Although the United States has called for a boycott of espionage concerns, India is unlikely to ban China’s Huawei’s sale of its 5G equipment, contrary to its previous position.
A recent announcement states that telecom equipment manufacturers cannot be listed separately on security issues, especially since their competitors also source key components from China.
In September, telecom secretary Aruna Sundararajan declared that Huawei was being excluded from a list of firms invited to partner with the government for 5G trials. It was only two weeks after the announcement that Huawei said the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has invited it to participate in the programme. During his recent visit to China, Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged deepening economic ties between the two countries.
“Only Australia, New Zealand and Japan have followed (the US call). Germany and the European countries haven’t banned Huawei. Why should we ban?” said a senior government official to Economic Times. “To top it all, most telecom equipment providers source their supplies, especially chips, from China. The equipment providers themselves might not know if there is spyware in their products.”
Telecom equipment suppliers such as Sweden’s Ericsson and Finland’s Nokia are from China, but both say they have strict control and security protocols.
Without probing much further into details, the government official cited above said spyware was known to have been found even in components sourced from non-Chinese firms.
Although it takes some time to develop standards, the government can invoke the terms in the telecommunications license conditions to check the safety integrity of imported equipment.
Another official informed that by banning Chinese equipment manufacturers, India will only become more vulnerable to the influence of several other telecommunications equipment manufacturers, who may make the country “ransom.” The first official said that a private laboratory testing all telecommunications equipment is being established nationwide. To strengthen this further, telecom Minister Manoj Sinha opened a factory in Bangalore last month that will establish test standards and certify these private laboratories.
