News on China's scientific and technological development.

Monaco debuts Europe’s first nationwide 5G network, using Huawei gear

While

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have launched early 5G networks in parts of multiple cities, none has achieved full nationwide coverage — until now. The small but wealthy principality of Monaco today has a comprehensive 5G network courtesy of local carrier

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, which notably relied on Huawei’s controversial 5G hardware to achieve the feat.

Initially, Monaco Telecom is offering customers

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handsets, with 5G service included at no additional cost through the end of July 2020. The carrier also says that it’s making public Wi-Fi available in travelers’ transportation facilities using 5G infrastructure, with plans to use 5G to augment autonomous vehicle, firefighting, and remote control technology development efforts already underway in the country.

“5G is not a simple improvement in the performance of 4G, it’s a paradigm shift,” Monaco’s digital transition chief Frédéric Genta explained in a press release (

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). “Energy, health, the media, health, transport will be transformed thanks to 5G. This offers the Principality, its inhabitants, its public policies and its economy immense possibilities for the good of all.”

As the second-smallest country in the world, Monaco has just under 500 acres of land and fewer than 40,000 people to cover with 5G, making nationwide coverage relatively easy compared with earlier “first to 5G” countries such as the

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. But as

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reports, Monaco ignored U.S. government protestations regarding the risks of using Huawei gear, even deploying the Chinese company’s hardware within its network core.

Consequently, Monaco is now serving as a “shop window” for Europe, allowing other European governments to see how 5G will integrate with the “intelligent state,” said Huawei vice president Guo Ping. For its part, Monaco Telecom claims that it has taken all measures necessary to guarantee the security of its 5G network.

It’s unclear whether carriers are truly able to eliminate security risks from Huawei’s 5G hardware, which the U.S. has claimed is susceptible to surveillance and remote control demands from China’s government. Huawei has denied the claims, but countries including the

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have blamed the company for earlier incidents of network insecurity and hacking, suggesting that Huawei hardware might not be safe to trust at a network’s core. Even so, multiple European carriers have recently opted to deploy Huawei 5G hardware, with

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at their networks’ edges.

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China’s EV charging stations powering up
Charging totalled more than 1 million units, with year-on-year growth of 69.3%

Charging infrastructure in China for electric vehicles reported fast growth in June, statistics from the China Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Promotion Alliance has shown, China Daily reported.

By the end of June, charging piles for EV in China totalled more than 1 million units, with a year-on-year growth of 69.3%, the organization announced on Wednesday.

Public charging piles in China totalled 412,000 by the end of June, while the number of private charging piles stood at 591,000.

Among the public charging piles, 236,000 are alternate-current (AC) charging piles, 175,000 are direct-current fast charging piles, and about 500 use both of the charging technologies, the report said.

A total of 10,926 public charging piles were built in June, and 11,656 public charging piles were built on average each month from June 2018 to last month, which resulted in an overall growth of 51.5 % year on year.

The top 10 provinces or municipalities with the highest numbers of public charging facilities – Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, and Jiangsu, Guangdong, Shandong, Zhejiang, Hebei, Anhui and Hubei provinces – have 75.3% of all public charging piles.

A McKinsey report last year predicted that public charging will dominate and increase in importance over time in China, going from 55% to 60% in 2020 to approximately 80% by 2030.

The structural limitations of highly dense urban cities, which have larger proportions of on-street and large-commercial-garage parking, are the catalysts for increased public-charging demand, the report said.

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Huawei's HongMeng OS set for release in August: insiders

The HongMeng operating system (OS), developed by Huawei as a potential alternative to Google's Android OS, might be released at Huawei's Developer Conference on August 9, industry insiders close to the matter told the Global Times Wednesday.

According to media reports, the user experience (UX) design features a brand new ringtone and notification panel, a cleaner interface for the camera, more animation and faster speed. Users can also add widgets and personalize the locked screen.

Experts said that it is possible for Huawei to build a sustainable smartphone ecosystem on the HongMeng OS and reshape the current market dominated by Android and Apple's iOS, although the new system is primarily designed for industrial automation and applications in the Internet of Things (IoT).

