Category: Communications

The leaders of a US House of Representatives panel have called on top Chinese telecom companies to detail any links to the Chinese military and government, citing national security concerns posed by the companies’ US presence.

Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, the top Democrat on the House Select Committee on China and the panel’s chair, Republican John Moolenaar, asked China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom to answer a series of questions by March 31, according to letters seen on Friday by Reuters.

The lawmakers raised concerns the firms could exploit access to American data through their US cloud and internet businesses by providing it to Beijing, citing a 2024 Reuters report that revealed a Commerce Department investigation into the matter.

“China Telecom’s ongoing US operations – particularly in internet backbone exchanges and cloud computing environments – could … allow unauthorized data access, espionage, or sabotage by the Chinese Communist Party,” the lawmakers wrote in one of the letters to the firms seen by Reuters.

The firm’s “documented connections to (Chinese) intelligence raise urgent national security questions in light of the Chinese government’s increasingly aggressive attacks on US telecommunications networks,” they added.

The letters show growing bipartisan concern about the Chinese telecoms’ U.S. footprint following a series of high-profile Chinese-led attacks on American telecoms infrastructure.

Salt Typhoon, described by the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee Mark Warner as “the worst telecom hack in our nation’s history,” compromised sensitive data of millions of Americans.

Volt Typhoon, tied to China’s Ministry of State Security, is waging what the FBI calls China’s “most significant cyber-espionage campaign in history,” the letters add. Beijing has denied responsibility.

China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom have long been in Washington’s crosshairs. The Federal Communications Commission denied China Mobile’s application to provide US telecommunications service in 2019 and revoked China Telecom and China Unicom’s authorizations in 2021 and 2022.

In April 2024, the FCC went further and said it was barring the companies from providing broadband service once new rules took effect on net neutrality. But the net neutrality rules were blocked by a court.

Nothing prevents Chinese telecoms from providing cloud services and routing wholesale U.S. internet traffic, which gives them access to Americans’ data, the lawmakers said. Reuters

Microsoft is shifting its data centre strategy to be driven by power availability rather than user demand or creating supply, and sees the Nordic region as a prime location for emission-free capacity to sustain artificial intelligence, its director in charge of AI Infrastructure said.

Microsoft, which operates some 300 data centres globally and is investing about $80 billion more in them by the end of June, has a goal to become carbon negative by 2030, meaning it needs to find emission-free renewable power to be able to sustain the AI-driven expansion of its cloud-based data storage and usage.

Alistair Speirs, Microsoft’s senior director for Datacentre & AI Infrastructure, said the global expansion in the use of artificial intelligence was creating new workloads that are not tied to a specific location by legislation, allowing Microsoft to build data centres where abundant emission-free power is available, such as the Nordic region.

“There’ll be locations across the world but efficient energy infrastructure is going to be the deciding factor for a lot of these areas,” he told Reuters on a visit to Finland.

Microsoft is currently developing a dozen new data centres on three sites in Finland and has partnered with local district heating producers, such as utility Fortum, that will redistribute the waste heat from the data centres to heat homes.

“As we look at the Nordic region, Finland in particular, it has huge advantages to grow this sort of infrastructure,” Speirs said, referring to the region’s cold climate that helps cool data centres, reliable power grids and abundant availability of carbon-neutral power among other factors.

Microsoft’s strategy for its data centre expansion was initially driven by where demand was, then shifted to creating supply where it anticipated more demand, before taking on what the company now calls its “power first” approach, in which affordable and emission-free power supply is a decisive factor driving investment, he said.

Fortum, which will collect waste heat on two new Microsoft data centre sites in the Helsinki region, said the collaboration would allow it to cut emissions further towards its goal of reaching carbon neutrality in its district heating – or heat supplied and distributed from a central source – business in Finland by 2029. Reuters

In a major boost to India’s semiconductor research ecosystem, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee has established Uttarakhand’s first nanofabrication facility.

As reported, developed at a cost of Rs 15 crore, the state-of-the-art center is designed to enhance India’s semiconductor capabilities through advanced research and laboratory testing.

