Chinese telecommunications provider Huawei have appointed Perth-born Colin Giles as executive Vice President, following the company’s ban from providing services on Australia’s National Broadband Network.  

Mr Giles is no stranger to the telecoms game, he spent a number of years in various high positions for Nokia and other ICT providers. Reports say Giles will be in charge of global marketing, retail and open channel development.

Huawei has been the benefactor of some good luck in the fickle handset market, reporting a staggering 60 per cent year-on-year growth in 2012. It hasn’t helped their image in Australia though, with the provider labelled as a possible Trojan horse for Chinese cyber-spies. Huawei has been banned from bidding for NBN contracts, the result of a US House Intelligence Committee report stating Huawei was liable to build ‘backdoors’ into Australian network infrastructure that would provide an easy channel for espionage and even sabotage in times of conflict.

It is too early to tell whether Huawei’s new Australian VP will be able to polish the tarnished relationship between themselves and NBN Co. Some observers have noted that Huawei already provides mobile phone infrastructure for Telstra, incongruous with the fears held over work on the NBN.

The company's corporate senior vice president, Chen Lifang has said “It's impossible for Huawei to install any backdoors or vulnerabilities into our products... no-one has ever found any security breaches within Huawei's products, never, and it's impossible for us to do it.”