Huawei man!

[mothman]

This is precisely why a lot of Chinese folk that end up in the UK just go 'fuck it, call me Tony' isn't it?

Yeah, pretty much.

Is it Hua-BLERGH like the worst vomiting sensation you have ever had, or hua-blurgm, feeling like you can choke it down if you try really hard.

The... latter..? Just imagine you're trying not to throw up on a sleeping chihuahua.

[Zetetic]

The US is a pretty lousy ally and often actively hostile to Euro and UK interests.

Certainly true, but doesn't do much to address why we would imagine that China's exercise of power would be more pleasant.

Given ECHELON and whatever else, it would still seem marginally preferable - to both the British establishment and the rest of us - to still avoid undermining the security of infrastructure any further.

I suppose the question is whether excluding Huawei products really does that. The inability to achieve reproducible builds thing is ridiculous (noting that I can believe it's quite possible that it's incompetence rather than malice). Are Western manufacturers just as incapable? (I've no idea.)

[Sebastian Cobb]

Are Western manufacturers just as incapable? (I've no idea.)

Yes.

[buzby]

I'll chip in.

It wasn't GEC that supplied the last generation of telecoms kit to BT, it was GPT (a joint venture between GEC and Plessey, and later GEC and Siemens after GEC bought Plessey) and it's Italian offshoot Marconi SpA. GEC was run in a financially conservative manner by Lord Weinstock (much to the annoyance of the stock market) but when his son and heir Simon died he lost interest in the company and that is how George Simpson and John Mayo ended up in charge.

This was around 1998-99, and the telecoms industry was booming, riding on the back of the internet becoming widely accessible. Simpson and Mayo, aided and abetted by some management consultants, decided to refocus GEC on telecoms. They bought Siemens stake in GPT, sold off all the defence electronics businesses to BAe and Thales, and their remaining heavy power division to Alsthom and renamed the company Marconi (due to it's telecoms connotations). They decided they needed a presence in the US market, so bought a Texas-based company called Reltec who made broadband access equipment, and a Philadelphia-based company called Fore Systems that made ATM and IP core switching equipment.

Marconi paid massively over the odds for these companies as they were at the top of the market. In typical fashion, it turned out that any company the US allows to be sold to a foreign company (e.g. Ferranti's takeover of ISC) is usually a dud. Reltec turned out to be an inflated, worthless shell and a large chunk of Fore's employees left on the back of the windfall from their stock options being bought out, and not wanting to be managed by 'The Briddish'. The only serious contract Fore had was developing an ATM core switch for the US Navy, and after half of their employees had done a runner with their cash Marconi had to send engineers over from the UK to complete the work.

At the same time back in the UK GPT could see that IP-based telephony was the future, and began a program to convert the call processing software from the System X exchanges to run on new hardware that could use IP-based signalling and media. GPT had been developing it's own media gateways that would sit at the edges of the network where it interfaced with conventional TDM systems, but in the restructuring it was decided to use Marconi SpA's ATM-based Access Hub gateways instead. The Access Hub could do VOIP and Broadband in the same chassis, and the ex GPT engineers in UK then started developing E1 TDM gateway cards for it too.

The new version of System X was called the SoftSwitch 2000, and eventually it was installed in a some of Marconi's smaller customer networks. At that time it was the only true 'Class 5' (i.e. reliable and with enough processing capacity to run at the core of a network) VOIP switching system in service.

Around 2001 BT announced it's '21st Century Network' programme, an ambitious scheme to replace the whole if it's core voice network with a VOIP system from 2005. The programme was broken up into a number of different contracts (one for the core VOIP switching system, one for the VOIP and media gateways that would be at the edges of the network, and one for broadband line access equipment). A number of companies from all over the world bid for these contracts, but the main players ended up being Marconi, Ericsson, Cicso, Alcatel and Fujitsu. Each of the bidders was asked to install a model system of what they were offering in BT;s R&D centre (Adastral Park in Martlesham, near Ipswich).

