Michael Geist:
This is Law Bytes, a podcast with Michael Geist.
CBC News:
Front and centre in Beijing today, a report from Reuters that the U.S. president is preparing to sign an executive order making it impossible for American companies to use Huawei’s equipment. A purely political move made without a shred of evidence, China says. The order would be confirmation of the U.S. stance that Huawei’s equipment could easily be used by the Chinese government to spy on Americans. The U.S. Australia and New Zealand have all banned Huawei from their networks. Canada hasn’t gone that route nor has Britain. But that may soon change.
Michael Geist:
What to do about Huawei? The Chinese telecom giant has emerged as one of Canada’s most challenging policy issues, raising concerns involving competition, communications, security, and trade. Not to mention kidnappings and arrests of corporate personnel. The government has repeatedly promised to articulate a policy on the use of Huawei equipment in Canada’s next generation wireless networks only to regularly delay doing so. Despite the attention and discussion around the company, the issues are often poorly understood by the public and even by some politicians.
Michael Geist:
Here to help sort through the exceptionally complex issues is Dr. Christopher Parsons, a senior research associate at the Citizen Lab, the world famous cybersecurity lab located at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. Christopher specializes in third party access to telecommunications data as a research specialty, making him ideally suited to sort through fact from fiction when it comes to one of the world’s most challenging global tech policy issues.
Michael Geist:
Chris welcome to the podcast.
Christopher Parsons:
Thanks so much for having me.
Michael Geist:
I’m really glad you’ve come on because the issue that we’re going to talk to vote today – Huawei – is one where that’s generated I think an enormous amount of political and business attention both in Canada and certainly around the world. And yet despite the attention it certainly feels a bit like it’s a fairly poorly understood issue, certainly by the public and perhaps by some of the politicians as well. So I was hoping you could. Certainly at the beginning help unpack things a little bit and so why don’t we start with the basics. What is Huawei?
CBC News:
Huawei is the world’s largest supplier of everything related to telecom it sells more smartphones than Apple but is also a leader in cloud storage and cyber security. Sales for 2018 are projected to reach one hundred and two billion dollars. Ren Zhengfei founded the company in 1987. He was a former engineer for China’s People’s Liberation Army and a member of the Communist Party.
Christopher Parsons:
Huawei is a massive massive Chinese company. So they produce a large range of telecommunications products everything from core networking equipment, edge networking equipment, handsets. I think they’re doing. They’re starting to move in to video stuff as well. Really they just if it’s telecommunications related they either have a hand in it one of their product offerings or offerings that are then built in other companies products or at least prior to some of the issues with the Americans, they had intent of moving into that space right.
Michael Geist:
It feels like they’ve come a little bit out of nowhere. I mean to the extent to which consumers have heard of the company it’s probably from the smartphones because they are I think the second largest smartphone maker in the world. But it seemed like overnight you had this massive technology company suddenly now dominating business pages and is as you say in every part of the communications market.
Christopher Parsons:
Yeah I think that for a lot of people they’re sort of shocking especially people who have been in telecommunications space. Those who have been looking at routing or you know anyone who’s been looking to purchase carrier grade telecommunications equipment. I mean they’ve known Huawei for quite some time. Huawei began quite sometime ago in the way that they got it was selling carrier grade equipment and they have a whole bunch of features over some of their competitors. One of them is Huawei has enormously benefited from the relatively protected Chinese market which has meant that they’ve had a huge market that they can sell into with limited competition. And they’ve also had the advantage of a bunch of very advantageous state loans that have been provided to them at different points in their development which is facilitate facilitate both R and D, and production and then the sale of goods often at a rate that is just a better market price than something from Ericsson, Nokia, or Nortel, when Nortel was still around.
