The inability to win US government approval isn’t exactly an unfamiliar issue for Huawei, which by now must be conditioned not to expect a nod from major US telecom companies. But now, The Daily Beast reports that the U.S. Commerce Department has made it very clear that the Chinese company won’t have a role in building the country’s new dedicated first responder wireless network. A spokesman wasn’t shy about the reason, either, explaining that Huawei “will not be taking part in the building of America’s interoperable wireless emergency network for first responders due to U.S. government national security concerns.” And what about those national security concerns? Well, Huawei president Ren Zhengfei’s former role as a People’s Liberation Army technologist may have something to do with it, considering it wouldn’t be unreasonable to suspect that he still has some fairly close ties to Chinese government officials. We haven’t heard a peep from the feds regarding Huawei’s invitation for US officials to investigate the company earlier this year, but it’s safe to assume that the investigation either didn’t go very well, or more likely that it hasn’t happened at all. We imagine that whole corporate espionage debacle probably didn’t help the company, either.

Huawei blocked from first responder network contract, US cites ‘national security concerns’ originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 14 Oct 2011 11:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It looks like Sony Ericsson needs to juice up the invisibility cloak. Not only has the handset maker been pushing a decent number of phones through for Federal approval, it’s splayed out most of them for the whole world to see. The latest device to get the thumbs-up from the feds is the Xperia Mini Pro, which appears to be on track for its promised third-quarter launch. If we don’t see a different version of the same phone hit Washington soon, it’s more than likely that the 900 / 2100MHz Mini Pro won’t see much 3G activity in the US, since we use different frequencies stateside — though it’ll still function as a 2G device when it hops the pond with Europeans on holiday. We’ve yet a little while before the QWERTY smartphone comes out to play, but check out its outer (and inner) beauty in the gallery below.

Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini Pro ‘slides’ through FCC with photos in tow originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Jul 2011 10:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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