Marconi, Ericsson and Cisco installed their VOIP core switches, and Marconi, Ericsson, Alcatel and Fujitsu installed their gateways and broadband equipment for a trial that would last 18 months. The Cisco switch was discounted pretty early on, as was the Ericsson gateway. By late 2003 the feedback we were getting from the BT test engineers was that the Marconi Softswtich 2000 was far in advance of anybody else's, but the gateways still needed work. Marconi was confident that the Softswitch would win the core switching contract, and may at least win a share of the gateway contract.

This would be much needed good news for Marconi, as having blown Weinstock's cash mountain in two American lemons, the telecoms bubble had now burst and the share price was plummeting fast (and as it was no longer a conglomerate, there was no steady income from the defence businesses to fall back on). BT had also undergone some changes too, it tried and failed to merge with the US telecoms provider MCI Worldcom (luckily they found out ir was worthless before the deal was agreed), but in doing so had placed itself on the US stock market and hired a load of young, thrusting American MBAs for it's top managers.

In 2004 the 21CN contracts were announced. The core switching went to Ericsson  (which surprised everyone, as their softswtich was a prototype that didn't really work) and the gateways went 50/50 to Alcatel and Fujitsu. We were later told by the BT R&D people that their report had recommended the Softswitch 2000 as the one to purchase, but the decision had been made purely on price and Ericsson had bid stupidly low just to get the work (and the new US upper management had no loyalty to a UK supplier).

Having no customers, Marconi basically went bankrupt, but were allowed to keep going by governmental pressure on the banks they owed money to as they still had  to support the existing UK telecoms infrastructure. During this time Huawei came sniffing round the company - they were trying to break into the UK network (and had won part of the BT  21CN contract to supply IP networking equipment alongside Cisco). They basically wanted Marconi to act as a UK sales and support network. however their offer to purchase the company was blocked by 'some agency' within the government on national security reasons.

One of the strikes against Huawei at that time was that their products were largely bootlegged or hacked versions of Cisco kit, and here had already been a number of lawsuits served against them by Cisco for IP and copyright infringement (this would explain the poor quality code and lack of repeatable builds) . However, trying to sue a Chinese company for IP theft in a Chinese court is a fools errand. They are also owned by an ex-General of the PLA. It was also inferred that 'they' did not want Huawei to get hold of Marconi's IP and knowledge about how the UK's existing telecom's network worked, for obvious reasons.

Eventually Marconi was bought by Ericsson, mainly for their optical transmission networks products and  the Marconi SpA Access Hub products. The useless American companies were spun back off and support for the existing System X networks was spun off to a new independent company called telent. Ericsson killed off the Softswitch 2000 product shortly afterwards, forcing it's customers to take on the Ericsson softwitch, which still didn't work. Shortly after the contract winners were announced, the American MBAs departed from BT's management as the MCI Worldcom merger was off   BT converted two System X exchanges in South Wales to the Ericsson softswitch for 21CN, but after  two years of it not working properly (even only hosting a couple of hundred BT employees' lines) the  programme was halted (and I believe in the process Ericsson had to pay BT a hefty penalty payment for it's poor performance). BT were also not happy with Alcatel's Access Hub equipment after it was rolled out, so their contract was not renewed and it was instead awarded to ECI of Israel.

Huawei continued to supply IP networking kit to BT, and having a foothold in the UK this then expanded into supplying 3G and 4G networking equipment to mobile telecom companies. Most of their contracts were won on the basis of pricing at or below cost, which is a pattern followed by a lot of Chinese companies (i.e. make no profit until you have a big enough market share with the customer, then steadily bring your prices up). telent briefly had an installation contract with them for mobile network equipment, but the contract was eventually terminated by telent as the price squeezing from Huawei's end meant telent were losing money on the deal.

TL:DR - the UK no longer has any indigenous telcoms industry due to management incompetence and short-sightedness on Marconi's part, lack of support from the government at the time and  BT awarding contracts purely on a lowest cost basis. Huawei are also dodgy as fuck (as are Cisco, HP, ECI and any other national-level telecoms kit provider). Ericsson and Alcatel are dodgy on competency reasons (though I wouldn't put it past the French government to ask Alcatel to stick backdoors for spook access into their kit too).

