Huawei gets vote of confidence from Philippines’ Globe Telecom, which says security concerns somewhat overblown

Globe Telecom, a Philippines-based network operator that counts Huawei Technologies as a key supplier, said that concerns over the potential threat posed by the Chinese company to national security were overblown “to a certain extent” and that it was pushing ahead with a planned roll-out of fifth-generation (5G) commercial services in the second quarter of this year.

“They may provide the equipment, but we run the network and so we know what passes over our network, what goes through it,” Globe Telecom president and chief executive Ernest Lawrence Cu said in a phone interview with Bloomberg Television on Tuesday.

“We’re very confident that we’re well protected,” he said, as the company had been given a “clean bill of health” by UK and Israeli consultants hired to conduct extensive checks of the network “with regards to back doors, Trojan horses and stuff like that.”

The vote of confidence comes as more European telecom companies review their plans to use Huawei over concerns that governments could ban the vendor. The US government has been pushing its allies to block the Chinese company, citing fears that its equipment could be used for spying, something that its executives have strenuously denied.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Monday that America may be forced to scale back certain operations in Europe and elsewhere if countries continue to do business with Huawei.

He was speaking in Budapest on the first leg of a five-nation European tour during which he said he would raise US concerns about China and Russia’s growing influence in central Europe.