The Government cancels a contract for defense with Huawei teams | Economy

The Ministry for Digital Transformation has canceled a contract that sought to enhance fiber optic benefits for various public institutions, including the Ministry of Defense, with Huawei teams, the Chinese company in the view of the United States and the European Union. Red.es, the public company attached to the department directed by Óscar López, had given green light this Monday, August 25 to a telephone award of 10 million euros for the installation of new generation equipment of Huawei in a megarred of public fiber optic of more than 16,000 kilometers that runs through the entire Spanish territory. This infrastructure, called Rediris, gives services to the National Network of Spanish Research and Education (universities and research centers) and some five million professionals are connected, although it is also allocated to other uses, such as some services of the Ministry of Defense.

However, the government has reversed and decided to cancel the contract for “reasons for digital strategy and strategic autonomy,” said an official spokeswoman for the Ministry to questions to questions yesterday The country. The award still appears on the public sector contracting platform, but not such cancellation. Telefónica does not have evidence that the annulment of the contract has occurred.

The object of the tender launched by Red.es consisted of “the supply, installation and management of components for the equipment plant of Routing Currently in production, of the manufacturer Huawei, supplied and managed by Telefónica, for the extension of the IP connectivity of Rediris-NOVA100 to 400GBPS ”, as literally consists of the official documentation to which this newspaper has had access. The contract has negotiated without advertising and directly between the public and telephone body. Red.es expressly asked Telefónica to telephone Awarded in 2020, it was also equipped with Chinese giant infrastructure.

The public company justified this expense because “the progressive growth of traffic studied by institutions connected to Redirisnova, mainly due to supercomputing projects, the recent connection of military academies and educational centers of the Ministry of Defense, the massive transfer of data, and in general, the implementation of new Rediris ICT services (in fields such as cybersecurity, electronic administration, electronic administration Blockchainsupport for hybrid teaching, open science, etc.) require that the IP and optical communications infrastructure of Rediris-Nova expands. ”

Red.es has recognized security problems that led him to launch this contract. As explained in the documentation consulted, the remarkable increase in the use of ICT infrastructure and its critical character requires redoubled efforts aimed at its improvement “to respond to new cybersecurity services of Rediris that are being planned in order to contravene the continuous security threats that are being suffered in recent times”. To the above, he adds that “a budget has been allocated to the Strategic Plan and Cybersecurity of Rediris for the improvement of infrastructure and its academic and scientific institutions (currently the connection of the 45 formation centers of the Ministry of Defense, throughout the national territory) has been completed.”

Released on July 24 and approved on August 25

This contract was launched on July 24, after the United States warned Spain of the danger of hiring with Huawei after knowing that the Ministry of Interior had awarded Huawei a contract of 12.3 million euros to digitally store communications intercepted by the State Security Forces with authorization of judges and prosecutors. This August 25, the Administration had approved Telefónica’s proposal to carry out the works requested by the Ministry of Oscar López.

The award of this contract to provide the Network with new components of the Chinese brand would not fail to The administration or telecommunications operators.

The contract had negotiated with Telefónica exclusively because the operator already reprimhedue in 2020 said fiber network in another contract of 5.5 million euros awarded to the company that equipped Rediris with Huawei devices. Then, the Chinese brand was already vetoed by the first Trump administration, since in 2019 it ordered the prohibition of any commercial relationship with the Asian manufacturer under the accusation that the Chinese government had access to the data and communications of the networks and the mobile phones 5G sold by Huawei. A veto to which several countries later joined while the European Union has repeatedly recommended its member states that do not hire 5G teams with Huawei.

The reason that this contract had not opened to other competitors is that it was an extension of 2020, according to Red.es, which indicated in the official documentation that “all these components must be installed in the equipment of Routing Currently in production, of the manufacturer Huawei, supplied by Telefónica, as a contractor for the supply of equipment L2 and L3 to Rediris-Nova100 and that, as responsible for said contract, provides the guarantee, support and maintenance of all Huawei equipment ”.

Rediris is an ICT communications and services infrastructure for affiliated institutions (universities and research centers), of which the Ministry of Science, Research and Universities is the holder. Its operation corresponds to Red.es, from the Ministry for Digital Transformation.

Red.es explains that the fiber optic network is connected to Routers of Huawei from which more than 500 Spanish educational and research institutions are connected. Telefónica installed said Routers And now digital transition wanted to add components so that its power passed from 100 Gbps (Gigabytes per second) to 400 Gbps and thus improve security and accommodate new demands such as supercomputing or services of the Ministry of Defense.

To do this, the contract provided for actions for five months in various points of presence (PDPS), as it is called in technical language the places from which users connect to the ultra -granted fiber optic network. The repowering were planned in Seville, Madrid, Vizcaya, Mallorca, Zaragoza and Valencia. The works were going to consist of supplying, installing, integrating and managing hardware in the Routers Huawei to increase his capacity. Among the specifications of said hardware To install are also references from Huawei, according to the sentence of technical conditions of the contract.

5G cybersecurity committee

The Ministry of Digital Transformation already included Huawei in the 5G Security Operations Center, known as SOC 5G (for its acronym in English), a public body responsible for supervising and certifying the safety of the systems, networks and services of the new generation of 5G mobile telephony. The Chinese manufacturer is part of an advisory council in which the other 5G infrastructure companies such as the Swedish Ericsson and the Finnish Nokia are represented, as the country revealed. The ministry directed by Óscar López, on whom the committee depends, defends that Huawei is integrated into soc 95, but only for advisory purposes, without having any decision -making power and without access to critical information.

For its part, Telefónica has renewed the most important contract of its 5G network with Huawei, granting the administration of the nucleus or Core From its 5G network for residential users from 2025 to 2030, as this newspaper also reported. He Core It is the critical element of the network and, therefore, the first objective in case of cyber attack. Telefónica defends that Huawei only contributes the platform, but the data is managed by the company itself, always encrypted so the Chinese firm does not have access to them.