[Urinal Cake]

Thanks for the summary.

To quote Jez, 'The Internet's gonna be massive, I keep telling you.'

[Pearly-Dewdrops Drops]

I'll chip in.

It wasn't GEC that supplied the last generation of telecoms kit to BT, it was GPT (a joint venture between GEC and Plessey, and later GEC and Siemens after GEC bought Plessey) and it's Italian offshoot Marconi SpA. GEC was run by Lord Weinstock, but when his son died he lost interest and that is how George Simpson and john Mayo ended up in charge.

This was around 1998-99, and the telecoms industry was booming, riding on the back of the internet becoming widely accessible. Simpson and Mayo, aided and abetted by some management consultants, decided to refocus GEC on telecoms. they bought Siemens stake in GPT, sold off all the defence electronics businesses to BAe and Thales, and their remaining heavy power division to Alsthom and renamed the company Marconi (due to it's telecoms connotations). They decided they needed a presence in the US market, so bought a Texas-based company called Reltec who made broadband access equipment, and a Philadelphia-based company called Fore Systems that made ATM and IP core switching equipment.

Marconi paid massively over the odds for these companies as they were at the top of the market. In typical fashion, it turned out that any company the US allows to be sold to a foreign company (e.g. Ferranti's takeover of ISC), Reltec turned out to be a worthless shell and the bulk of Fore's employees left on the back of the windfall from their stock options being bought out. The only serious contract Fore had was developing an ATM core switch for the US Navy, and after half o thir employees had left Marconi had to send engineers over from the UK to complete the work.

At the same time back in the UK GPT could see that IP-based telephony was the future, and began a program to convert the call processing software from the System X exchanges to run on new hardware that could use IP-based signalling and media. GPT had been developing it's own media gateways that would sit at the edges of the network where it interfaced with conventional TDM systems, but in the restructuring it was decided to use Marconi SpA's ATM-based Access Hub gateways. instead. The Access Hub could do VOIP and Broadband in the same chassis, and GPT UK then started developing E1 TDM gateway cards for it too.

The new version of System X was called the SoftSwitch 2000, and eventually it was installed in a some of Marconi's smaller customer networks. At that time it was the only true 'Class 5 (i.e. reliable and with enough capacity to running the core of a network) VOIP switching system in service.

Around 2001 BT announced it's '21st Century Network' programme, an ambitious scheme to replace the whole if it's core voice network with a VOIP system from 2005. The programme was broken up into a number of different contracts (one for the core VOIP switching system, one for the VOIP and media gateways that would be at the edges of the network, and one for broadband line access equipment). A number of companies from all over the world bid for these contracts, but the main players ended up being Marconi, Ericsson, Cicso, Alcatel and Fujitsu. Each of the bidders was asked to install a model system of what they were offering in BT;s R&D centre (Adastral Park in Martlesham, near Ipswich).

Marconi, Ericsson and Cisco installed their VOIP core switches, and Marconi, Ericsson, Alcatel and Fujitsu installed their gateways and broadband equipment for a trial that would last 18 months. The Cisco switch was discounted pretty early on, as was the Ericsson gateway. By late 2003 the feedback we were getting from the BT test engineers was that the Marconi Softswtich 2000 was far in advance of anybody else's, but the gateways still needed work. Marconi was confident that the Softswitch would win the core switching contract, and may at least win a share of the gateway contract.

This would be much needed good news for Marconi, as having blown Weinstock's cash mountain in two Us lemons, the telecoms bubble had now burst and the share price was plummeting fast (and as it was no longer a conglomerate, there was no longer the steady income from the defence businesses to fall back on). BT had also undergone some changes too, it tried and failed to merge with the US telecoms provider MCI Worldcom (luckily they found out ir was worthless before the deal was agreed), but in doing so had placed itself on the US stock market and hired a load of young, thrusting American MBAs for it's top managers.