The facility, funded by the Department of Science and Technology, has been in development since 2019. It has also benefited from IIT Roorkee’s collaboration with leading institutions in Taiwan, a global semiconductor manufacturing hub, facilitating expertise exchange and technological advancements.

Equipped with cutting-edge tools, the facility features a 50 kV electron beam lithography (EBL) system with 10nm resolution and an inductively coupled plasma reactive ion etching (ICP-RIE) system, a critical technology used in semiconductor device manufacturing.

To maintain precision in nanotechnology research, the center also houses ultra-clean rooms with controlled environments, including Class 100 and Class 1000 spaces spanning 300 and 600 sq ft, respectively.

Currently operational, the center is backed by five faculty members and has already trained 30 in-house research scholars and MTech students. Additionally, 12 PhD scholars are utilizing the facility for their research.

The center focuses on key areas such as quantum sensors, quantum optics, spintronics, memory devices, thin-film devices, photodetectors, and photonic crystals, with ongoing efforts to further optimize its capabilities.

IIT Bombay and IIT Madras Driving Semiconductor Innovation
While IIT Roorkee’s new nanofabrication facility marks a significant step for Uttarakhand, IIT Bombay and IIT Madras have also been instrumental in shaping India’s semiconductor industry.

IIT Bombay’s Nanofabrication Facility (IITBNF) is a premier multidisciplinary, open-access research and development center under the Department of Electrical Engineering. IIT Bombay has been a leader in semiconductor device characterization and modeling since the 1980s.

Its comprehensive fabrication capabilities were significantly bolstered in 2006 with the establishment of the Centres of Excellence in Nanoelectronics (CEN) at IIT Bombay and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore, an initiative supported by the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY).

IITBNF is widely used by researchers across India, with its semiconductor R&D spanning applications such as communications, radar, encryption, quantum information, AI, photodetectors, power switching, and energy conversion.

The facility has contributed to significant scientific breakthroughs, industry collaborations, and startup-driven semiconductor product development. It also plays a key role in training semiconductor professionals through the Indian Nanoelectronics Users’ Programme (INUP).

Meanwhile, IIT Madras has taken strides in indigenous semiconductor design and development. Earlier this year, in collaboration with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), IIT Madras successfully booted the SHAKTI-based semiconductor chip, a milestone in India’s push for self-reliant aerospace-grade processors.

The SHAKTI microprocessor project, led by Prof. V. Kamakoti at the Prathap Subrahmanyam Centre for Digital Intelligence and Secure Hardware Architecture (PSCDISHA) within IIT Madras’ Department of Computer Science and Engineering, focuses on RISC-V-based open-source microprocessors.

Supported by MeitY under the Digital India RISC-V (DIR-V) initiative, the project aims to develop secure, indigenous microprocessors for diverse applications, reinforcing India’s strategic push toward semiconductor independence.

India’s Expanding Semiconductor R&D Landscape
With IIT Roorkee strengthening semiconductor research in Uttarakhand, IIT Bombay advancing nanofabrication and semiconductor technology, and IIT Madras pioneering indigenous chip design, India’s academic institutions are playing a crucial role in the country’s semiconductor ambitions.

These initiatives align with the government’s larger vision of boosting domestic semiconductor capabilities and reducing reliance on foreign technologies, paving the way for India’s emergence as a key player in the global semiconductor ecosystem. APAC News Network

A US congressional committee urged Americans to remove Chinese-made wireless routers from their homes, including those made by TP-Link, calling them a security threat that opened the door for China to hack U.S. critical infrastructure.

The House of Representatives Select Committee on China has pushed the Commerce Department to investigate China’s TP-Link Technology Co, which according to research firm IDC is the top seller of WiFi routers internationally by unit volume.

US authorities are considering a ban on the sale of the company’s routers, according to media reports.

Rob Joyce, former director of cybersecurity at the National Security Agency, told Wednesday’s committee hearing that TP-Link devices exposed individuals to cyber intrusion that hackers could use to gain leverage to attack critical infrastructure.

