Yesterday, Inside Towers reported on FBI’s probes into Huawei gear used on cell towers near U.S. military installations. As early as the Obama administration, FBI agents were monitoring what they called a disturbing pattern along stretches of Interstate 25 in Colorado and Montana, and on arteries into Nebraska, according to CNN. The heavily trafficked corridor connects some of the most secretive military installations in the U.S., including a group of nuclear missile silos.
Small, rural telecom providers were installing cheaper, Chinese-made routers and other technology atop cell towers up and down I-25 and elsewhere in the region, notes CNN. Many of them turned to Huawei for cheaper, reliable equipment.
Beginning in late 2011, Viaero, the largest regional provider in the area, signed a contract with Huawei to provide the equipment for its upgrade to 3G. A decade later, it has Huawei tech installed across its entire fleet of towers, roughly 1,000 spread over five western states.
As Huawei equipment began to proliferate near U.S. military bases, federal investigators started taking notice, sources familiar with the matter told CNN. Of particular concern was that Huawei was routinely selling cheap equipment to rural providers in cases that appeared to be unprofitable for Huawei — but which placed its equipment near military assets. Huawei says it doesn’t use the telecom gear it sells to spy on the U.S. government or its citizens.
The Competitive Carriers Association has said it was legal to purchase the equipment when some small, rural telecoms did so. The FCC made it illegal to do so in 2019, and is now crafting its “Rip & Replace” reimbursement program to make whole telecoms who now need to remove what the U.S. considers to be untrusted communications gear.
By examining the Huawei equipment themselves, FBI investigators determined it could recognize and disrupt DoD-spectrum communications — even though it had been certified by the FCC, according to a source familiar with the investigation. “It’s not technically hard to make a device that complies with the FCC that listens to nonpublic bands but then is quietly waiting for some activation trigger to listen to other bands,” said Eduardo Rojas, who leads the radio spectrum lab at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida.
Weather Camera Concerns
Around 2014, Viaero started mounting high-definition surveillance cameras on its towers to live-stream weather and traffic, a public service it shared with local news organizations. With dozens of cameras posted up and down I-25, the cameras provided a 24-7 bird’s eye view of traffic and incoming weather, even providing advance warning of tornadoes.
But they were also inadvertently capturing the movement of U.S. military equipment and personnel. The intelligence community determined the publicly posted live-streams were being viewed and likely captured from China, according to sources. At least some of the cameras in question were running on Huawei networks.
Viaero CEO Frank DiRico said it never occurred to him the cameras could be a national security risk. ”There’s a lot of missile silos in areas we cover. There is some military presence,” DiRico told CNN. But, he said, “I was never told to remove the equipment or to make any changes.” DiRico doesn’t question the government’s insistence that he needs to remove Huawei equipment, but he is skeptical that China’s intelligence services can exploit either the Huawei hardware itself or the camera equipment.
“We monitor our network pretty good,” DiRico said, adding that Viaero took over the support and maintenance for its own networks from Huawei shortly after installation.
Given the strategic risk, Lenkart said, “Rip and Replace is a very blunt and inefficient remediation.” DiRico said the cost of Rip and Replace is astronomical and that he doesn’t expect the reimbursement money to be enough to pay for the change. Still, he expects to start removing the equipment within the next year.
By Leslie Stimson, Inside Towers Washington Bureau Chief
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