Huawei has had an image problem lately among countries skittish about trusting a Chinese telecom giant with the backbone of networks that its home government might like to snoop. The company's Australian chairman John Lord thinks that's just paranoia, and he's planning radical transparency in the country to recover what trust he can after Huawei lost a National Broadband Network deal. The firm is willing to give the Australian government "unrestricted" access to both networking hardware and source code to prove that there's no espionage afoot. Lord even likes the idea a domestic inspection agency that would greenlight equipment across the industry. All of the proposals represent a one-way conversation, however -- Canberra hasn't said if it's receptive enough to drop the cold attitude. There's a distinct chance that any successful return to favor wouldn't come soon enough to recover the most lucrative contracts, which could make any Australian change of heart a Pyrrhic victory.

Filed under: Networking, Internet

Huawei gives Australia peeks at its network hardware and code to regain trust originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 24 Oct 2012 14:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.