In 2004 the 21CN contracts were announced. The core switching went to Ericsson  (which surprised everyone, as their softswtich was a prototype that didn't really work) and the gateways went 50/50 to Alcatel and Fujitsu. We were later told by the BT R&D people that their report had recommended the Softswitch 2000 as the one to purchase, but the decision had been made purely on price and Ericsson had bid stupidly low just to get the work (and the new US upper management had no loyalty to a UK supplier).

Having no customers, Marconi basically went bankrup, but were allowed to keep going by the governmental pressure on the banks we owed money to as we still had  to support the existing UK telecoms infrastructure. During this time Huawei came sniffing round the company - they were trying to break into the UK network (and had won part of the BT  21CN contract to supply IP networking equipment alongside Cisco). They basically wanted Marconi to act as a UK sales and support network. however their offer to purchase the company was blocked by 'some agency' within the government on national security reasons.

One of the strikes against Huawei at that time was that their products were largely bootlegged or hacked versions of Cisco kit, and here had already been a number of lawsuits served against them by Cisco for IP and copyright infringement (this would explain the poor quality code and lack of repeatable builds) . However, trying to sue a Chinese company for IP theft in a Chinese court is a fools errand. They are also owned by an ex-General of the PLA. It was also inferred that 'they' did not want Huawei to get hold of Marconi's IP and knowledge about how the UK's existing telecom's network worked, for obvious reasons.

Eventually Marconi was bought by Ericsson, mainly for the Marconi SpA Access Hub products. The useless American companies were spun back off and support for the existing System X networks was spun off to a new independent company called telent. Ericsson killed off the Softswitch 2000 product shortly afterwards, forcing it's customers to take on the Ericsson softwitch, which still didn't work. Shortly after the contracts were announced, the American MBAs departed from Bt's management as the MCI Worldcom merger was off   BT converted two System X exchanges in South Wales to the Ericsson softswitch for 21CN, but after  two years of it not working properly (even only hosting a couple of hundred BT employees' lines) the  programme was halted (and I believe in the process Ericsson had to pay BT a hefty penalty payment for it's poor performance). BT were also not happy with Alcatel's Access Hub equipment after it was rolled out, so their contract was not renewed and it was instead awarded to ECI of Israel.

Huawei continued to supply IP networking kit to BT, and having a foothold in the UK this then expanded into supplying 3G and 4G networking equipment to mobile telecom companies. Most of their contracts were won on the basis of pricing at or below cost, which is a pattern followed by a lot of Chinese companies (i.e. make no profit until you have a big enough market share with the customer, then steadily bring your prices up). telent briefly had an installation contract with them for mobile network equipment, but the contract was eventually terminated by telent as the price squeezing from Huawei's end meant telent were losing money on the deal.

TL:DR - the UK no longer has any indigenous telcoms industry due to management incompetence and short-sightedness on Marconi's part, lack of support from the government at the time and  BT awarding contracts purely on a lowest cost basis. Huawei are also dodgy as fuck (as are Cisco, HP, ECI and any other national-level telecoms kit provider. Ericsson and Alcatel are dodgy on competency reasons (though I would't put it past the French government to ask Alcatel to stick backdoors for spook access into their kit too).

...but at that moment the Huawai CEO was transfixed by a spear of frozen liquid waste from an airplane toilet facility.

[the]

I'll chip in. [...]

Good to see that Everything Working Fucking Shitly Due To Bids Being Cheekily Won By The Cheapest And Shittest Bidder isn't limited exclusively to... other sectors.

"ECONOMICS!"[/Greek tragedy]

[seepage]

Ah, Alcatel - did anyone else have one of their SpeedTouch 'stingray' USB ADSL modems? "As it looks a bit like something from the ocean, instead of white or black or a discreet grey, lets use the most hideous shade of sea-green plastic we can find so it'll look really nice in your home office or living room".

