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Huawei: ‘We stand naked in front of the world’

wwwmaster — Tue, 07 Mar 2023 19:50:53 +0000

By Mary-Ann RussonBusiness reporter, BBC News

Huawei has denied that it has any links to the Chinese government.

Huawei’s cyber-security chief John Suffolk told MPs on Monday that the tech giant had never been asked by China or any other government to “do anything untoward”.

Mr Suffolk said Huawei welcomed outsiders to analyse its products and detect engineering or coding flaws.

“We stand naked in front of the world, but we would prefer to do that, because it enables us to improve our products.”

He added: “We want people to find things, whether they find one or one thousand, we don’t care. We are not embarrassed by what people find.”

Huawei was invited to the Technology and Science Select Committee to answer questions from MPs on the security of its equipment, and its links to the Chinese government.

The US has encouraged allies to block Huawei – the world’s largest maker of telecoms equipment – from their 5G networks, saying the Chinese government could use its products for surveillance.

Huawei’s cyber-security chief John Suffolk said the tech giant has no access to mobile networks

“We’ve never had a request from the Chinese government to do anything untoward at all,” said Mr Suffolk. “We have never been asked by the Chinese government or any other government, I might add, to do anything that would weaken the security of a product.”

MPs raised concerns about Chinese human rights abuses, such as reports that up to a million Muslims are in detention centres in Xinjiang province.

They asked whether Huawei was required to provide equipment to Xinjiang province, especially in light of the 2017 Chinese intelligence law, which requires individuals and associations to comply with Chinese intelligent agencies.

Mr Suffolk said: “We have had to go through a period of clarification with the Chinese government, that has come out and made it quite clear that that is not the requirement of any company.

“We’ve had that validated via our lawyers and revalidated by Clifford Chance…according to our legal advice, that does not require Huawei to undertake anything that weakens Huawei’s position in terms of security.”

Remote access

MPs asked whether Huawei would be able to remotely access the UK’s 5G mobile networks via its equipment.

Huawei said it would have no access to any data on a 5G mobile network

In reply, Mr Suffolk stressed that Huawei is a provider of telecommunications equipment to mobile network operators.

“We don’t run networks, and because we don’t run the network, we have no access to any of the data that is running across that network,” he said.

He also explained that Huawei is only one of about 200 vendors who would be providing various different bits of equipment that would eventually make up a 5G network in the UK.

However, if an operator were to have a problem with Huawei equipment, a support centre based in Romania would be able to remotely access the equipment to fix the problem.

MPs wanted to know whether it would be possible for a 5G network to be used to track an individual user.

In response, Mr Suffolk explained that mobile phone technology requires the mobile operator to constantly track a user’s phone, in order to be able to connect them to the mobile network.

By that logic, the operator is constantly tracking all of its customers, all the time.

He also told MPs that only about 30% of the the components in Huawei products are actually made by the company – the rest of the components are obtained from a global supply chain that Huawei closely monitors in order to prevent security breaches.

2019 Telecommunications Industry Outlook

wwwmaster — Tue, 08 May 2018 04:09:50 +0000

What’s ahead for telecom providers in 2019? Fifth generation (5G) wireless technologies will be gaining ground quickly, unleashing the full potential of augmented and virtual reality, Smart Cities, and IoT. Mic Locker, managing director in Deloitte Consulting LLP’s Technology, Media & Telecommunications (TMT) industry practice, shares her thoughts on opportunities for growth in our new telecom industry overview.

2019 will present several opportunities for providers to bolster current revenue sources—or to create entirely new revenue streams. Many of those opportunities will arise from changing market conditions and consumer preferences—and from the first large-scale rollouts of 5G technologies, which are expected to create significant business opportunities for telecom companies.

Even before the rollout of the 5G, there is work to be done. Consumers continue to display an insatiable appetite for mobile data. With more data-heavy applications securing their place in consumers’ daily lives, we only expect this trend to continue. Consumers demand higher data limits, and they opt in for unlimited data plans. According to the US edition of Deloitte’s 2018 Global Mobile Consumer Survey, 37 percent of respondents now have unlimited data plans—up from 25 percent in 2017.¹ We now see providers offering lower prices for these plans as well as a variety of bundled services, decreasing the average revenue per user (ARPU). To balance the competitive landscape and possibly stabilize pricing, telecom companies will likely be looking to expand their boundaries and search for new opportunities.

