IEEE Sanctions - the Huawei Vote Stuffing Scandal Part 2

Andrew Myles[1] emailed me in response to my post about Huawei and its ballot stuffing scandal (The Huawei IEEE Scandal: Is Huawei a Buccaneer or a Privateer?).  It turns out there is an existing process to sanction “block” voting, e.g. when the employees of a company collude together to vote as one, rather than voting as individual participants according to their conscience (which is what everyone is supposed to do). 

Here’s some of what Andrew had to say about the situation:

At first, I could not understand how this issue even came to light. However, after some digging, it appears that Andrew Woodward stuffed up big time by sending an email describing his activities in the IEEE 802.11 Working Group to the whole email group, rather than just the apparent intended recipient, Edward Au. That’s a big mistake to make! [Note from Marta: Edward Au is a Huawei employee who is Chair of one of the 802.11 task groups as well as being the 802.11 liaison to the IEEE 802.18 working group.  The fact that Mr. Au was apparently aware of the issue and did nothing is itself a red flag that this problem goes further within Huawei than just Mr. Woodward]

This situation represents a major test for the IEEE SA processes — and ultimately whether the IEEE SA has the guts to appropriately discipline parties that violate the IEEE SA rules, potentially including Huawei as a company. I suspect that the evidence will show that several Huawei employees were coordinating a “block voting” strategy within the IEEE 802.11 Working Group.  That is very much contrary to the IEEE SA voting rules. In my view, if proven, the punishment should be a year (or more) in which all Huawei participants can, collectively, only exercise one vote in any IEEE 802 ballots (not just IEEE 802.11 ballots). This is a punishment for “block voting” for which there is ample precedent within IEEE SA and IEEE 802. The imposition of such a punishment will hopefully cause other companies that also are behaving badly to rethink their behavior. 

It would be sad to lose the “individual” voting concept in the IEEE 802.11 Working Group.  In an ideal world, I believe “individual” voting has far more positives and far less negatives than the alternative “entity” voting scheme, at least for the development of IEEE 802.11 standards. I have long experience with both methods, “individual” voting in the context of the IEEE 802.11 Working Group and “entity” voting in context of the Wi-Fi Alliance.

“Entity” voting works best when the focus is on consensus, with an independent and knowledgeable Board able to block decisions not in the best interests of the industry and the global community. This method worked well for the Wi-Fi Alliance for many years because there is a review process by the Wi-Fi Alliance Board, which acts as a check on the development working groups. In the context of the IEEE SA processes, there is unfortunately no effective process to review proposed IEEE 802.11 standards in the best interests of the industry and the global community. The SA Ballot process is totally ineffective in practice in this regard. [Note from Marta: also, several of the members/officers on the IEEE SA Board of Governors are employed by the very companies –for example, Huawei’s affiliate Futurewei holds the Chair - engaged in wrongful acts so it is hard to imagine the Board acting as a check and balance on these companies’ behavior]

On the other hand, “individual” voting has worked remarkably well for the IEEE 802.11 Working Group over many years because most participating engineers fully embraced their responsibilities to act according to their conscience.  This effectively meant acting in the best interests of the industry and the global community. There were always a few participants who at various times focused only on the best interests of whomever was paying them, but they were generally outnumbered by the responsible majority.

The problem that has more recently arisen in the IEEE 802.11 Working Group is that a few companies have so many participants that they can’t be outnumbered by the responsible majority if these few companies decide to behave badly.  Huawei is one of the entities that sends so many participants that they can effectively execute “block voting” strategies. While it is sad to think some companies might act contrary to IEEE SA’s “block voting” rules, it is the reality of the non-ideal world in which we now operate. One possible solution would be to limit the number of “individual” voters from a single entity.  I’m not sure what the right percentage would be in the case of the quite large IEEE 802.11 Working Group, but maybe a 5% limit of the total number of voters is a reasonable starting point.

Marta again: after I got Andrew’s email I went and checked the minutes of the most recent plenary 802.11 working group meeting (https://mentor.ieee.org/802.11/dcn/25/11-25-1352-02-0000-minutes-working-group-july-2025.docx).  There were roughly 620 participants (not all voting members but most).  Huawei (including its affiliate Futurewei) had about 64 people attending (not all voting members but most).  Andrew’s very generous 5% limit (roughly 30 voting members per meeting depending on how many people attended the meeting) might dissuade the Huaweis of the world. 

But it probably would not dissuade the other types of pirates who attend meetings and try to inject their technology into the standard, but then refuse to provide assurances that they will license their SEPs on RAND terms.  Nor would it encourage effective and equal participation by smaller companies who can only afford to send 1-2 people to a meeting and so, in the current environment, can always be outvoted no matter how good their ideas. Sadly, in this changed world, the voting limits probably need to be smaller — probably much smaller — than 5% and additional mechanisms need to be put in place to police bad behavior, including potentially stripping pirates of any Board, Chair and other leadership positions in both the working groups and the IEEE SA BoG itself.

I would strongly encourage the IEEE to do the right thing here and to investigate and address these pressing problems.  It is far past time that the IEEE police itself and the behavior of its participants.  And a word of warning to the IEEE— I strongly suspect that if the IEEE is unable to address these problems itself, others will step in to do it.  If that happens, it likely will not be pretty.

[1]          See INTERVIEW WITH ANDREW MYLES - PART 1 for more information about Andrew’s long experience with the IEEE and with the development of the Wi-Fi standard.