The Wall Street Journal reported that Sprint has decided to exclude Huawei Technologies and ZTE from potentially lucrative supply contracts on national security grounds. The article claims that senior Obama administration officials, including Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Pentagon officials, recently discussed their national security concerns with Sprint CEO Dan Hesse. None of the companies were quoted directly for the article.
http://www.wsj.com
- In August, a group of eight U.S. senators openly published a letter to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Director of National Intelligence General James Clapper in they raised their concern about Huawei Technologies as a potential supplier to Sprint Nextel. Specifically, the senators claimed that Huawei maintains close ties with China’s military and poses a national security risk to the United States. The senators also cite Huawei’s sales activity in Iran, intellectual property concerns, and financial support from the Chinese government.
- In response, Huawei then circulated a letter to the media in which it static that it is an employee-owned private company with no ownership stake by the Chinese government or the military. Huawei further asserted that it has a good intellectual property record and that it abides by the law in all of the territories in which it operates.