The UK’s government is expected to set a deadline of 2025 for the removal of all equipment made by Chinese telecom company Huawei from that country’s 5G networks.
Conservative lawmakers have pressured Prime Minister Boris Johnson to move the deadline up to 2023.
The Trump administration has actively discouraged allies from using Huawei for 5G implementation.
5G is expected to power everything from smartphones to driverless cars to power grids once it is implemented broadly. As a result, granting a foreign company access to critical network infrastructure is seen as a risk.
Last week, Guillaume Poupard, the head of France’s cybersecurity agency ANSSI said there will be no ban on using 5G equipment built by Huawei in France, but that the French government was encouraging firms not to use them.
The week before Singapore’s biggest telecomm companies selected Nokia and Ericsson to build their next-generation 5G network. Huawei had also been in the running to land that project.
Poupard said the decision by France should not be seen as anti-China, but rather a national security decision.
“This is not Huawei bashing or anti-Chinese racism,” he said. “All we’re saying is that the risk is not the same with European suppliers as with non-Europeans.”
Photo by James Frid