Photo taken on April 23, 2018 shows the Huawei 5G Truck at its roadshow in Madrid, Spain. (Xinhua)
General Manager of Huawei Technologies Espana, Tony Jin Yong, on Wednesday criticized the U.S. ban on Huawei while insisting that Huawei would continue to invest in 5G and cybersecurity.
The U.S. ban "is a step backwards, which will affect commerce, the exchange of ideas and the search for a better economy and a technological and digital ecosystem", Jin said when asked about the U.S.' decision to blacklist Huawei and Google's move to block the Chinese company's Android license.
The U.S. government said recently that it will "prohibit transactions posing an unacceptable risk" to the country by declaring a national emergency over what it claims are technological threats, and announced restrictions on the sale and transfer of U.S. technologies to Huawei.
"We need to work together in order to break down these walls and at Huawei we are going to continue working to do this through investment in research and development and by collaborating with all of our stakeholders in the sector, be they companies, governments or universities," Jin said during a Huawei 5G Roadshow in the Spanish capital.
The roadshow is touring Europe under the banner "5G is ON - Building a Fully Connected Intelligent Europe", showcasing Huawei's investment in and solutions for the 5G rollout.
"Our commitment to the development of 5G has been made clear once again thanks to this program, which is bringing to European capitals the most up-to-date technology," explained Jin.
He said the roadshow showed that Huawei was "unquestionably the leading company in 5G and the numbers back that up".
"In 2018 alone, we spent 800 million U.S. dollars on R&D for the development of 5G and we estimate that in the next 5 years we will reach a total investment of 100,000 million U.S. dollars.
"We are working with our partners in the main sectors of the industry in order to guide innovation towards an intelligent and totally-connected world," he said.
Jin rejected accusations that Huawei's technology presented a security risk, saying the company "could not accept accusations without any legal basis. We are the company that has undergone the most scrutiny in the world and there has never been any incident with our technology".
"Cybersecurity is our priority and we have shown a commitment in our work here in Spain for several years," he insisted, stressing that questions about security were mere "excuses" for the company's critics.
5G will allow for faster internet connections and greater data transfer capacities, enabling advances in artificial intelligence, Internet of Things and autonomous vehicle development.