“We need to all take action and replace those devices so they don’t become the tools that are used in the attacks on the U.S.,” Joyce said, adding that he understood the Commerce Department was considering a ban.

TP-Link said in a statement to Reuters that the hearing did not provide a “shred of evidence” the company was linked to China’s government. “No government has access to or control over the design and production of our routers,” it said.

“Any claims suggesting our products pose a unique risk to U.S. national security are baseless and without merit,” said Jeff Barney, president of TP-Link Systems Inc.

The company said it had split with its former China affiliate and now manufactures its routers in Vietnam.

Democratic Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, holding up a consumer-grade TP-Link router, said at the hearing: “Don’t use this.

“I don’t have one at home either. It’s not a good idea,” Krishnamoorthi said.

Joyce said Chinese government-linked hackers were “approaching a peer status” with U.S. cyber capabilities, and said he had grave concerns that the Trump administration’s efforts to cut the federal workforce could undermine U.S. cyber defenses.

Democratic Representative Shontel Brown said the Trump administration had laid off more than 130 officials from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

In 2023, CISA said TP-Link routers had a vulnerability that could be exploited to execute remote code.

Krishnamoorthi said the U.S. must deter Chinese hackers by going on offense.

“I think that we should also consider potentially enlisting private sector actors to hack back at the hackers. I’m going to get in a lot of trouble for saying that, but I think you have to sometimes use fire against fire,” Krishnamoorthi said. Reuters

SBI Holdings denied that it is negotiating with South Korea’s SK Hynix and Taiwan’s UMC about collaboration on a chips plant in Miyagi prefecture.

SBI aims to collaborate with SK Hynix on back-end DRAM processes and with UMC on chips for vehicles, according to the Nikkan Kogyo report, which did not cite sources.

SBI announced in September it was dissolving a joint venture with Taiwan’s Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp.

The companies had been seeking government subsidies to build a foundry in northern Japan. SBI said at the time it would consider partnering with other firms on chip-related business. Reuters

Samsung Electronics’ head of North American public affairs is expected to resign and it is looking for a successor with ties to U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration and the Republican Party.

Samsung is looking to replace the current person in the North American external relations role, Mark Lippert, who served as U.S. ambassador to South Korea during the Obama administration, and was hired by Samsung in 2022 while former President Joe Biden was in office, DongA Ilbo reported citing unnamed industry sources.

A Samsung spokesperson said it does not comment on speculation, while Lippert did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comments. Reuters

Maharashtra will formulate a Space Tech Policy in the next three months, said Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Thursday while asserting that the coming era belongs to advanced technologies.

Speaking at the ‘Space-Tech for Good Governance’ conference here, the CM emphasized the transformative potential of space technology and artificial intelligence (AI) in governance.

“The coming era belongs to these advanced technologies,” he said while hailing Prime Minister Narendra Modi for formulating policies that recognize the importance of space tech and integrating the private sector into its growth.

“With over 189 space startups emerging in India, space technology is being utilized for applications like remote sensing, drone GPS, and transparency in governance initiatives. The Gatishakti platform has revolutionized infrastructure development. Projects that typically require years for completion are now being executed in significantly shorter timeframes due to space tech integration,” Fadnavis said.

The gram panchayat development plan could benefit from geo-mapping, while space technology was deployed for water resource management in 20,000 villages in Maharashtra under the Jalyukt Shivar scheme, he said.

“Maharashtra will soon formulate a dedicated Space Tech Policy within the next three months. This policy will aim to develop a startup ecosystem around space technology, fostering innovation and entrepreneurship in the sector,” the CM said.

He also highlighted the importance of advanced technologies in disaster management and the health sector.

The conference explored how cutting-edge space technologies such as satellite imagery and geospatial tools can address various governance challenges, particularly in rural India. PTI

Memorandums of understanding (MoUs) for projects worth Rs 1.5 lakh crore were signed during the 19th vision summit of the India Electronics & Semiconductor Association (IESA), held in Gandhinagar.

