Ericsson wrote:kmucheke wrote:Ericsson wrote:kmucheke wrote:Around 2008 Ericsson was the largest telecommunication equipment provider in East Africa. They used to supply around 70% of SCOM GSM network equipment.
Then Huawei happened, their stuff way way cheaper than Ericsson or Nokia-Siemen.
GSM is a standard and the equipment manufactured should be back and forward compatible and this was the basis by which SCOM was able to switch very fast to Huawei and ZTE.
Most of the network upgrade to 3G and 4G is by Huawei due to cost. Initially the stuff from Huawei used to fail but over time their quality has improved. Huawei is now the largest vendor of telecom equipment in the world and is the leader in 5G.
Spying concerns by the US are very valid. The CIA spied on foes and allies using sabotaged encryption equipment sold to foreign countries.
LinkChina was recently accused of spying on African governments at the Chinese built AU headquarters which uses computer network equipment supplied by Huawei.
LinkSCOM and Huawei are too intertwined from infrastructure (3G and 4G network), modems, phones and even equipment maintenance.
Ericsson wasn't the largest supplier to Safaricom.
It was Siemens which later changed to Nokia-Siemens and finally Nokia
One expatriate manager at Eden suare in 2008 gave me that info. He may have exaggerated. A few years later there was a massive layoff of engineering staff after Huawei invaded their turf.
Nokia-Siemens lasted from 2006/2007 to 2013/2014.
Ericsson were doing rollout for Yu and Orange mobile
A few points on my side:
1. Ericsson mainly rolled out for Yu ( which was sold ) and Orange ( which swapped out Ericcson for Huawei & ZTE ). It also had massive business with Airtel but was swapped out by Nokia .
2. Huawei have massive business with Safaricom & the Govt( security project) .
3. Removing Huawei is an incredibly massive undertaking mainly because as much as vendors are to follow 3GPP standards , there is flexibility to deviate slightly to match customer specific requirements.
4. UK ban on Huawei is due to US restriction on Huawei using chips from their companies. Chips are the heart of the equipment and subject to security vulnerabilities.
If the chip vendors cannot support on patch updates for the chips then the network becomes exposed . Huawei will manufacture their chips but it will take a number of years to get to the level of reliability & trust on security.
5G has incredibly sensitive use cases such as autonomous driving ,automated ports , connected health etc which if exposed can shut down an economy hence any unknown is already viewed as a potential security issue.
5. It will be interesting to see the direction Safaricom takes on this matter given the massive investment & autonomy they have from Vodafone group
Knowledge is power , but action gets things done ...