Sprint And Softbank Won’t Use Huawei After Their Upcoming Merger

Huawei maybe getting another blow from their United States market (or what’s left of it) as both the mobile carrier companies, Spring Nextel Corp. and Softbank Corp. told to U.S. lawmakers that they will not use equipments made by the Chinese based tech company Huawei Technologies after they merge.

Both the companies have been concerned about the potential electronic spy issue and decided not to use the Chinese manufacturer’s hardware. The U.S. agency is currently reviewing a merger worth $20Billion for national security, but Representative Mike Roger told Bloomberg via email that he expects the companies to make the same assurances before the deal is approved.

Rogers added,”I have met with Softbank and Sprint regarding this merger and was assured they would not integrate Huawei in to the Sprint network and would take mitigation efforts to replace Huawei equipment in the Clearwire network.”

Clearwire uses certain equipments from Huawei whereas the internal core network is powered by vendors such as Cisco. The company’s chief technical office John Saw assured that the Clearwire will be reducing Huawei’s presence in its high-speed wireless service network.

Huawei doesn’t have any knowledge about the national security report, but a U.S. spokesman said,”“If government approval of the transaction is somehow contingent on an agreement to restrict purchase of equipment from any vendor based on the flag of heritage, then it is a sad day for free and open global trade and it does nothing to secure the network. Everyone is global and every company faces the same cyber challenges.”

Even though Huawei’s name is only mentioned by the companies, ZTE would be facing the same scenario. Softbank is a Japanese based telecom company which happen to buy base band units and wireless systems from Huawei and ZTE.

It has been reported here that the U.S. government has introduced provisions to stop government agencies to use electronic equipment made by Chinese companies.

Source: Bloomberg