“We are open to that. We feel this is a must-needed step as we continue to expand our operations in India. We will proactively talk to our customers, regulator and relevant stakeholders,” Xiao Ming, president, ZTE Global Sales, told ET. “We will offer them solutions and guarantee complete openness.”
Such a move is aimed at helping the Chinese company allay concerns to go a step further in being more open and transparent. The vendor’s comments come at a time when India has yet to decide on involving Chinese vendors, especially Huawei, in the country’s 5G field trials and commercial networks.
Huawei, and rival ZTE to a lesser extent, have come under global scrutiny after the United States raised security concerns regarding 5G equipment, given their perceived proximity to the Chinese government. The US has asked its allies to ban 5G gear from Huawei. Canada, Japan, New Zealand, and Australia have acquiesced. Indian telecom operators, however, backed Chinese vendors.
The executive said ZTE is a listed company, trying to differentiate between itself and Huawei, which is privately owned. “We have an explicit shareholding structure, we are giving openness and transparency,” said Xiao.
ZTE opened a cybersecurity lab in Rome in May, followed by a similar lab in Brussels. It already has a big lab in Nanjing in China. “In European labs, we work with government agencies, regulators, customers and third-party companies that are experts in the cybersecurity domain. We encourage unified security cleared by the third-party staff to perform verification (of ZTE products and solutions) rather than ourselves,” said Xiao.
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