4G contracts: China Mobile throws EU firms a bigger bone

Huawei and ZTE have once again won the biggest share of a major Chinese telecom tender, despite being undercut by Nokia Siemens.

In what is certain to be the largest telecom tender this year, China Mobile handed out 20 billion yuan ($3.27b) in contracts to build its TD-LTE network in 100 cities.

Nokia Siemens surprised the industry when it was revealed during the tender that it had bid the lowest price - the first time a foreign vendor had done so. Despite that, it won no more business than other foreign players, and much less than the two large local firms.

With what appears to be immaculate stage management, Huawei and ZTE emerged with 26% each of the total tender, while the three foreign vendors, Ericsson, Nokia Siemens and Alcatel Shanghai Bell, were allocated 11% apiece. Small Chinese players Datang, Potevio, New Postcom and Fiberhome picked up the remainder.

Chinese telecom news site C114 noted that the 67% share won by local firms was down slightly from their 70% share of China Mobile's trial network last year.

The market share number is more than academic. EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht has warned he would push ahead with his subsidies case against Huawei and ZTE if European firms did not win a fair share of Chinese domestic contracts.

Chinese firms have a 25% share of the EU market, according to CICC telecom analyst Chen Haofei. The 33% of these contracts that have gone to European firms are probably enough to stave off De Gucht's attentions.

As well as the size - 207,000 base stations - this contract is strategically important as the first large-scale tender for the China Mobile's 4G network. The major winners are best-placed to pick up follow-up contracts as the network expands over the next decade or so.

Spooks, spies and backup tape

Gen. Michael Hayden’s lengthy encounter with the Australian Financial Review last week was unusual in itself.

Despite the appetite for spook-related stories these days, the most widely-reported part of the interview is the claim by the ex-CIA and NSA chief about Huawei's role in Chinese espionage.

What's telling is not the assertion, or the inevitable lack of accompanying hard fact; it's that the assertion itself is adequate.

Hayden tells the interviewer that Huawei “would have” shared its knowledge of foreign telecom systems with Chinese authorities.  Asked if evidence exists that Huawei has engaged in espionage on behalf of China, he replies (emphasis added):

Yes, I have no reason to question the belief that’s the case. That’s my professional judgement. But as the former director of the NSA, I cannot comment on specific instances of espionage or any operational matters.

Thus Huawei’s role as a security threat is reduced to a mere “belief”. Even within 'operational' constraints, if you have a case against someone, you will find a way to express it. And you would certainly put it with more conviction than the phrase above.

But Hayden does us an unintentional favour here by making it clear that Huawei is proscribed not because of what it's done but what it has the potential to do.

Hayden reveals that after retiring from the CIA he even received a pitch from Huawei in its search for Beltway advocates. According to Hayden, Huawei said all the right things: 

But God did not make enough briefing slides on Huawei to convince me that having them involved in our critical communications infrastructure was going to be okay. This is not blind prejudice on my part. This was my considered view based on a four-decade career as an intelligence officer.

He adds:

But frankly, given the overarching national security risks a foreign company helping build your national telecommunications networks creates, the burden of proof is not on us. It is on Huawei.

Leaving aside the ontological challenge of demonstrating that one is not a spy, this is the logic of the national security mindset. It takes a brave politician to challenge it and through the Cold War, the 'war on terror' and now the contest with China, it’s been the prevalent one in Washington.

The rest of world, including the telecom industry, has to live with it.  Telstra and PCCW are surely not the only operators to have signed pledges allowing the FBI access to their cables or to store data for its convenience.

But as this blog has suggested before, this logic makes suspects of all vendors.

In this part of the world, that puts the spotlight on Cisco. According to Ni Guangnan, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Engineers, Cisco provides 70%-80% of the backbone routers, international gateway nodes and super-nodes in the two biggest backbone networks, China Telecom and China Unicom.

In a widely-reported incident last October, Unicom swapped out Cisco routers for Huawei kit in what is said to be the world’s largest cluster node. Because of Cisco’s large installed base and the thousands of Cisco-qualified engineers, we won't see a rush to dump Cisco gear.

