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U.K. will allow Huawei to play a role in building its 5G networks
Britain will allow Chinese telecoms giant Huawei a limited role in building its 5G networks, the government says.The U.K.’s decision on Tuesday to give Huawei a role in building its 5G networks goes against U.S. pressure to ban the Chinese telecom giant. (Jason Lee/Reuters)Britain will allow Chinese telecom giant Huawei a limited role in building…
Britain will allow Chinese telecoms giant Huawei a limited role in building its 5G networks, the government says.
Britain will allow Chinese telecom giant Huawei a limited role in building its 5G networks, the government said on Tuesday.
It said high-risk vendors would be excluded from the sensitive core of networks, and there would be a 35 per cent cap on their involvement in the non-sensitive parts.
The U.K. faced opposing pressures from the United States and China on the eve of Brexit.
The United States had wanted U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson to ban Huawei completely, arguing that Beijing could use the company's equipment to steal Western secrets. Huawei has denied any involvement in espionage.
Beijing had warned that blocking the company would hurt Chinese investment.
Huawei, the world's biggest producer of telecom equipment, said the United States wants it blocked from Britain's 5G network because no U.S. company can offer the same range of technology at a competitive price.
5G is one of the biggest innovations since the birth of the internet a generation ago, offering consumers and businesses much faster data speeds.
The British government's move leaves Canada as the only nation within the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network that has not made a decision on whether or not to make Huawei part of its 5G network plans.
Canada is grappling with its strained relationship with the Chinese government, as the first phase of extradition hearings for Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou concluded last week and two Canadians — Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig — remain detained in China.
In what some have compared to the Cold War arms race, the United States is worried that 5G dominance would embed China into global communications networks, giving it an unassailable technological and security advantage.
Huawei's equipment is already used by Britain's biggest telecom companies such as BT and Vodafone, but it has been largely deployed at the “edge” of the network and excluded in the “core” where data is processed.
The United States has argued that as 5G technology evolves, the distinction between the “edge” and “core” will blur as data is processed throughout the network, making it difficult to contain any security risks.
Tom Tugendhat, a Conservative former head of the British parliament's foreign affairs committee, had compared giving Huawei access to Britain's 5G network to “allowing the fox into the hen house when really we should be guarding the wire.”
But telecoms companies have warned that it will cost them billions of dollars and delay the roll-out of 5G if Huawei is banned completely. It would leave them reliant on Sweden's Ericsson and Finland's Nokia, the only major competitors to the Chinese giant.
British intelligence officials have criticized Huawei for failing to address security flaws in its equipment, but say they have found no evidence of state espionage and believe they are able to successfully manage any risks posed by the firm.
The debate over Huawei's role in 5G networks has split opinion across Europe, with politicians weighing the U.S.-led arguments against lucrative trade ties with China.
Former Prime Minister Theresa May agreed last year before leaving office to block Huawei from all core parts of the 5G network, but to give it restricted access to non-core parts.
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