Chinese iPhone Has No Wi-Fi
---------------------------
by Glenn Fleishman <gl...@tidbits.com>
The combination of mobile broadband and Wi-Fi in the iPhone has long
been one of its selling points, and seamless data roaming between
cell and Wi-Fi...Not so in China. The iPhone model for sale by China
Unicom lacks Wi-Fi. This was widely rumored months before the deal
was in place for China Unicom to offer the iPhone.
<http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gLahWr8T0f1sDPIXmMEV4yoR5Z-AD9BL82BO0>
The reason for this omission is the Chinese government's efforts...
...to promote a proprietary security standard for 802.11 devices
called WAPI...
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WLAN_Authentication_and_Privacy_Infrastructure>
For the first few years, non-Chinese firms were required to partner
with...Chinese companies that had access to the
WAPI spec...many of these companies were tied to the
Chinese military,...Foreign firms protested,
because they would have had to disclose significant portions of
their intellectual property in a country that has a mixed record in
honoring patents and trade secrets...U.S. Secretary of State Colin
Powell raised WAPI in trade talks in 2004 because if required it
would be a bar for U.S. firms to sell Wi-Fi products in the country...
<http://www.iso.org/iso/home.htm>
<http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/166725/china_to_propose_wlan_security_standard_for_global_use_again.html>
A second concern about WAPI...that one must presume that a
proprietary standard that hasn't been subjected to full disclosure
and outside scrutiny includes backdoors for government access to
secured sessions...While WAPI may be completely secure, this can't be
determined, nor does that conform with the Chinese government's
history of Internet oversight...
<http://wifinetnews.com/>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Firewall_of_China>
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/10707>
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