The Huawei Trial
I have posted several times about Huawei’s scandalous behavior and growing domination of several standard setting/development organizations. This behavior includes “stuffing the ballot box in group voting” in the 802.11 working group, which came to light when a Huawei patent portfolio manager accidentally sent an email intended for another Huawei employee (who is Vice-Chair of the 802.11 working group) to the entire 802.11 email reflector.[1] I have also written extensively about Huawei’s checkered past and about its status as the largest SEP holder for both the current generation of the Wi-Fi and cellular standards.[2]
Well, that checkered past may finally be catching up to Huawei. On September 10, a U.S. federal trial began against several Huawei entities: Huwaei Technologies; Huawei Device Co. Ltd., Huawei Device USA Inc. and Futurewei Technologies Inc. The Huawei entities are charged with racketeering under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), bank fraud, bank fraud conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy, violations of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), conspiracy to violate IEEPA, wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to defraud the U.S., conspiracy to steal trade secrets and conspiracy to obstruct justice.
The U.S. government alleges that Huawei and its entities are operating as a vast criminal conspiracy that goes back decades. The U.S. government alleges that Huawei stole technology from Cisco, T-Mobile and three other companies as part of its corrupt scheme to become one of the largest technology companies in the world, and that Huawei used the U.S. financial system to give Iran's intelligence services top-of-the-line surveillance technology.[3]
At the same time as the U.S. trial is proceeding, the Belgian government is investigating whether Huawei bribed members of the European Parliament.[4] Last year, the European Commission blacklisted Huawei lobbyists because of the bribery scandal.[5]
Yet, despite the many decades of scandal swirling around Huawei, Huawei continues to hold important roles in several important standards organizations. In the IEEE, Lei Wang continues to hold the Chair of the IEEE Standards Association (IEEE-SA) Board of Governors despite being employed by one of the accused conspirators, FutureWei. Stephen McCann is 2nd Vice Chair of the 802.11 working group while being employed by another Huawei entity. Edward Au is the 802.11 working group’s technical editor and the Technical Advisory Board representative to the IEEE-SA Board of Governors despite being employed by a Huawei entity and likely having been personally involved in the IEEE ballot stuffing scandal.[6]
Huawei and its entities also hold several officer level positions at ETSI[7] and in at least one 3GPP[8] working group.[9] Collectively, these positions give Huawei a significant presence in both the standard development and standard setting organizations responsible for the cellular standard.
Huawei also holds important roles at the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the standard development/setting organization responsible for making the Internet work. Huawei (including its alleged co-conspirator and affiliate FutureWei) holds three positions on the IETF’s Internet Architecture Board (IAB).[10] The IETF’s “Internet Architecture Board provides long-range technical direction for Internet development, ensuring the Internet continues to grow and evolve as a platform for global communication and innovation.” In other words, Huawei has three members (out of 12 total) on the board that helps determines the future direction and technology for the Internet. Huawei is the ONLY company that has more than one representative on the IAB's Board. Some of the world’s largest Internet companies – including Cisco, Google and Netflix – have only one representative on the IAB Board and some large Internet companies have none at all. But Huawei, somehow, has three, including holding the IAB Chair.
I will be following the U.S. trial and European bribery investigation with quite a bit of interest given the seriousness of the accusations and how prominent a role Huawei has in some of the world’s most important standards and standard setting/development organizations.
[1] See, The Huawei IEEE Scandal: Is Huawei a Buccaneer or a Privateer? and more generally, SEARCH RESULTS: 'huawei' - SEP Essentials.
[2] See e.g. part 5 of my six part series Convergence and Competition: Convergence and Competition - A Tale of Two Standards Part 5: Huawei.
[4] See, EU Parliament lifts immunity of senior Italian lawmaker over Huawei scandal probe – POLITICO and Huawei bribery scandal rocks European Parliament – POLITICO.
[7] See, ETSI Organisation Chart (various executive positions in different groups including chair of the 3GPP CT ETSI partnership project and secretary for the Fifth Generation Fixed Network specification group).
[8] 3GPP or the 3rd Generation Partnership is the organization that develops cellular standards that are in turn adopted by more well-known standard setting organizations such as the European Telecommunications Standard Institute (ETSI).
[9] See, 3GPP technical body: R3.
[10] See, IAB | IAB Members and IETF | IESG Members
