Huawei's UBC partnership unchanged by company executive's arrest

Huawei has struck partnerships with universities across Canada including the University of Toronto and Ecole Polytechnique to support development of 5G wireless communications networks.

 December 7, 2018

Foreigners look at a Huawei computer at a Huawei store in Beijing.

The University of British Columbia has had a research relationship with Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies Co. since 2011 and the arrest of company’s chief financial officer in Vancouver last week won’t change that, the university said.

UBC and Huawei cemented the latest version of their applied-research partnership in October 2017 when university president Santa Ono and Huawei Canadian executive Christian Chua signed a framework agreement worth up to $3 million over three years.

And UBC, on Thursday, said it “is not aware of any restrictions regarding working with Huawei and will continue with its partnership with Huawei,” according to an emailed statement from UBC vice-president of research and innovation Gail Murphy.

Murphy also said UBC had no comment on “recent reports of legal proceedings against a Huawei employee,” who is Meng Wanzhou, the company’s chief financial officer and daughter of Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei.

Meng, who also goes by the name Sabrina Meng, was arrested at Vancouver International  Dec. 1 on an extradition request from the U.S. related to allegations that she violated American trade sanctions against Iran.

Huawei’s work in Canada, however, includes developing intellectual property for next-generation communications equipment through research partnerships, such as the one with UBC.

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Murphy described UBC’s arrangement with Huawei as applied research, which is where companies and organizations sponsor researchers in projects that solves problems.

“Partnering with Canadian and global companies provides UBC graduate students with the experience of working with industry and researchers with valuable funding to advance their science,” Murphy said in her statement.

In signing the latest three-year deal with UBC in 2017, Huawei boasted that it would spend more than $10 million that year on research projects at schools including the University of Toronto, University of Waterloo and École Polytechnique in Montreal.

At UBC, Chua called the university “a critical part of Vancouver and B.C.’s (information and communications technology) infrastructure,” where Huawei was committed to research initiatives in the new 5G generation of wireless communications.

In this courtroom sketch, Meng Wanzhou, back right, the chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies, sits beside a translator during a bail hearing at B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver, on Dec. 7, 2018. She was arrested Saturday after an extradition request from the United States while in transit at the city’s airport.

5G is the evolution of mobile communications that will have the capacity to handle artificial-intelligence applications such as driverless cars and other autonomous equipment.

Huawei has been a controversial entity in telecommunications with the United States, Australia and New Zealand have barred Huawei equipment from being used in development of 5G networks in those countries over fears China could use it for intelligence gathering or cyber attacks.

Canada has not barred Huawei and companies such as Telus Corp. and Bell Canada have partnered with the company to test 5G technologies, though don’t use its equipment in their core networks for security reasons.

Murphy, in her statement, said UBC’s university industry liaison office drafts and administers its research agreements to make sure industry-sponsored research abide by UBC’s core values and comply with legal restrictions on working with foreign companies.

Members of the media crowd around an unidentified woman who was attending a bail hearing for Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies, during a break in proceedings at B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver, on Friday December 7, 2018. She was arrested Saturday after an extradition request from the United States while in transit at the city’s airport.