"Given the design features of the HongMeng OS, it can be a game changer in IoT-related areas, such as driverless cars and smart homes," Fu Liang, a Beijing-based independent industry analyst, told the Global Times.

According to Huawei's website, the HongMeng OS is built with a processing latency of less than 5 milliseconds, which is especially required in circumstances involving IoT applications that often need to transfer large amount of data simultaneously.

"It's not designed for phones as everyone thinks," Ren Zhengfei, founder of Huawei, said in a recent interview with the French magazine Le Point.

However, the company could still resort to the HongMeng OS as it may be wary of the threats coming from the US, and it still can be very competitive, according to experts.

"One key advantage of the HongMeng OS is that the Android apps don't need to be recoded to run in the system," Fu said. "As it is reportedly 60 percent faster than Android and iOS, more smartphone makers such as Xiaomi and Oppo will be likely to install the OS in their phones."

As a new OS that's almost 10 years younger than Android, HongMeng is currently lacking a robust ecosystem that Huawei will need to cultivate and sustain, Fu noted.

According to statistics by statcounters.com, as of June 2019, Android had more than 76 percent of the mobile OS market and iOS had more than 22 percent, leaving less than 2 percent to other systems.

But Huawei is encouraging app developers to join its app store, called AppGallery, to build its ecosystem.

According to a report by technology news website landiannews.com, Huawei has sent an email to app developers inviting them to publish their apps on AppGallery.

"All Huawei smartphones are installed with our official app store AppGallery with more than 270 million monthly active users… To guarantee full support for your app, it is an invitation for you to join our developers' community and portal," said the email.

"It is hard to estimate if the new OS is put into use, exactly how many customers will switch to HongMeng in the short term," said Xiang Ligang, director-general of the Beijing-based Information Consumption Alliance.

"But given time, I see no reason Huawei cannot take up a significant share of the market if it decides to. The millions of users of Huawei are too big to miss out for developers. As more apps operate in the system, more developers will join to build a robust ecosystem."

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In Global Tech Battle, a Balky U.S. Ally Chooses China
The Philippines has chosen Chinese companies to expand its telecoms network, shunning warnings about security risks

By
Niharika Mandhana
July 15, 2019 11:51 am ET

MANILA—The U.S.-China technology war is raging around the world, but the Philippines is no longer torn. It is binding its telecommunications future to China’s.

The country got its first taste of next-generation 5G services in late June with gear supplied by Huawei Technologies Co. This month, a new carrier backed by state-owned China Telecommunications Corp. will begin rolling out a network largely designed in China, to be executed by Chinese engineers in the Philippines.

The moves are a blow to the U.S., which has in recent months

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. U.S. officials contend Chinese companies could be compelled to conduct espionage for Beijing.

As countries like the Philippines reject pressure from Washington, Chinese companies are embedding themselves deep in strategically important infrastructure. These developments tie countries to Beijing through a

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, from economic growth to military planning.

Huawei, which has repeatedly said it wouldn’t spy for China, estimates its 5G equipment will spread across more than 130 countries, including in Europe. Huawei’s 5G system is up and running in South Korea and will be deploying in the United Arab Emirates this year. Both countries are U.S. allies.

Chinese companies’ dominant presence in Philippine telecom networks stands to move the Southeast Asian country further away from the U.S., its treaty ally—testing a relationship that has already grown strained.

In Blow to U.S. the Philippines Chooses Chinese Technology

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on a trip to Manila in March that, “America may not be able to operate in certain environments if there’s Huawei technology adjacent to that.” Other officials have since warned that the U.S. could curtail information it shares with the Philippines over concerns data could be stolen by Chinese companies.

The deal with China Telecom is part of a foreign policy shift under President Rodrigo Duterte, who has expressed distrust of the U.S. He has pursued Chinese investments and played down his country’s disputes with Beijing in the South China Sea, dismissing warnings he is giving China greater control over the contested waterway.

