House Republican Circulating Letter on T-Mobile/Sprint National Security Concerns
Rep. Robert Pittenger, R-N.C., is collecting colleagues’ signatures on a letter he plans to send this week to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin voicing national security concerns about T-Mobile buying Sprint. Japan-based Softbank, with majority ownership of Sprint, has a “documented…
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history of working with Huawei, a major Chinese telecom company, widely known to pose cyber threats,” Pittenger said. T-Mobile/Sprint “would increase telecommunications risks associated with third-party foreign entities, including Huawei, being utilized in the development of U.S. 5G infrastructure” partly on a November Softbank-Huawei 5G deployment agreement. Sprint didn't “address serious security concerns,” including not abiding its 2013 agreement to replace Huawei equipment in its network after the Softbank/Sprint and Sprint/Clearwire (see 1304010074), Pittenger wrote. Sprint has "a strong record of compliance with the National Security Agreement," a spokeswoman said. "We spent more than $200 million replacing network gear that was deployed in the Clearwire network that Sprint acquired in 2013. Sprint has been a trusted partner of the U.S. government and the agencies that monitor the Sprint/SoftBank NSA have been complimentary of compliance." T-Mobile didn’t comment.