US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that India’s Reliance Jio is among “clean telco” globally that don’t do any business with Chinese gear vendors like Huawei. "The world's leading telecom operators - including Spain's Telefonica, as well as Orange, O2, Jio, Bell Canada, Telus, and Rogers, and many more - are becoming clean telcos... (They are) disconnecting from the Chinese Communist Party infrastructure," Pompeo was quoted as saying by PTI. Mukesh Ambani had told the United States of America President Donald Trump during his February visit to India that Reliance Jio was the only network in the world to not have a single Chinese component.
Reliance Jio works with Korea’s Samsung for 4G LTE wireless network, and works with players like Nokia, Cisco and Ericsson for other non-wireless parts of the network. Jio, however, had submitted an application with the telecom department (DoT) to conduct 5G field trials with Huawei along with all other gear vendors.
Jio has recently sought permission from the DoT to conduct lab tests for its own 5G products without third-party participation. It has reportedly developed its own 5G and IoT products to cut dependence on foreign vendors.
US: Huawei a Part of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Infrastructure
Pompeo called Huawei a part of the "Chinese Communist Party (CCP) infrastructure and said that its relationships with global telecom operators are now evaporating. "Huawei's deals with telecommunications operators around the world are evaporating because countries are only allowing trusted vendors in their 5G networks. Examples include the Czech Republic, Poland, Sweden, Estonia, Romania, Denmark, and Latvia. Recently, Greece agreed to use Ericsson rather than Huawei to develop its 5G infrastructure," Pompeo said.
The US has been pressurizing India to not use 5G telecom equipment from Huawei, and last year said that Huawei was capable of using backdoors to spy if its gear is installed in India’s telecom networks.
Interestingly, China had warned India of economic consequences if Huawei was excluded from 5G networks. India, however, allowed Huawei and ZTE to participate in the country’s 5G field trials.
Australia, New Zealand, Japan have decided to block Huawei from their respective 5G networks. The UK, which had allowed Huawei’s participation in the country’s 5G networks in a limited manner, is now considering the removal of Huawei gear in the coming years.