Mr. Duterte has come under international scrutiny for his

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in which tens of thousands of people have allegedly been killed. Human-rights groups have raised alarms over

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, which Mr. Duterte denies.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, left, and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing in April. Photo: Kenzaburo Fukuhara/Kyodo News/Getty Images
After taking office in 2016, one of Mr. Duterte’s early priorities was to improve his country’s telecom services. Citizens have long complained that phone and internet services are slow and unreliable.

With his push, the Philippines introduced a new telecom company in which China Telecom holds a 40% stake—the maximum permitted under Philippine law. Mr. Duterte has said he is counting on it to speed up internet connectivity in a market long controlled by two carriers.

Philippine officials say the venture, Dito Telecommunity Corp., will benefit from China Telecom’s experience serving hundreds of millions of subscribers in China, as well as its deep pockets. China Telecom will take the lead on technical operations, said Adel Tamano, a spokesman for Dito Telecommunity. Its local partner, the Udenna Group, has no telecom experience, with business interests in other areas such as shipping, logistics and real estate.

“A lot of the work has been done outside the country, in China,” said Mr. Tamano. Chinese engineers will oversee technical matters for at least three years, until their Filipino counterparts are trained, he said.

China Telecom is eager to acquire a majority stake, said Eliseo Rio Jr., an undersecretary in the Philippine government’s information and communications technology department. To make that happen, the government is seeking to lift foreign-ownership limits. An amendment is pending approval in the Philippines Congress.

China Telecom said it supports the government’s initiative and that its future investment strategy in the venture will depend on how it progresses.

Tom Uren, a cyber-specialist at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a think tank, said a Chinese telecommunications firm could enable hackers by helping them gain entry into a network, or simply by sharing how it is configured. Chinese engineers could duplicate data, read unencrypted correspondence or even bring down phone services to sabotage Beijing’s opponents.

If a conflict broke out, “it’s almost impossible to imagine China wouldn’t take advantage of its position” as a telecom partner, he said.

A Filipino telecom executive who works closely with cybersecurity teams said: “When those who could potentially threaten your network are inside running it, you’re as vulnerable as you can be.”

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, right, and Philippines Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. in Manila in March. Photo: andrew harnik/press pool
China Telecom said in response that the new Filipino telecom operator is “deeply committed to the security of its network.” The consortium will “ensure it handles user data in strict compliance with the data-protection regulations,” it said.

China’s foreign ministry said those raising questions about the China Telecom venture were “trying to politicize normal business cooperation.”

In a 2018 paper, researchers at the U.S. Naval War College and Tel Aviv University said China Telecom had “hijacked” internet traffic flowing in and out of the U.S. on several occasions in 2016 and 2017 and redirected it through China. Such a diversion could allow Beijing to copy information-rich traffic and exploit it, co-author Yuval Shavitt said.

Of the Philippine venture, he said: “You’re letting them into your home, so the bottom line is, you trust them.”

China Telecom said the hijacking allegations are unfounded and resulted from “erroneous routing configuration” by another operator.

Mr. Tamano said Dito Telecommunity plans to spend $5 billion in five years on its network: “If this is a spying venture, it is a very expensive spying venture for something they can do a lot more cheaply.”

The group has hired a former Philippine military general with expertise in signals and communications to beef up cybersecurity. Under pressure from lawmakers, the government is taking its own measures. It has signed up New York-based

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Inc. to install cyberintelligence tools into the network, said Mr. Rio, the communications technology official. Intrusions or diversions would alert the company as well as authorities.

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Filipino officials and business leaders said they believe Chinese companies have become a target for the U.S. because Beijing is threatening American supremacy. Everyone spies, Mr. Rio said, adding: “They can still be a threat even if they’re not here.”

Civil-rights activists worry that once the network is fully on, Beijing could give Filipino leaders lessons on how to restrict online access and monitor citizens. Pierre Tito Galla, the founder of a local technology-focused advocacy group Democracy.Net.Ph, said his team would be watching for any signs of a Chinese-style Great Firewall going up to censor cyberspace.

Surveillance systems built by Huawei are coming to the Philippines, including 10,000 high-definition cameras. The project, intended to help police fight crime with facial-recognition technology, will be funded by Chinese loans. Congressional critics had blocked it, citing privacy and security concerns, but Mr. Duterte vetoed their decision.

