

@Dave

1. You can have backdoors in hardware too. The most obvious examples are keyloggers and passkey-triggered timebombs

2. 99% of chips and PCBs are manufactured in China, so don't expect the abovementioned NSN gear to be free from backdoors

Danny Thompson
Unhappy

Its all a matter of trust

This is all really quite simple The Chinese are not to be trusted. They're cheap, which makes the western company's Finance Director look good, but they expose us to needless risk by side-stepping virtually every single standard known to man.

Pretty soon, if not already, China will be as vital to the western economies as oil is today. We're getting ourselves in deep doo doos, people.

Mines the one printed bold "All hail our new Chinese overlords".

Phil Koenig
Pirate

Huawei's not so golden history

Sometimes these things are based on knee-jerk presumptions, sometimes not.

If I recall correctly, Huawei has a long history of pirating/copying other organizations IP, including Cisco IOS. Cisco had longstanding lawsuits against them for this.

It doesn't exactly reflect too well on their general trustworthiness.

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