Sprint agrees to shun Huawei equipment

Sprint Nextel, the US telephone carrier, and its Japanese suitor SoftBank have both agreed not to use equipment made by China’s Huawei , the chairman of the House intelligence committee said on March 28.

Rep Mike Rogers (R-MI) said that the two companies had given assurances that they would not use Huawei equipment in Sprint’s cellphone network. They had also agreed to replace products made by the Chinese company in the network of Clearwire, a data network operator that Sprint is acquiring. Rep Rogers also said the companies would make the same assurances to the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States, which monitors national security concerns in business deals. In October, Sprint agreed to sell a 70 per cent stake to Japan’s SoftBank for $20.1 billion.