Huawei is also the front-runner to supply the new China-linked telecom network. Dito Telecommunity expects to leverage China Telecom’s longstanding ties with the equipment maker to clinch a good deal, its spokesman Mr. Tamano said.

Huawei already leads the Philippines market by a mile. It provides most of the gear used by the two major operators, Globe Telecom Inc. and Smart Communications Inc.

A Globe Telecom tower on a rooftop in Pateros. Photo: erik de castro/Reuters
Just 10 years ago, Globe relied on European providers

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AB and

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Corp. That changed in 2010, when the company decided to overhaul the network with equipment from Huawei, then a third-tier supplier.

Huawei representatives didn’t speak fluent English and Western industry leaders dismissed them as lightweights, Philippine executives recalled. But the Shenzhen-based company offered innovative products at prices most others couldn’t match and was “eager, willing,” said Globe’s chief executive, Ernest Cu. In 14 months Globe’s network was all Huawei.

Around the same time, diplomatic relations between the Philippines and China were plummeting. In 2012, China seized the fisheries-rich Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea from Manila. It also accelerated the building of artificial islands near the Southeast Asian country.

Worried Philippine officials called for an audit to check for Beijing-directed backdoors or hidden code. In response, Globe hired firms from Israel and the U.K. to run tests.

The network got a “clean bill of health,” Mr. Cu said. Still, Globe began investing in its own cybersecurity system.

To settle the maritime disputes, the Philippines filed an arbitration case against China with an international tribunal and in 2016, it won. Soon after, its government and banking systems were hit with massive denial-of-service cyberattacks originating in China that knocked critical websites offline, Philippine officials said. China rejected the ruling and denied any involvement in the attacks.

Mr. Duterte’s 2016 election reversed Manila’s China policy. The president sought closer economic ties with Beijing and signed on to China’s Belt and Road infrastructure initiative. He slowed progress on a military pact with the U.S.

In a November 2017 meeting with Chinese premier Li Keqiang, Mr. Duterte offered China “the privilege to operate the third telecom carrier in the country,” his office said. Beijing chose China Telecom for the job, Philippine officials said.

China Telecom needed a local partner, and joined hands with a Philippine company with no experience in telecom but that has well-known ties to Mr. Duterte. The company’s owner Dennis Uy, a third-generation Chinese-Filipino businessman, had contributed to Mr. Duterte’s election campaign. Mr. Uy has publicly said he is close to the president.

At first, executives at Mr. Uy’s original enterprise, the Udenna Group, were reluctant to enter a business out of the company’s comfort zone. “But we wanted to support the president. This was important to him,” said spokesman Mr. Tamano, who was also at Udenna.

Although Mr. Duterte had publicly declared his favorite, the government department overseeing telecom was setting up a competitive process to pick a new carrier.

Mr. Rio, the official in charge of selection, confronted the president’s advisers. “That’s what the president wants,” Mr. Rio was told, according to people with knowledge of the conversation.


Mr. Rio says he stuck to the rules and created a fair bidding process. Three sets of companies submitted bids; two were disqualified for not meeting the requirements. In the end, the China Telecom-backed group was the lone qualifying candidate.

Dito Telecommunity’s spokesman, Mr. Tamano, said the deal didn’t result from Mr. Uy’s relationship with the president. Mr. Rio said Dito Telecommunity was the best equipped to take on industry incumbents.

Ernest Cu, chief executive officer of Globe Telecom, in 2017. Photo: Veejay Villafranca/Bloomberg News
Globe unveiled a Huawei 5G modem at a party last month. The next day, Mr. Cu reached out to his other supplier, Nokia, and coaxed executives there to catch up with their Chinese rival.

Mr. Cu said Huawei was 12 to 18 months ahead of Nokia, whose products were reintroduced into his company’s network a few years ago. A spokeswoman for Nokia told The Wall Street Journal the company was working with customers to support 5G rollouts.

If the “doomsday scenario” of a digital cold war played out in the future, Mr. Cu said, “the U.S. will be the one isolated.”

