Australia and New Zealand have banned use of Huawei equipment and the Pentagon last year barred Huawei phones on military installations. File Photo by Stephen Shaver/UPI |
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Feb. 26 (UPI) -- The leader of Chinese telcom giant Huawei said Tuesday the company has done nothing to warrant the treatment it's received from the United States and other nations over its equipment.
The Trump administration wants to ban Huawei on national security grounds, in a dust-up that's led to substantial international fallout. In addition to being a cellular leader in Asia, Huawei is also in the process of rolling out a 5G mobile network -- a system several times faster than 4G LTE speeds.
At a conference in Spain Tuesday, Huawei chairman Guo Ping said the United States' national security claims are unfounded.
"What we promise is we don't do anything bad -- we don't do bad things," Gua said.
"The U.S. security accusation on our 5G has no evidence -- nothing. The irony is that the U.S. cloud act ... allowed their entities to access data across borders."
Gua and many cellular executives are attending the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, which started Monday and runs through Thursday.
Huawei equipment is already prevalent throughout Europe's cellular networks and replacing it would be a great undertaking, Vodafone CEO Nick Read said at the conference. Vodafone is waiting for a British intelligence report for the final word on whether Chinese equipment will be allowed in Britain's 5G infrastructure.
A British cybersecurity expert said last week any threat from Huawei could be managed and German officials appear to be leaning toward using Huawei equipment on their 5G network.
While the administration pushes to block Huawei, President Donald Trump has yet to sign an executive order banning the company and appeared to change his stance last week as he started new trade talks with China.
"I want to have competition with China," he said Friday, without mentioning Huawei by name. "I don't want to block out anybody if we can help it. ... We want to have open competition. We've always done very well in open competition."
New Zealand and Australia have already banned Huawei and the U.S. Defense Department last year barred use of Huawei phones -- and those from Chinese manufacturer ZTE -- on military installations worldwide.
