
T-Mobile, Sprint see Huawei shun clinching U.S. deal - tareqak
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-sprint-corp-m-a-t-mobile-huawei-exclu/exclusive-t-mobile-sprint-consider-dropping-huawei-see-u-s-security-clearance-for-deal-sources-idUSKBN1OD2HO
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mac01021
That's a pretty incomprehensible headline.

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ggm
The implied conditionality here is troubling me. Reasons to block a merger
should be about market power. This is like pork barrelling, to secure a
tactical moment in a trade war.

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ardy42
> The implied conditionality here is troubling me. Reasons to block a merger
> should be about market power.

Why just market power? National security seems like it's also be a valid,
defensible reason to kill a deal (it'd have been obvious to block Russian
company taking control of a major US defense contractor, especially during the
Cold War).

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ggm
You can't join together, even though neither of you have Huawei deployed,
because your German majority owner has Huawei and we want to leverage an
advantage. Merkel isn't in five eyes and we have no other leverage.

That's abusing the reasons major mergers like this are referred to the system
in peacetime. It's not a hot war, it's not a cold ear, it's a trade war. What
happened to the WTO? Did we all just walk off the reservation back to
tarrifland?

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slededit
China has developing nation status at the WTO. Thus China has an unfair
advantage under WTO rules (in the direct sense - they literally get special
treatment).

Until that is rectified expect the WTO to not hold much sway over US trade
policy.

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Aloha
I dont think either Sprint or T-Mobile have any Huawei gear in their network
anymore, Sprint got rid of theirs when they migrated from WiMAX to LTE.

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tonyztan
"Like all major U.S. wireless carriers, T-Mobile and Sprint do not use Huawei
equipment, but their majority owners, Germany’s Deutsche Telekom AG and
Japan’s SoftBank Group Ltd, respectively, use some Huawei gear in overseas
markets."

"U.S. government officials had been pressuring Deutsche Telekom to stop using
Huawei equipment."

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Aloha
Both Sprint and T-Mobile had a significant Huawei footprints, Sprint via
Clearwire, and T-Mobile via MetroPCS - AT&T also bought some when they bought
Cricket too. It's all gone now. Sprint is a mix of Samsung, Alcatel-Lucent
(Now Nokia), and Ericsson, depending on the market - T-Mobile is all Ericsson
I think.

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ardy42
I don't think anyone's disputing that they've removed their Huawei gear from
their US networks, but it appears they may still have some installed in other
countries, e.g. Germany or Japan.

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freeflight
As a German, I have to ask why should that be any of the US's business?

It's disturbing how nonchalantly this keeps happening [0] and escalating with
barely anybody daring to even mention the actual reasons behind it and instead
playing up the "moral" angle of "China possibly spying = evil, US most
certainly spying = good [1]".

While the US can't even reign in its own surveillance apparatus on a domestic
level [2]. In that context, the US is like the thief yelling "Hold the thief!"
to distract from its own, still on-going, much bigger heist.

A reminder: The US uses its "intelligence dominance" to not only abduct people
all over the world, but de-facto assassinate them, "we kill people based on
metadata" is not just a meme [3]. At least China keeps most of that stuff on a
domestic level, while if you end up in the US's crosshairs you will be quite
literally hunted all over the globe.

One has to wonder if Huawei systems encryption really is that much better, and
that's why the US intelligence community is so "concerned" about an increased
adoption of Huawei systems: They fear to lose their massive reach and access.

[0] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-03-22/why-
ameri...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-03-22/why-america-is-
so-scared-of-china-s-biggest-tech-company)

[1] [https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/news/worlds-largest-
inter...](https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/news/worlds-largest-internet-
exchange-sues-german-spy-agency-for-tapping-data-center/)

[2] [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/04/us/politics/nsa-
surveilla...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/04/us/politics/nsa-
surveillance-2017-annual-report.html)

[3] [https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2016/02/the-n...](https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2016/02/the-nsas-skynet-program-may-be-killing-thousands-of-
innocent-people/)

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ardy42
> As a German, I have to ask why should that be any of the US's business?

Because those networks might be integrated internally and any vulnerabilities
or backdoors in equipment installed in other countries might offer a jumping
off point to access US parts of the network.

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freeflight
If that'd be the case then Germany should have just as much of a right to
meddle with US internal issues, because any integration like that would always
work both ways. Fat chance of that ever happening.

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ardy42
> If that'd be the case then Germany should have just as much of a right to
> meddle with US internal issues, because any integration like that would
> always work both ways. Fat chance of that ever happening.

Doesn't it already? I'm pretty sure EU antitrust authorities have fined and
prevented mergers of US companies, for instance.

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supergirl
just in case anyone ever thought blocking huawei is about national security in
the US. this looks like the americans are looking around trying to cut huawei
out of deals in any country.

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lawnchair_larry
Make no mistake, Huawei is in fact a security nightmare, and that is true
regardless of whether or not corporations (with no government ownership, and
are both in fact foreign owned) are going to be opportunistic about it.

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bogomipz
>"Make no mistake, Huawei is in fact a security nightmare,"

Can you elaborate on this? Do you mean a potential nightmare? Has there been
any actual evidence of backdoors?

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lawnchair_larry
Backdoors are a moot point. Security is so bad on them that they don’t need a
backdoor. Or maybe that is the backdoor. I don’t know if it’s incompetence or
plausible deniability. I don’t care to speculate, and am not interested in the
politics, all I am saying is, technically speaking, you do not want this shit
near your communications.

Some well known industry experts sharing their opinions:
[https://www.computerworld.com/article/2505191/malware-
vulner...](https://www.computerworld.com/article/2505191/malware-
vulnerabilities/hackers-reveal-critical-vulnerabilities-in-huawei-routers-at-
defcon.html)