[Sebastian Cobb]

Ah, Alcatel - did anyone else have one of their SpeedTouch 'stingray' USB ADSL modems? "As it looks a bit like something from the ocean, instead of white or black or a discreet grey, lets use the most hideous shade of sea-green plastic we can find so it'll look really nice in your home office or living room".

I didn't have one but I remember them. Some of my pals had ADSL modems like the speedtouch that connected directly to the internet (often with no firewall) and they all got clobbered by that Windows XP RPC worm. We survived it because we had a router with NAT that didn't automatically forward the traffic over. Which isn't really secure but it was enough.

[bgmnts]

I had an alcatel smart phone for a year or two. Cost 90 quid and worked perfectly fine.

[Mister Six]

Obviously the spying bullshit is just a proxy for the petty US-China trade war rather than a real thing.

My job intersects a bit with the trade war, the tech war and other US-China stuff, so time for me to wade in like Billy Big Bollocks and lay down the FUCKING TRUTH.

Yeah, Trump thinks that messing around with Huawei will give him a bit of leverage in his trade war - he used sanctions on another telecoms manufacturer, ZTE, as a bargaining chip with Beijing (to little effect beyond the horror of Rubio and other GOP hawks) - but really the Huawei case and the trade war itself are both extensions of the US's desire to maintain its economic and political supremacy by stifling China's economy and technological growth.

Back in 2015, Beijing launched a much-touted plan called Made in China 2025 that was supposed to be a roadmap that would turn China into the world leader in various technologies, including AI, largely through massive state investment. The hawks in Washington shat themselves about this (not without reason, TBH) and their cries have been heard in the White House, especially since Bolton came on board.

The trade war started off as an actual trade disparity thing, because Trump thinks he understands that, but has morphed into the vanguard of the US push to curb China, with demands that they stop forcibly filching intellectual properties among the "trade" demands being called for in exchange for Trump calling his tariffs off (this is a pretty fair demand, TBH - China keeps doing shit like that under the auspices of being a developing country, but that's a hard charade to keep up when you're the second biggest economy in the world).

The Huawei thing ties into that because it's such a big part of the Chinese tech world (ZTE was bigger, but Trump fucked that up for the hawks when he called off sanctions), and because it owns a ton of patents for 5G technologies (more than any other company, with Samsung in second place, IIRC) and is intimately involved in building 5G infrastructure around the world, including in ally countries.

Huawei is technically not state-owned (it's supposedly owned by the unions that its employees are members of), but realistically any major company operating off the Chinese mainland is fist-in-anus with Beijing, because that's the only way you're allowed to become a major company. The import of Huawei to Beijing (and vice versa) became clear after Canada arrested Huawei's CFO at US request; Beijing then arrested two Canadians, claiming they are spies, while another Canadian who had been found guilty of drug smuggling had his sentence upgraded from prison to death (a second Canadian has since been sentenced to death for drug trafficking). Clearly attempting to pay back in kind.

Obviously if the US can browbeat its allies into avoiding Huawei, it will hit China's economy, but the concerns about 5G are legitimate. The main one is that it doesn't want a rival to control the global technology (the US fucked its chance to create a 5G standard same as it did 4G because of its inane commitment to free market economics but that's another post) but the security concerns are absolutely legitimate.

5G isn't just going to make your phone faster - if it performs as advertised, it's going to the be backbone for ultra high-tec digital cities. The AI that controls self-driven cars won't be contained in the vehicles themselves; it'll be housed externally and communicating with multiple vehicles to best control the roads. 5G will be used to communicate with traffic lights to automatically improve traffic flow around cities. It'll allow for near-instantaneous remote control of surgical robots across continents, etc etc etc.

With that in mind, having the core tech built by Huawei is clearly a concern, not just because of the possibility of spying, but because it would theoretically allow Beijing to shut down entire American cities if it wanted to.

And while the US does monstrous things, China is absolutely worse in almost all ways (foreign military policy notwithstanding), so I'd rather America won out, however underhanded they have to be.