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UK says no way to US calls for no Huawei on 5G networks: MPs find 'no technical grounds' to exclude Chinese giant

By

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15 Jul 2019 at 14:55

The UK's Science and Technology Select Committee said it can't find any "technical grounds" for chopping Huawei out of the UK's 5G and other telco networks, but said government should consider "ethical" issues and its relationship with "allies".

The committee of Commons MPs wrote in a

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to Minister of Fun* Jeremy Wright that Huawei's involvement in the 5G network posed no techie issues, excepting, of course, the not-so-minor point that if the country pulls the Chinese firm's kit from either its current or future networks, it could cause "significant delays".

BT's EE 3G and 4G networks, for example, still use Huawei equipment in the Enhanced Packet Core, although

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the plan is to rip and replace kit in the network's core by the end of 2020. Both Vodafone and EE use Huawei's kit in the radio access network in their 5G deployments and Three said it will on its upcoming deployment.

The Science and Technology Select Committee's letter noted that UK network operators' "decision to exclude Huawei from the core of their future 5G networks is, however, voluntary. The government should mandate the exclusion of Huawei from the core of UK telecommunications networks," but explain why they'd done so.

It also suggested other vendors follow the model of the

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and let government bods have a sniff at their software.

Rt Hon Norman Lamb MP, Chair of the Science and Technology Committee, said:

Following my Committee's recent evidence session, we have concluded that there are no technical grounds for excluding Huawei entirely from the UK's 5G or other telecommunications networks.

The benefits of 5G are clear and the removal of Huawei from the current or future networks could cause significant delays.

However, as outlined in the letter to the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, we feel there may well be geopolitical or ethical considerations that the Government need to take into account when deciding whether they should use Huawei's equipment.

The Government also needs to consider whether the use of Huawei's technology would jeopardise this country's ongoing co-operation with our major allies.

Moreover, Huawei has been accused of supplying equipment in Western China that could be enabling serious human rights abuses. The evidence we heard during our evidence session did little to assure us that this is not the case.

New inquiry
Meanwhile, the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy (JCNSS) this morning launched an inquiry into the government's "approach to sustaining access to 'safe' telecoms technology as a national security issue".

This comes as telcos continue to cry out for the delivery of the Telecoms Supply Chain Review, giving them some clarity on their own supply chains. The review had been due to land in the "spring", but is now scheduled for the end of August.

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: "If the Telecoms Supply Chain Review says Huawei is OK, then great, but if it said we don't believe you should be using Huawei, we'd have to stop what we are doing and change our plans. As each month goes by, we are deploying more and more 5G. So ideally, it would be better to have it out sooner rather than later."

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it would like to see a conclusion to the review sharpish.

The JCNSS also pointed to the "limited number of alternative suppliers" in the UK's telecoms infrastructure.

The body's chair, Margaret Beckett MP, said: "The government has found itself in a situation where it has just three viable options for suppliers of key equipment for the UK's 5G infrastructure.

"One of the questions for this inquiry is how Government can build a secure future for all of us which does not rely too closely on individual providers... We can't put all our eggs in one or two baskets – a resilient and secure network means spreading the risk across strong and solid foundations."

The committee will accept written submissions until the deadline 13 September 2019 and the whole thing will trundle on very, very slowly after that. The Committee will then move to hearing oral evidence and because they'll meet just once a month, the inquiry is likely to take some time.

Jobs, the entity list and the American Huawei
A senior US official has

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the country may approve licences for companies to start new sales to Huawei – as soon as two and no later than four weeks from now.

A Huawei spokesman told the newswire: "The Entity list restrictions should be removed altogether, rather than have temporary licenses applied for US vendors. Huawei has been found guilty of no relevant wrongdoing and represents no cybersecurity risk to any country, so the restrictions are unmerited."

Two "anonymous" chip makers who sell into Huawei said they'd apply for more licences after hearing commerce secretary Wilbur Ross say last week that licences would be issued where there was "no threat to national security".

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it would seek export licences allowing it to ship kit to Huawei, should the Trump administration make them available. ®

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ILikeChina said:

Could you tell me if Huawei Hongmeng will be for smartphones or not? I've read recent report it says not(citing some Huawei director) is it true?

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