The Snowden saga has given China the ability to laugh off US complaints about its online data theft. Now the US national security case, as put by Hayden, is a script that China will faithfully adapt for its own purposes.

So stand by for the continued blocking of foreign telcos, more technology protectionism and the dextrous application of 'national security' to ensure China's networks are increasingly the preserve of the home team. 

Huawei boosts sales, trims disclosure

Huawei says it’s on track to reach full-year targets but has trimmed its financial disclosures.

In the first six months of 2013, revenue reached 113.8 billion yuan ($18.54bn), up 10.8% over last year, Huawei said in a statement today. 

CFO Cathy Meng says the privately-held firm would reach its goal of 10% revenue growth for the full year, with a 7%-8% net margin.

But whereas last year Huawei’s mid-year guidance included operating profit and margin, it has omitted those from the 2013 statement.

Meng said growth was “steady” in the core carrier business and “fast” in the device group.

For full-year 2012 the Shenzhen-based vendor posted net earnings of 15.38 billion yuan on sales of 221 billion yuan ($35.35bn) – a margin of just under 7%.

Huawei is not obliged to issue any financial statements, but as part of its effort to burnish its image it publishes full-year and interim results and an annual report.

US, Snowden, China: The world's biggest case of projection?

Amid the blizzard of information in the Snowden affair, the factoid that caught this blog’s attention was the hacking into the Hong Kong Internet Exchange (HKIX).

According to Snowden, the NSA listened into the HKIX, the city’s prime internet exchange, through the internet backbone.

We hack network backbones – like huge internet routers, basically – that give us access to the communications of hundreds of thousands of computers without having to hack every single one," he said.

He named one target as the Chinese University of Hong Kong, home to a handful of advanced internet research facilities such as the Hong Kong Internet Exchange, which "essentially connects all of the city's internet access providers to a single infrastructure," the [SCMP] reported.

We don’t know if Snowden is telling the truth, or even if he knows what he is talking about. And while we should probably take most denials on this topic with a large grain of salt, let’s just note that the CUHK said it had not “detected any form of hacking to the network, which has been running normally.”

Maybe, just maybe, “running normally” actually means with a hidden security backdoor already built-in by its router vendor, Cisco. I stress this is pure speculation; there is no evidence Cisco or anyone else provided a key.

But it is striking that that is exactly the kind of behaviour that the US fears that the Chinese will execute on American networks through Huawei.

I can’t help but wonder: when the Pentagon, Congress and the CIA label Huawei a security threat, are we looking at the world’s biggest case of projection?

Nokia appoints fourth China CEO in three years

Nokia China and Huawei have both swapped out the heads of their handset operations – but that’s where the similarity ends.

Gustavo Eichelmann, Nokia’s China chief since the beginning of 2012, has left the company for “personal reasons”, Nokia announced Monday. He will be replaced by Erik Bertman, the head of Nokia Russia, effective June 1.

Eichelmann’s departure follows the collapse of Nokia’s share of China’s smartphone market last year – from market leader, with a 29.9% share in 2011, down to seventh with just 3.7% share.

Bertman, a Swedish national, is the fourth head of Nokia’s China business since the beginning of 2010.

He has the job ahead of him. Nokia’s global devices sales were down 32% year-on-year in Q1. Handset shipments were off 25% and smartphone shipments fell by a scary 49%.

As he wings his way to Beijing Bertman may cross paths with Wan Biao, Huawei’s terminals group CEO, who has just been sent to Moscow. In a promotion for Wan, he will head up all of Huawei's operations in Russia, one of the Huawei’s target ofshore markets.

Wan will be replaced by Yu Chengdong, who will retain his current title of chairman of the terminals unit.

In contrast with Nokia’s declining fortunes, the Huawei’s devices team is on a roll. Of course, the popularity of Huawei's affordable smartphones is one reason why Nokia is struggling.

Huawei boosted devices revenue 8.4% to $7.9 million last year and shipped 32 million smartphones. It’s aiming for 60 million this year.