[mothman]

An excellent post. People need to remember that the UK government being evil, and the US government being REALLY evil, does not exclude their rivals on the global stage from being equally nasty, or even worse. China - as in a geopolitical entity - is Not Nice. They are engaged in repression of their ethnic minority populations at scale. We could argue forever about "Western values" and how much we, or our notionally-elected representatives, actually live up to them, but Chinese values are very different and often not in good ways. OK, I get it - think globally, act locally; you can't do anything about China but you, or we, can try to fight our own awful government. Just so long as you remember that the enemy of your enemy is NOT your friend.

[Mrs Wogans lemon drizzle]

I'll chip in.

It wasn't GEC that supplied the last generation of telecoms kit to BT, it was GPT (a joint venture between GEC and Plessey, and later GEC and Siemens after GEC bought Plessey) and it's Italian offshoot Marconi SpA. GEC was run in a financially conservative manner by Lord Weinstock (much to the annoyance of the stock market) but when his son and heir Simon died he lost interest in the company and that is how George Simpson and John Mayo ended up in charge.

This was around 1998-99, and the telecoms industry was booming, riding on the back of the internet becoming widely accessible. Simpson and Mayo, aided and abetted by some management consultants, decided to refocus GEC on telecoms. They bought Siemens stake in GPT, sold off all the defence electronics businesses to BAe and Thales, and their remaining heavy power division to Alsthom and renamed the company Marconi (due to it's telecoms connotations). They decided they needed a presence in the US market, so bought a Texas-based company called Reltec who made broadband access equipment, and a Philadelphia-based company called Fore Systems that made ATM and IP core switching equipment.

Marconi paid massively over the odds for these companies as they were at the top of the market. In typical fashion, it turned out that any company the US allows to be sold to a foreign company (e.g. Ferranti's takeover of ISC) is usually a dud. Reltec turned out to be an inflated, worthless shell and a large chunk of Fore's employees left on the back of the windfall from their stock options being bought out, and not wanting to be managed by 'The Briddish'. The only serious contract Fore had was developing an ATM core switch for the US Navy, and after half of their employees had done a runner with their cash Marconi had to send engineers over from the UK to complete the work.

At the same time back in the UK GPT could see that IP-based telephony was the future, and began a program to convert the call processing software from the System X exchanges to run on new hardware that could use IP-based signalling and media. GPT had been developing it's own media gateways that would sit at the edges of the network where it interfaced with conventional TDM systems, but in the restructuring it was decided to use Marconi SpA's ATM-based Access Hub gateways instead. The Access Hub could do VOIP and Broadband in the same chassis, and the ex GPT engineers in UK then started developing E1 TDM gateway cards for it too.

The new version of System X was called the SoftSwitch 2000, and eventually it was installed in a some of Marconi's smaller customer networks. At that time it was the only true 'Class 5' (i.e. reliable and with enough processing capacity to run at the core of a network) VOIP switching system in service.

Around 2001 BT announced it's '21st Century Network' programme, an ambitious scheme to replace the whole if it's core voice network with a VOIP system from 2005. The programme was broken up into a number of different contracts (one for the core VOIP switching system, one for the VOIP and media gateways that would be at the edges of the network, and one for broadband line access equipment). A number of companies from all over the world bid for these contracts, but the main players ended up being Marconi, Ericsson, Cicso, Alcatel and Fujitsu. Each of the bidders was asked to install a model system of what they were offering in BT;s R&D centre (Adastral Park in Martlesham, near Ipswich).

Marconi, Ericsson and Cisco installed their VOIP core switches, and Marconi, Ericsson, Alcatel and Fujitsu installed their gateways and broadband equipment for a trial that would last 18 months. The Cisco switch was discounted pretty early on, as was the Ericsson gateway. By late 2003 the feedback we were getting from the BT test engineers was that the Marconi Softswtich 2000 was far in advance of anybody else's, but the gateways still needed work. Marconi was confident that the Softswitch would win the core switching contract, and may at least win a share of the gateway contract.

