Huawei gets support from UK universities
Several universities in the United Kingdom are standing by Chinese tech giant Huawei despite doubts raised by other Western bodies, including the United Nations and NATO over security concerns.
Several organizations in the UK, including Oxford University and Prince Charles’ personal charity the Prince’s Trust, have severed ties with the technology company recently.
National mobile phone network Vodafone said it will temporarily halt use of the Huawei equipment in its core mobile phone networks and BT said it would remove Huawei equipment from its 4G network.
However, Edinburgh and Napier Universities, which both have teaching and research partnerships with Huawei, and Police Scotland, which uses the company’s broadband devices, have rejected concerns around the security of Huawei products.
Huawei makes equipment including base stations, switches and routers, as well as consumer products such as smartphones, but there has been concern from some Western nations that the Chinese government could use Huawei’s technology for espionage, an allegation the company has rejected. The Chinese government also repeatedly denied the allegation.
“We use mobile internet devices by the manufacturer Huawei with the internet service provided by Vodafone,” said Police Scotland.
“This service does not directly connect to our network. While BT carries out its work to remove Huawei products, Police Scotland will follow a well-established process to ensure any impact is kept to a minimum.”
Huawei has partnered with a number of UK universities on academic research in recent years.
Edinburgh University has received 5.1 million pounds ($6.6 million) in its partnership with the tech company for a laboratory dedicated to researching data management and processing.
“As with any research partnership that we undertake, this has undergone a rigorous process of due diligence and is the result of long-term collaboration between experts at the University of Edinburgh and Huawei,” said an Edinburgh University spokesperson.
Edinburgh Napier University, which collaborates with Huawei in information and communications technology, added: “Our relationship with Huawei Technologies is focused on teaching programs rather than research projects.”
The Scottish universities are not the only institutions who are standing by the tech company for the time being.
Huawei has also made sizable donations to the University of Surrey’s 5G Innovation Centre. The university told City AM, “Huawei is one of a number of key partners, industrial, academic and government, with whom we are working to develop 5G capabilities. We’re committed to continuing our research, pushing the frontiers of human knowledge. We will continue to work with all our research partners, including Huawei, unless there are clear and compelling reasons not to.”
Huawei has also put more than 850,000 pounds into projects at the University of Southampton such as development of innovative consumer 3D technologies. The company also sends undergraduates to its headquarters in Shenzhen as part of its Seeds for the Future program.
Elsewhere, the company has invested 90 million pounds in the University of Manchester’s National Graphene Institute.
The university said: “We have a range of relationships with corporate business partners. These are not necessarily donations, but may be business development projects or research collaborations. We have no plans to change our relationship with Huawei but will monitor developments.”
The University of York also said there are no plans to make changes to its research project at the moment, while famed engineering school Imperial College London, where Huawei funds a data science innovation lab, said it will continue the relationship.