Swisscom said it has no evidence of espionage by Huawei. CEO Urs Schaeppi expressed confidence in its Chinese partner, reports Handelszeitung. “Today we have no indication that espionage is being operated on the networks,” said Schaeppi on 31 January at a media conference in Zurich, in an interview with the news agency AWP . “We are not completely blind when we operate the networks. We constantly monitor them and see what happens on the networks,” he continued.
Swiss Parliament has expressed national security concerns over Huawei. According to Schaeppi, Swisscom is dealing very intensly with the matter. He noted that the discussion is much too narrow and that today’s telecom networks have a large number of suppliers. Therefore, it is important that the operators build architectures and have security concepts and monitoring measures, so that the networks are safe. The greater danger comes from a cyber attack that is independent of suppliers.
Schaeppi called for a differentiated view. “With Trojans, you can penetrate any infrastructure, whether it’s from Cisco or Huawei. That’s why one shall look at the whole security concept of the infrastructures,” he said. Huawei is accused in the US not for network espionage, but for industrial espionage. He also argued that today espionage can be done via any electronic component.
Huawei supplies components for the fixed network of Swisscom. Competitor Sunrise is relying on Huawei for the construction of its 5G mobile network. The country’s third mobile operator Salt has opted for Nokia.