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Huawei
TechBig Tech

The numbers that show it’s hard for the UK to ditch Huawei

  • The world’s largest telecoms equipment supplier accounts for about 35 per cent of the radio access network gear used in Britain’s 4G infrastructure
  • Most of the initial 5G network gear already deployed by BT, Three UK and Vodafone come from Huawei

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Pedestrians walk past a Huawei Technologies product stand at a shop of mobile network operator EE, part of the BT Group, in central London in April of last year. Photo: Agence France-Presse
Bloomberg
The British government is rethinking its cautious welcome of Huawei Technologies into the country’s 5G mobile networks, but walking away from the Chinese technology giant will neither be easy nor cheap.

Growing tensions with Beijing have led Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government to seek out credible alternatives to Huawei’s antennas, routers and switching gear, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday. That could win him favours from Washington, which has urged its allies to ban the company.

Yet British telecommunications carriers are already building 5G mobile networks using Huawei equipment. Any other supplier – even Huawei’s big European rivals Nokia and Ericsson – would struggle to fill the void.

Intelligence officials want the government to make Britain’s networks less vulnerable to spying and sabotage of services and infrastructure. So the government has set out measures to tighten security and oversight of the four mobile network operators – BT Group’s EE, Vodafone Group, CK Hutchison Holdings’ Three UK and Telefonica’s O2.

These measures are expected to reach Parliament later this year for approval. Several lawmakers from Johnson’s own party, however, have pushed back, saying Huawei must have no role in 5G.

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