China's Huawei has firmly dismissed reports claiming the vendor supplied equipment to aid in internet monitoring and web censorship in Iran.
In a statement on the vendor's website, Huawei denied supplying any technology that can be used for news censorship or web monitoring.
“We have never been involved in and do not provide any services relating to monitoring or filtering technologies and equipment anywhere in the world,” the statement reads.
“Huawei's work in Iran is no different than our work in any other market and we are only involved in the R&D, manufacturing and sales of telecommunications equipment that is for commercial and civilian use.”
Huawei was responding to – but did not name - a report in the Wall Street Journal last month, which claims that the vendor “plays a role in enabling Iran's state security network.”
The report cites sources claiming that Huawei pitched for a contract to build a mobile news delivery platform based on alleged experience censoring news for the Chinese government.
The vendor acknowledges providing the platform to customer MTN Irancell, but insists it has no involvement with any aspect of the content that is hosted on it.
Huawei also dismissed claims in the article that it dominates Iran's telecom sector, stating that “just this year, we lost two major contracts to our western competitors for commercial systems with two major [Iranian] operators.”
Huawei has been struggling to appease US suspicions over the security of its gear. Such concerns most recently led to the vendor being excluded from the bidding for a major US public safety network project.