India’s recent decision authorising 5G trials without Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE is a sovereign one, a US State Department official has said in what can be described as an indirect support for New Delhi’s move. The US official also asserted that America is deeply concerned about the dangers of installing networks with equipment that can be manipulated, disrupted or potentially controlled by China.
The Department of Telecom last week approved applications of telecom companies Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea and MTNL to conduct 5G trials but none of them will be using technologies of Chinese entities. “This was a sovereign decision on the part of the Indian government,” US State Department spokesperson Ned Price told reporters on Tuesday. “But I would say more broadly, it is true that we are deeply concerned about the dangers of installing networks with equipment that can be manipulated, disrupted or potentially controlled by the PRC.”
“Allowing untested, untrusted telecommunication suppliers, like Huawei or ZTE, to participate in or to have any control over any part of a 5G network creates unacceptable risks to national security, to critical infrastructure, to privacy and to human rights as well,” Price said.
Last year, the US designated Huawei and ZTE as “national security threats”, saying they have close ties to the Chinese Communist Party and China’s military apparatus, and they are broadly subject to Chinese law obligating them to cooperate with the country”s intelligence services. Last August, the then US administration also added 38 Huawei affiliates in 21 countries to the US government’s economic blacklist raising the total to 152 affiliates since first adding Huawei in May 2019.
On Tuesday, a senior Republican senator asked the chief executives of Toshiba America Electronic Components, Seagate Technology, and Western Digital Corp if the companies are improperly supplying Huawei with foreign-produced hard disk drives. Senator Roger Wicker, a ranking member of the Commerce Committee, said a 2020 US Commerce Department regulation sought to “tighten Huawei’s ability to procure items that are the direct product of specified US technology or software, such as hard disk drives”. China last week regretted the decision by Indian authorities to not allow Chinese telecom companies to conduct 5G trials in India.
“We noted relevant notification, and express concern and regret that Chinese telecommunications companies have not been permitted to conduct 5G trials with Indian telecom service providers in India,” Wang Xiaojian, a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in New Delhi, had said. “To exclude Chinese telecommunications companies from the trials will not only harm their legitimate rights and interests, but also hinder the improvement of the Indian business environment, which is not conducive to the innovation and development of related Indian industries,” Wang said.
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