Huawei to share software code; competitors out-foxed

Chinese telecom equipment giant Huawei Technologies decision to share its properietory telecom gear equipments software codes with clients to overcome Indian security concerns has out-foxed its Western competitors in the lucrative $50-billion Indian telecom hardware market.

Huawei will share the source code with the Indian regulators and its clients through a mutually agreed third party, which can be accessed under certain agreed circumstances.

The move has however stumped its competitors Nokia Siemens, Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent and others, all of whom till now have refused to share their technology with their Indian clients saying that revealing source codes would compromise their patent rights.

In July, this year, the Indian government laid down stringent security norms for imported telecom equipment, saying that telecom equipment vendors must allow inspection of their gear and made carriers solely responsible for the security of their networks.

Since 10 February, the government had refused to clear over 450 equipment orders worth close to $3 billion placed with Chinese vendors, mainly Huawei and ZTE Corp, citing security concerns, thus slowing down the expansion plans of all operators.

Intelligence agencies suspect that foreign equipment, mainly imported from China, could be embedded with secret interfaces or 'backdoors' that may allow Chinese intelligence agencies to monitor sensitive information being transmitted through the network.