IESA president Ashok Chandak told FE that increasing interest of global semiconductor companies towards India shows that the country is poised for a big leap, with the end goal being a “complete ownership of the semiconductor manufacturing system”.

The MoUs signed are an addition to the existing five projects approved by the Indian Semiconductor Mission. “Within the next five-seven years, we will see more fabrication (fab) and outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) plants in the country,” Chandak said.

He stressed the importance of strengthening India’s semiconductor manufacturing capacity – “OSAT plants are a good starting point for companies… These plants will cement one end of the value chain. Now, we must focus on developing a complete semiconductor manufacturing ecosystem, which could take another 10-20 years.”

Big-ticket investments announced during the summit include an MoU with Jabil India to establish a silicon photonics manufacturing unit in Gujarat with a Rs 1,000-crore investment, a financial support agreement between ISM and Tata Electronics (TEPL) for a Rs 91,526-crore semiconductor fab unit in Dholera, an MoU between Taiwan Surface Mounting Technology and the Gujarat government for an electronics manufacturing service unit at an investment of Rs 500 crore, a Rs 10,000-crore MoU between NextGen, Hitachi and SolidLight for a compound fabrication and optoelectronics facility in Gujarat and a tripartite agreement between TEPL, Himax Technologies and Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation for a fabless semiconductor plant.

“We have many companies investing in semiconductor R&D, it is our core strength. However, most companies venture towards design services, rather than taking complete ownership of producing a chip, due to financial, funding and time constraints. While India will continue to rely on semiconductor component imports for the next five-seven years, new agreements will facilitate our domestic production ambitions.” Financial Express

The Italian government is having growing doubts about closing a €1.5 billion ($1.6 billion) deal with Elon Musk’s Starlink in light of the US pullback from commitments to European security, people familiar with the matter said.

Possible alternatives to Starlink for secure satellite-based communications to the government include Eutelsat Communications SA, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the talks are confidential. Musk, a close ally of US President Donald Trump, is also seen as an unreliable partner by some in Meloni’s administration, they said.

A spokesperson for the Italian government declined to comment. SpaceX, which owns Starlink, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“Eutelsat regularly engages with European governments and institutions on secure satellite communications,” a Eutelsat spokesperson said, adding that the company doesn’t comment on ongoing discussions with specific governments.

The issue came up at a meeting with ministers Tuesday, when Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said changing geopolitics required looking for viable SpaceX alternatives, according to the people familiar. President Sergio Mattarella is among those who strongly support considering different options, they said.

Reuters reported earlier that Eutelsat was among the companies in talks with the Italian government to provide secure communications.

In January, Bloomberg News reported that Italy was in advanced talks with SpaceX for a deal to provide communications services for the Italian military and direct-to-cell satellite service during emergencies, which was later confirmed by Meloni’s office. However, Trump’s decisions this week to halt military assistance to Ukraine and restrict intelligence sharing with Kyiv have highlighted the fast-changing relationship between the US and the European Union.

Starlink has become an essential service for the Ukrainian military in its three-year war with Russia after much of the country’s communications infrastructure has been knocked out. Strained ties between Washington and Kyiv after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s White House visit on Friday descended into a shouting match with Trump and Vice President JD Vance have raised fears that the service could be disrupted.

Meloni and her entourage have privately been staggered by the magnitude of attacks on long-established tenets of foreign affairs by Trump and his new administration, Bloomberg reported in February, citing people with knowledge of their thinking.

Trump has challenged other traditional US allies as he seeks an economic and diplomatic reset of America’s place in the world, including sparking a tariff war with Canada and Mexico.

Meloni has been positioning herself as a bridge between Europe and the US administration and has a long-standing rapport with Musk. She attended Trump’s inauguration in January and recently headlined an annual gathering of conservatives that Trump and Musk attended.

