Global standard setting bodies repose faith in Huawei

Huawei Technologies Co remained in the list of some key global standard-setting bodies against US government's restrictions on the country's tech firms, as the world's largest telecom equipment maker continues its contribution to an open and sustainable telecom community globally.

The move came as earlier reports last week said that Huawei has disappeared from the member list of world groups dedicated in making standards related to the information communications and technology industry, including JEDEC, SD Association, Wi-Fi Alliance and USB-IF.

An employee demonstrates a Mate X foldable 5G mobile device at the Huawei Technologies Co. pavilion on the opening day of the MWC Barcelona in Barcelona, Spain, on Monday, Feb. 25, 2019. [File Photo: VCG]

By Thursday, the Chinese tech giant remained in the membership list on the websites of all four associations which set or promote standards in semiconductor, memory card, wireless network and common interface respectively.

Industry insiders pointed out that retention of Huawei in most standard-making groups reaffirms that standards organization plays a critical role in setting rules for "common" rather than a single country or company and an isolated case won't influence Huawei in the long term.

"Even if it is removed from the membership, a company can still adopt the standards or develop its own technology outside of global standards," said Xiang Ligang, director-general of Information Consumption Alliance, a telecom industry association.

Even if the removal is true, it won't impact Huawei's business in the long term. "The only bad impact is that Huawei may lose some voice in setting global standards," he said.

"Standards in the ICT industry are usually common and open to companies worldwide and the making of it requires global cooperation and partnership," he said.

Huawei has joined more than 400 standards organizations, industry alliances, and open source communities, in which its staff members have served in more than 400 key positions. The company submitted more than 5,000 standard proposals and nearly 60,000 related articles last year, its annual report showed.

To date, PCI-SIG, a consortium that specifies the peripheral component interconnect, which is used for attaching hardware devices in a computer, has suspended Huawei's membership. The firm asked staff in an internal letter to ban Huawei from any related email or activity due to Washington's embargo list.

The US government recently added Chinese tech champions including Huawei to its Entity List due to so-called safety concerns, which would effectively ban US companies from selling components and software to them.

As a latest response to US restrictions on Huawei, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said on Thursday that the US has been "racking its brains" to make up various topics and mislead the public to suppress Huawei.

"But the US has dodged a topic that everybody cares about the most, which is where on the earth can it provide the evidence to back its claims," Lu said.