Australia Bars Huawei From Broadband Project

[xdrive]

This thread is about Australia Banning Huawei From a Broadband Project, yet the last 2 pages is full of off topic garbage that i can't even be bothered reading.

TAKE IT ELSE WHERE.

 

[+4vsgorillas-Apebane]

dude, Kevin rudd also call chinese rat fookers while on record.
sinophobe or just pretending?

 

[Gnimgnay]

Why bother making such a silly comment?

Banning a company on grounds of national security doesn't win "popularity" and certainly doesn't have anything to do with racism.

Before replying, make sure you think about your comments before you make them.

Have you really thought about this? Banning a company because its CEO is ex-military person? Serious? So you bluntly bought the excuse, didn't you?

There are millions of companies who has ex-military persons as one of its leaders.

 

[fly2012]

There is something not right with Huawei, for such a large company why only 2 years ago did it finally release who its board of directors are? Why the secrecy?
I dont think anybody is going to argue the generous subsidies and lines of credit Huawei gets from the state.

It is a private (family owned) company so they don't have obligation to reveal board members.

I have a few classmates working in Huawei, one in fairly senior position. She complained to me several times that Huawei, as a private owned company, is in a very poor position against its competitor state owned ZTE. Not only they don't get help from the government, the government doesn't trust their boss either. They have to work really hard to keep competitive. They don't need to borrow money that's why they are reluctant to go public.

Do you have links that shows they get a state subsides and credit?

 

[xdrive]

Have you really thought about this? Banning a company because its CEO is ex-military person? Serious? So you bluntly bought the excuse, didn't you?

There are millions of companies who has ex-military persons as one of its leaders.

Exactly, there are millions of companies who has ex-military persons as one of its leaders so there must be something wrong this this particular guy if it was enough to ban their tender.

The exact details of the reasoning behind the banning aren't released, but they don't make such decisions lightly.

Saying they did it because they "hate" China etc etc is just crap. That's not how we operate here in Australia. Our institutions aren't corrupt.

There is literally thousands of Chinese companies doing business in Australia. So your argument is invalid.

 

[shuttler]

Exactly, there are millions of companies who has ex-military persons as one of its leaders so there must be something wrong this this particular guy if it was enough to ban their tender.

The exact details of the reasoning behind the banning aren't released, but they don't make such decisions lightly.

Saying they did it because they "hate" China etc etc is just crap. That's not how we operate here in Australia. Our institutions aren't corrupt.

There is literally thousands of Chinese companies doing business in Australia. So your argument is invalid.

But Huawei is a global player with a good track record which poses the biggest threat to all the other bidders so that is the main reason for the ban.

 

[xdrive]

But Huawei is a global player with a good track record which poses the biggest threat to all the other bidders so that is the main reason for the ban.

No it isn't. You can't make such claims when you have no knowledge of the details. You are just making false assumptions and claiming them as fact.

ASIO doesn't release intelligence details.

Huawei has done business before in Australia, the tender they were bidding for wasn't large or substantial. This shows that there truly is a national security issue behind it and not the other ridiculous conspiracy theories people are throwing out.

 

[HellRider]

As far as I know its just that the Aussie govt. wants to have a hold on this network and I wont be surprised if the contract is awarded to some local company or a group of them.

 

[Alfa-Fighter]

Well , China is going to Ban MS Windows because of spying this , then MS has to give source code to china govt. When China can stop MS which is also gobal company then why can't other country stop a chinese company which has PLA background.

If we do its good and if other do same is wrong.

 

[xdrive]

As far as I know its just that the Aussie govt. wants to have a hold on this network and I wont be surprised if the contract is awarded to some local company or a group of them.

No. ASIO made the decision. Also large amounts of overseas companies are involved in the tenders.

There is no alternative motive.

 

[Hafizzz]

Australia has blocked Huawei Technologies of China from bidding on contracts in the $38 billion Australian National Broadband Network, citing security concerns, Huawei said Monday.

“We were informed by the government that there is no role for Huawei” in the network, said Jeremy Mitchell, a spokesman in Australia for Huawei, one of the world’s largest suppliers of telecommunications equipment.

The Australian plan is the largest infrastructure project in the country’s history. It is intended to connect 93 percent of homes and workplaces with fiber-optic cable, providing broadband service in urban and rural areas.

It was announced in 2009 by the Australian government with a committed investment of as much as $38 billion. The network is expected to be ready by 2020.

The Australian Financial Review newspaper said in a report Monday that Huawei had sought to secure a supply contract worth as much as 1 billion Australian dollars, or $1.05 billion, as part of the project, but had been blocked by the Australian attorney general on the basis of advice from the Australian Security Intelligence Organization.

The office of the attorney general said in a news release, “This is consistent with the government’s practice for ensuring the security and resilience of Australia’s critical infrastructure more broadly.”

The network is “a strategic and significant government investment,” the attorney general’s office told Bloomberg News. “We have a responsibility to do our utmost to protect its integrity and that of the information carried on it.”

The government declined to comment on its specific discussions with companies, which are confidential, the office said.

The security agency declined to comment on the report.

On the sidelines of a nuclear security summit meeting in South Korea, Prime Minister Julia Gillard of Australia said the government had made the correct decision.

“You would expect as a government that we make all of the prudent decisions to make sure that the infrastructure project does what we want it to do, and we’ve taken one of those decisions,” she said.

