Sprint Nextel and its Japanese suitor, SoftBank, have assured lawmakers that they will not use equipment from China’s Huawei Technologies in Sprint’s cellphone network, the chairman of the House intelligence committee said on Thursday.
Representative Mike Rogers, the chairman of the committee, said in an e-mailed statement that both Sprint and SoftBank of Japan had pledged not to use Huawei equipment in the existing Sprint network. The two also said they would move to replace Huawei products in the network of Clearwire, a high-speed data service provider that Sprint is in the process of acquiring.
Mr. Rogers added that he expects both companies to make similar assurances to the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States, a government body that oversees national security concerns in business transactions.
“I am pleased with their mitigation plans, but will continue to look for opportunities to improve the government’s existing authorities to thoroughly review all the national security aspects of proposed transactions,†he said in the statement.
The statement by Mr. Rogers highlights one of the government’s concerns about Sprint’s sale of majority control to SoftBank for $20.1 billion. SoftBank, one of Japan’s biggest cellphone service providers, uses equipment from two Chinese manufacturers, Huawei and ZTE, in its own networks.
The United States government has been exceedingly wary of potential national security issues posed by using equipment from Chinese companies. Yet that may put some telecom companies in a bind, as Huawei is one of the biggest manufacturers of networking equipment in the world.
SoftBank’s chief executive, Masayoshi Son, told DealBook in an interview last fall that his company’s use of Chinese networking equipment was limited, and that he would take steps to assuage the United States government’s concerns.