One of the main opportunities could come from consolidations and partnerships, especially in the areas of cable and content. Today, we observe a high number of consumers who prefer video streaming services over cable subscriptions. Our Digital Media Trends survey revealed that 55 percent of US households now subscribe to paid video streaming services while pay-TV penetration fell to 63 percent—down from 75 percent the previous year.²

In response, cable companies are looking to augment their pay-TV business with communications services—and by extending their programming distributions beyond fixed lines. Changing dynamics and competitive pressures from both sides can encourage telecommunications providers to consider M&A deals to integrate content and media into their offerings. Partnerships are also likely to increase as providers attempt to accelerate development of new business models and services based on 5G technology.

Once available, 5G is expected to create significant business opportunities for telecom companies,³ helping them gain revenue in the fixed broadband market and business-to-business (B2B) opportunities such as smart cities and Internet of Things (IoT). It will also provide the ideal environment for telecommunications providers to employ “network slicing” to customize their offerings.⁴ In the context of 5G, this will enable sharing of a given physical network to run IoT, mobile broadband, and very low-latency applications—including many connected-car and connected-home functions that have the potential to create entirely new revenue sources for providers in 2019.⁵

Two other key revenue-generating opportunities for telecom providers will be mHealth and mPayments. In the area of mHealth, operators can monetize services targeted to the growing number of subscribers who have adopted health care–centric wearables to, for example, help them ensure they’re taking the proper dosages of medications. In the world of mPayments, on the other hand, mobile operators can play a different role: As an integrator for devices, applications, methods of mobile payment, and customer identity management. One study estimated that this strategy could help telecommunications providers increase their mobile payments revenue at least fourfold by 2022.⁶

What do you see in Emerging Sectors?

Not surprisingly, 5G has been a recurring theme throughout this 2019 outlook for the telecommunications industry. And, it appears the market is ready to embrace 5G. According to Deloitte’s 2018 Global Mobile Consumer Survey: US edition, 60 percent of respondents indicated that 5G is now “important” to them. Among those who use their smartphones to watch video content weekly, that interest level rises above 80 percent.⁹

5G is also poised to unleash the full potential of both AR and VR in the coming year. To feel seamless and deliver value, AR/VR experiences require the extensive bandwidth and low latency that only 5G can provide. These capabilities will create a wide range of opportunities for telecommunications providers and customers—everything from autonomous vehicles and virtual training to remote health care and innovative classroom learning applications. Another intriguing opportunity is e-commerce, where AR/VR applications can foster compelling online experiences that could help retailers close more sales.

Another key emerging trend is consumers’ increasing reliance on voice assistants—either through their smartphones or via voice-assisted speakers. In many ways, voice is becoming the new technology interface for consumers. According to Deloitte’s 2018 Global Mobile Consumer Survey: US edition, nearly two-thirds of respondents use a voice assistant on their smartphones—a 20 percent year-over-year increase. However, when it comes to frequent usage of voice assistants, voice-assisted speakers are the most prominent platform: 69 percent of respondents use them weekly and 47 percent daily. Among connected-home devices, penetration of voice-assisted speakers almost doubled over the past year.

2019 could also see the launch of a low earth orbit (LEO) satellite system from an LEO satellite provider to deliver improved internet connectivity to rural users and remote commercial operations. LEO satellites have the potential to deliver faster connections and dramatically lower latency—capabilities that are especially critical in remote locations where data need to be processed immediately, at the source (rather than waiting for processing on a centralized data server). Potential target customers are cruise ships, military installations, rural schools, far-flung oil and gas operations, and consumers frustrated with the poor performance of their current satellite internet service.

One final technology to watch in 2019 is blockchain. Blockchain should be on every telecommunications provider’s radar. Telecoms can harness blockchain technology to simplify billing systems, cut down revenue leakage from roaming and identity fraud, and automate settlements with smart contracts and tokens.¹⁰ The technology also offers several other advantages that can benefit 5G networks, including the enablement of secure, error-free, peer-to-peer connectivity for thousands of IoT devices with cost-efficient self-managed networks. It can also power a new generation of access technology selection mechanisms for 5G networks, such as sharing of faster and regulated local connectivity for reliable service to device; enablement of local connection prices based on local supply and demand; and the creation of new business models for determining the ideal capability for nonprioritized traffic.¹¹ Telecoms can accelerate their progress toward 5G by using blockchain to autonomously monitor and regulate their networks.