This would be much needed good news for Marconi, as having blown Weinstock's cash mountain in two American lemons, the telecoms bubble had now burst and the share price was plummeting fast (and as it was no longer a conglomerate, there was no steady income from the defence businesses to fall back on). BT had also undergone some changes too, it tried and failed to merge with the US telecoms provider MCI Worldcom (luckily they found out ir was worthless before the deal was agreed), but in doing so had placed itself on the US stock market and hired a load of young, thrusting American MBAs for it's top managers.

In 2004 the 21CN contracts were announced. The core switching went to Ericsson  (which surprised everyone, as their softswtich was a prototype that didn't really work) and the gateways went 50/50 to Alcatel and Fujitsu. We were later told by the BT R&D people that their report had recommended the Softswitch 2000 as the one to purchase, but the decision had been made purely on price and Ericsson had bid stupidly low just to get the work (and the new US upper management had no loyalty to a UK supplier).

Having no customers, Marconi basically went bankrupt, but were allowed to keep going by governmental pressure on the banks they owed money to as they still had  to support the existing UK telecoms infrastructure. During this time Huawei came sniffing round the company - they were trying to break into the UK network (and had won part of the BT  21CN contract to supply IP networking equipment alongside Cisco). They basically wanted Marconi to act as a UK sales and support network. however their offer to purchase the company was blocked by 'some agency' within the government on national security reasons.

One of the strikes against Huawei at that time was that their products were largely bootlegged or hacked versions of Cisco kit, and here had already been a number of lawsuits served against them by Cisco for IP and copyright infringement (this would explain the poor quality code and lack of repeatable builds) . However, trying to sue a Chinese company for IP theft in a Chinese court is a fools errand. They are also owned by an ex-General of the PLA. It was also inferred that 'they' did not want Huawei to get hold of Marconi's IP and knowledge about how the UK's existing telecom's network worked, for obvious reasons.

Eventually Marconi was bought by Ericsson, mainly for their optical transmission networks products and  the Marconi SpA Access Hub products. The useless American companies were spun back off and support for the existing System X networks was spun off to a new independent company called telent. Ericsson killed off the Softswitch 2000 product shortly afterwards, forcing it's customers to take on the Ericsson softwitch, which still didn't work. Shortly after the contract winners were announced, the American MBAs departed from BT's management as the MCI Worldcom merger was off   BT converted two System X exchanges in South Wales to the Ericsson softswitch for 21CN, but after  two years of it not working properly (even only hosting a couple of hundred BT employees' lines) the  programme was halted (and I believe in the process Ericsson had to pay BT a hefty penalty payment for it's poor performance). BT were also not happy with Alcatel's Access Hub equipment after it was rolled out, so their contract was not renewed and it was instead awarded to ECI of Israel.

Huawei continued to supply IP networking kit to BT, and having a foothold in the UK this then expanded into supplying 3G and 4G networking equipment to mobile telecom companies. Most of their contracts were won on the basis of pricing at or below cost, which is a pattern followed by a lot of Chinese companies (i.e. make no profit until you have a big enough market share with the customer, then steadily bring your prices up). telent briefly had an installation contract with them for mobile network equipment, but the contract was eventually terminated by telent as the price squeezing from Huawei's end meant telent were losing money on the deal.

TL:DR - the UK no longer has any indigenous telcoms industry due to management incompetence and short-sightedness on Marconi's part, lack of support from the government at the time and  BT awarding contracts purely on a lowest cost basis. Huawei are also dodgy as fuck (as are Cisco, HP, ECI and any other national-level telecoms kit provider). Ericsson and Alcatel are dodgy on competency reasons (though I wouldn't put it past the French government to ask Alcatel to stick backdoors for spook access into their kit too).

Very interesting post.  thanks for this.  Do you still work in telecoms?  I'm intresting in what BT are using these days in terms of core IP routing kit.

[biggytitbo]

Interesting posts, so let's assume it's a real threat. What are they actually spying on by installing backdoor in telecoms equipment? Stuff they might be interested in at state level like intellegence and military would use their own secure channels presumably, so they're spying on people Snapchatting their genitals to each other or someone ordering a kebab? But then even that stuff mostly has end to end encryption?

