Being banned from supplying telecommunications products to one country may be bad luck. But the Chinese company Huawei – the world's second-biggest supplier of telecoms network equipment – this week found itself facing shutouts from both Australia and the US, fuelling concerns about a cyber cold war between east and west.
The company announced this week it had been banned from tendering for contracts in Australia's A$38bn (£24.7bn) National Broadband Network (NBN) because of cybersecurity concerns. Then it emerged that the reason why its joint venture with the US online security company Symantec (which had the 49% stake) was dissolved last November was that the US company feared losing out on information from the US government, according to the New York Times.
For Huawei, it's part of a continuous uphill struggle. "We were informed by the government that there is no role for Huawei in Australia's NBN," said Jeremy Mitchell, a Huawei spokesman in Australia. That will be a blow to the company, which aims to overtake Sweden's Ericsson to be the world's biggest supplier of telecoms infrastructure such as fibre-optic connections and routers.
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