Huawei was founded by its chief executive, Ren Zhengfei, a former officer of the People’s Liberation Army in China. That has led to claims that it has too cozy a relationship with the Chinese government.

The company. based in Shenzhen, China, has been struggling to expand its business in the United States, which has blocked its equipment deals, citing national security concerns and allegations that Huawei had violated sanctions by supplying Iran with banned equipment.

“While we’re obviously disappointed by the decision,” the company said, referring to the Australian rejection, “Huawei will continue to be open and transparent and work to find ways of providing assurance around the security of our technology.”

Mr. Mitchell told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.: “We have never been told by the Chinese government to do a certain thing. If we would, that would be to our detriment, and we would lose the market share that we have.”

A former Australian foreign minister, Alexander Downer, who is an independent director on the board of Huawei’s Australian unit, rejected the government’s security concerns.

“This sort of whole concept of Huawei being involved in cyberwarfare, presumably that would just be based on the fact that the company comes from China,” he said on ABC Radio on Monday. “This is just completely absurd.”

Mr. Mitchell told Bloomberg that “the bar is set higher” for the company because of where it is from.

He said Huawei was working on eight broadband networks similar to the Australian plan in Benin, Britain, Brunei, Cameroon, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/27/t...ei-from-broadband-project.html?_r=1&ref=china

Communists...

China should buy less from Australia.

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

China should buy less from Australia.

no, we should buy less manufactured goods, if any, from Australia.

we should continue buying farm products and minerals.

 

[xdrive]

no, we should buy less manufactured goods, if any, from Australia.

we should continue buying farm products and minerals.

Last time i checked, China buys little if not any manufactured goods from Australia.

You would think that people responding here would actually know a little about Australia before commenting lol.

 

[xdrive]

Revealed: Australia plans tough national security restrictions on telecom operators

The Australian Government has begun secret talks with carriers on proposals to enhance the security of Australia’s telecom infrastructure which would, in part, mandate a penalty-backed requirement on operators to secure their networks against external threats and require notification of infrastructure upgrades, modifications and procurement decisions.

CommsDay also understands that the government is highly concerned by the offshore dissemination of Australian citizens’ private data and calling information for use by customer service centres in locations such as India, Sri Lanka and the Philippines. This could lead to a requirement for all data to be housed onshore.

The recent discussions likely explain the timing of the revelation last Saturday that Huawei Technologies would effectively be barred from supplying the National Broadband Network.

In recent weeks, representatives of major Australian operators were called to a confidential roundtable meeting with government officials from the Departments of Attorney-General and Broadband, Communications and Digital Economy to discuss the proposed measures. These include a notification process of infrastructure purchase decisions and upgrade or modifications to networks which may have national security implications. Infrastructure builds would potentially be subject to scrutiny or what is termed “risk assessment” under the arrangements with a key focus on details regarding suppliers. Existing infrastructure may also be subject to the reporting process.

An aim of the notification process would be to identify specific points of vulnerability on networks. Breaches of the arrangements could result in financial penalties for carriers.

Attendees at the roundtable were specifically told to keep discussions confidential and not discuss them in the public domain.

CommsDay understands that Australia is moving towards the American “Team Telecom” approach of evaluating the national security implications of carrier infrastructure investments. Team Telecom is the nickname given to an inter-departmental committee comprised of representatives from Defense, Homeland Security and Justice. Proposed foreign investments in areas such as satellite and undersea cable deployments are subject to a rigorous testing process looking at ownership and foreign affiliations, details on location of facilities and type of equipment deployed and major customer contracts. Lawyers advising telcos embarking on this process are understood to informally recommend that applicants avoid use of Chinese sourced-network equipment, CommsDay has learned.

Australian departments and agencies believed to be involved in the local telecom network security discussions include the Australian Federal Police, ASIO, the Defence Signals Directorate and DBCDE. Carriers would be required to meet with government representatives to discuss the security arrangements on sensitive network upgrades both prior to, during and after the deployment process. As a last most drastic recourse, government could actually direct a carrier to withdraw a service from the market deemed as being prejudicial to national security and impose punitive financial penalties under the proposals.

In 2008 the Australian government legislated to compile a database of network infrastructure information but this was ostensibly designed to help bidders for the NBN Mark 1 process and was criticised at the time from some quarters such as Telstra and Pipe Networks for actually putting national security at risk. The latest round of activity, including the Huawei ban, demonstrates a new seriousness at government level about national information infrastructure protections. One source told CommsDay that it was significant, in this light, that responsibility for cybersecurity was shifted from the Attorney-General’s department to the Prime Minister & Cabinet department in late 2011.

A specific area of concern, according to CommsDay sources, is the extensive use of offshoring in support of the customer service functions of Australian telcos. This sees detailed private data on Australian citizens and their calling patterns made available to outsourced operations across Asia and Africa creating a potential information security vulnerability. Nearly all Australian operators now make use of outsourcing in support of customer service functions. The government suggests that it may require carriers to keep all their customer data onshore or at the very least, require carriers to report full details of all their outsourcing and offshoring activities.

 

[kawaraj]

no, we should buy less manufactured goods, if any, from Australia.

we should continue buying farm products and minerals.

why China still buy their GEMO farm products? not to mention Australia is heavily subside it's farming industry.