Shares in France’s Eutelsat, which operates the second-biggest portfolio of low-earth orbit satellites after Starlink, have soared this week to the highest since 2022 as EU politicians pledged to boost defense spending. They rose a record 120% to €7.85. Bloomberg

President Donald Trump made no bones about his distaste for the US Chips Act during his congressional address Tuesday night — raising questions in the semiconductor industry about the future of the program and the role some U.S. companies will play going forward.

Trump also touted a recent agreement with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. in which the world’s largest chip-manufacturing company promised to invest $100 billion into building more factories in the U.S., in addition to $65 billion already planned. The latest agreement was not through any funding from the Chips Act, which funded $6.6 billion toward TSMC’s Arizona plants last November.

Trump’s latest stance made it seem likely to investors that he is no longer trying to parlay any kind of deal for Intel Corp. INTC-2.44% as Wall Street had speculated in the last month, which led to a big jump in its stock.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Intel Interim Chairman Frank Yeary held talks with Trump administration officials last month, expressing concerns about Intel’s future. Per the report, TSMC had studied controlling all or parts of Intel’s chip-making plants, potentially under a consortium, as part of a move that would break Intel in two. Some analysts have also speculated that the Trump administration has been working to get more U.S. chip companies to use Intel’s manufacturing facilities, in addition or as an alternative to TSMC’s.

Shares of Intel fell 2.4% on Wednesday.

“I think Intel has been left at the side of the road,” said Robert Maire, president of Semiconductor Advisors.

Maire and many other analysts have not been in favor of any sort of partnership between Intel and its fiercest rival TSMC, saying it never would worked. And in recent weeks, there have been positive reports that Intel’s much-anticipated next-generation manufacturing process, called 18a, is yielding good results.

“I don’t know why we are having these conversations — they keep telling us 18a is fine,” said Bernstein Research analyst Stacy Rasgon. “They keep telling us 18a is on track. I don’t think they are desperate for cash.”

Rasgon also said he expects Intel’s next chip line — code-named Panther Lake, and the first product to go in production on 18a — to launch at year-end. High-volume production is expected in 2026.

The Chips Act was created by Congress to encourage the semiconductor industry to build more plants in the U.S., and it would take an act of Congress to actually kill the Chips Act. That said, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency has already laid off about a third of the staff in the Commerce Department that was associated with administering funds.

“I do not think the president will find much support in Congress for undermining these chips investments and the massive amount of jobs they are creating,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, said in a statement.

One possibility, Maire said, is that the projects that were promised funding in the last few months of the Biden administration will not get funded. “The new money promised, those deals promised at the end of the Biden administration, I think those are all toast,” he said. “[Trump] is going to undo all that.”

In addition to TSMC’s award of $6.6 billion in the last two months of 2024, other big award recipients from the Chips Act included Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. which was awarded $4.75 billion for its plans to invest $37 billion in central Texas for two fabs and an R&D facility. Texas Instruments Inc. won $1.61 billion in direct funding, as part of its plans to spend $18 billion through the end of the decade on three plants — two in Texas and one in Utah. Micron Technology Inc. was awarded an additional $6.4 billion toward its plan to spend $100 billion on two high-volume manufacturing plants in Clay, N.Y., and $25 billion in Idaho.

“Most of the capex was coming from the companies anyway,” said Rasgon. “It was meaningful but it was not material.” He added that the tax credits were probably the more meaningful element of all the deals forged.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said during his confirmation hearings that he wants to review the awards finalized under President Biden. Trump said in his comments Wednesday night that whatever is left over from the Chips Act should be used to reduce the U.S. debt.

Raymond James’s Washington policy analysts said in a note to clients that they believed the Chips Act is unlikely to be repealed and the 25% tax credit for capital expenditures is likely to remain. They echoed Maire’s concerns about existing contracts that have not yet been funded.

“Aadditional grants will become increasingly unlikely,” the analysts wrote. “A bigger debate will be on changes to existing Chips Act rewards. There is an argument that could be made that Trump’s criticism could be used as an excuse to rework existing contracts, but also comes with concern that these changes could usher in new uncertainty for existing awards.” MarketWatch