[Zetetic]

Mostly, yes. (For now, noting that our own governments still seek to degrade this, even if they've not yet found the right meeting of technical and political possibility.)

And, thankfully no implementation of any form of encryption has proved to be susceptible to any kind of attack and therefore there's never any value in attempt to make the logistics of such an attack any harder.

(Setting aside that huge amounts of meaningful traffic does still pass in the clear. DNS being the obvious one for now.)

people Snapchatting their genitals to each other or someone ordering a kebab?

Or emailing or IM-ing each other about work, if you can remember what work is.



I do wonder if the more credible threat is disruption. (Particularly if we end up with emergency services piggybacking on 5G networks, for high-bandwidth stuff at least.)

[Sebastian Cobb]

Interesting posts, so let's assume it's a real threat. What are they actually spying on by installing backdoor in telecoms equipment? Stuff they might be interested in at state level like intellegence and military would use their own secure channels presumably, so they're spying on people Snapchatting their genitals to each other or someone ordering a kebab? But then even that stuff mostly has end to end encryption?

The topology of the proposed 5g networks means these switches should only be passing encrypted traffic; eavesdropping isn't the real concern here, it's that China could potentially disable all or part of the network at will and grind the country to a halt.

This is how cyber warfare will work. People used to use technology to guide missiles to things like power plants to disable their enemies, but why bother building a missile and risk killing civilians when you can simply do it remotely with code?

[ProvanFan]

Also the ironic thing here is Cisco recently patched a security vulnerability in some of its network switches that can be exploited to spy on people.

Ooh that patch so scandalous

[ProvanFan]

George Simpson ran it into the ground.

What a move, amazing dancer

[biggytitbo]

I'm just imagining a scenario where China disrupt our communications networks and thus effectively shut us down as a country causing unimaginable chaos, expense, death etc. This is WW3 and we're all fucked anyway.

But I also can't help thinking some of this is a mixture of paranoia and racism.

[Paul Calf]

It's not racist to prevent foreign agencies from implanting surveillance devices in vital infrastructure. I know you're trying to be contrary again, but this is just idiotic.

[Zetetic]

There's a reasonable point lurking somewhere that we shouldn't be blasé about the crap security practices of non-Chinese vendors, mind you.

(Regarding them being in bed with our own surveillance agencies - we shouldn't ignore that either. But tackling that issue is different.)

I'm just imagining a scenario where China disrupt our communications networks and thus effectively shut us down as a country...

I assume one desired property of any 'cyber-weapon' is proportionality.

[DistressedArea]

And, thankfully no implementation of any form of encryption has proved to be susceptible to any kind of attack and therefore there's never any value in attempt to make the logistics of such an attack any harder.

Is that sarcasm?  I can't tell.

https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=6243

[mothman]

But I also can't help thinking some of this is a mixture of paranoia and racism.

I'm not saying you're wrong re the racism, even in this day and age - hell, especially in this day and age - there's enough of it around. But it would be foolish to imagine it's the primary driver, if anything it probably nuances feelings ("a hundred years ago they were wearing clogs in paddy fields, now the <insert racial epithet> is overtaking us technologically, economically and militarily!"). But race is almost an aside, the critical difference is cultural.

[Zetetic]

Is that sarcasm?

Can't you?

[DistressedArea]

No.

[chveik]

I'm rooting for China.

[Zetetic]

No.

Oh.

[biggytitbo]

I'm rooting for China.

Use protection mate, they only allow one kid per family.

[biggytitbo]

I was sceptical about the theory China were fiendishly trying to bring the west down from within via telecommunications equipment but now I've seen who hauwaei have hired as their new chief executive I think its time to panic -

[Fambo Number Mive]

I don't see why it's racist to not trust the Chinese government, given their attitude to human rights. It doesn't mean you don't like the Chinese as a whole, any more than not liking the Tories means you hate British people. The way the Chinese government treats.its own citizens goes largely ignored in the West, mainly because the media are too ignorant to care about Chinese people.