Competitive Advantage
I worked for both Ericsson and Alcatel/Lucent. Both of these companies developed the technologies that compete against Huawei. Some of the products were developed in-house and others through acquisition. Ericsson had purchased Marconi (subsequently FORE Systems) and moved the US HQ to Texas while keeping Global HQ in Stockholm. Great company who treated their employees very well.
Just before the acquisition of Marconi and the merger of Alcatel/Lucent, Huawei was trying to establish a route to the US markets by OEM hardware to private label to anyone who would compete with Cisco. Their prices were ridiculously low resulting in very large margins for the organization. I am glad that our leadership realized that a short term competitive advantage was not worth the cost of chipping away at Cisco and possibly US Cyber Security.
It is hard for me to believe Huawei is just another "business in the business of doing business" as their ambassador stated in the 60 Minutes interview. They are currently in 150 markets and will surround us until we are outflanked. As IT professionals, we need to be aware of the threats from Huawei and I support any investigation of their motives.
Imagine getting your next version update that simply disables your entire Huawei communications network. Hmmmmm......
