Huawei CTO Says No One at the Company Discusses Detained CFO

(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- What’s the outlook for 5G deployment next year? Will the U.S. still be stuck in the mud?

Yeah, I think it’ll still be a challenge even in a year’s time, but you’re not alone. The Verizons of the world, AT&Ts, they’re going to move as quickly as they think they need to. The biggest opportunity really is in what we call fixed wireless access, and that’s providing fiberlike connectivity to areas unserviced by fiber.

What are the challenges for Huawei?

Smaller, faster, cheaper—right? Doing things in different ways. Necessity will breed innovation, of course. The security thing, I believe, will take a very, very long time. But we will get our story right. We’re going to use advisers, use the media to try and guide us to what is important, use more local people.

December will mark one year your chief financial officer has been detained in Canada. How is that case viewed by Chief Executive Officer Ren Zhengfei and others internally?

At all the levels I’ve been at, never mentioned—other than Mr. Ren’s statement earlier this year, that it’ll make us stronger. I know it’s a very strange way to describe it, but that’s exactly what he said at that meeting publicly to everybody in the company.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jeff Muskus at jmuskus@bloomberg.net

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