FCC officially opens its $1.9bn purse to reimburse those ripping out and replacing Huawei, ZTE kit The FCC is now accepting reimbursement requests from companies in the US that are ripping out and replacing their now-unwelcome Chinese Huawei and ZTE networking equipment. Small to medium-sized companies with fewer than ten million customers can ask the American watchdog to cover the costs of removing, replacing, and …
What exactly does that have to do with anything? A better question is where are thesae Chips being manufactured, and whos making sure that those arent being secretly subverted right out from under our noses. I feel this act, might be missing the trees for the forest.
Not just the chips though, what about the staff?
Who is making sure that no sneaky foreigners or Orientals are working in our telecommunications system?
Surely vital computer systems should only be built and operated by straight righteous God fearing Christians who listen to country music - like they used to be.
One of the peculiarities of the global supply chain is that when you source a product that product may not be actually made by the supplier who's label is on the box. This goes as much for breakfast cereal as it does for electronic equipment. So without extensive vetting of the replacement equipment there's no guarantee that the replacement won't be rebadged Huawei equipment, designs or technology. Its just the way the world works. (sorry, politicians.)
I've been wondering about Huawei's phones for the same reason. Sure, they're still sold and are popular where they can be sold but fundamentally they represent a very advanced design and manufacturing capability. So its quite possible that these banned devices are going to turn up somewhere in some form, they just won't have "Huawei" written on them. (There's obviously an army of DC bureaucrats dedicated to making sure that this can't happen but how effective they'll be is anyone's guess.)
Once upon a time there was a company named Nortel that did make network stuff in North America. Then they became victims of industrial espionage from China and purely by coincidence there was suddenly a viable competitor out of China. And eventually there was no more Nortel.
And, the thing which you convenitly left out, was that this was just one very miniscule problem, out of the onther 1000 little problems thay had, at the time. Besides, I wasn't aware that they even had a stake in the moble phone industy. PABX, and Local Wi-Fi? was what I rememberd of them, that and , having snaped up Novell back in the day, so theres Netware too, I guess.
Well, companies decided to build their business using a product cheaper than their national/neighbour counter part. They weren't obliged to buy from the alleged Nortel thief/pirate. Perhaps, we can blame that on capitalism, right? Where ethics don't matter much when buying a cheaper product that offers equivalent resources and technology will make you save thousand or perhaps millions. Besides, when the the USA "advises" other countries to not buy Huawei or ZTE products they imply that you should by from them or anyone but China.
Then, what will guarantee there is no backdoors on a CISCO router? It's not that unlikely the USA would be spying on other countries, specially in places where a coup could benefit them, over devices and gadgets. Ultimatelly, what makes them less threatening or more amicable than China CCP?
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