Being two of the leading telecommunications equipment manufacturers now does not give enough reason to win a contract for U.S. based carriers. This is the latest news that has come up in the wake of security concerns for the U.S. The mobile operator in question who had announced for Request For Proposals to improve their infrastructure was Sprint Nextel. Even though being the lowest bids among the others that Sprint had received, ZTE and Huawei are supposedly been denied approvals of a possible win in the competition at the last minute. The reason being that ZTE and Huawei are Chinese based companies that are closely tied to its government and military forces.
The new provision given to the U.S. military agencies by the U.S. lawmakers states that the military agencies can at will exclude subcontractors if they sense any threat to their nation’s security. The main concerns that the U.S. Department of Defense and Federal Communications Commission has now with these companies is that a possibility of the Chinese military forces utilizing the equipment of these companies to interfere in their peaceful operations with the U.S. based Sprint and disrupt, tamper, intercept or even purposely misroute the U.S Telecom systems as put up in a letter written by U.S. lawmakers to the FCC. Not only this, but there are concerns over china’s trade and currency policies with the U.S. that had not been elaborated enough.
Now the big question is – Even after Huawei’s denial of current ties with the Chinese military system and also ZTE’s self defense statements, will Sprint let them in with the contract or will Samsung and Alcatel-Lucent be the ones to take this billion dollar deal? Is the discussion of this issue in the G20 summit going to make any difference with Obama’s presence in Seoul along with other business leaders?
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