Huwaei 5G kit to be banned from UK by 2027

Digital Secretary Oliver Dowden told the House of Commons of the decision to ban Huawei 5G Kit must be removed from the UK. Mr. Dowden also said, “This has not been an easy decision, but it is the right one for the UK telecoms networks, for our national security and our economy, both now and indeed in the long run”.  He further revealed the move would delay UK’s 5G rollout by a year and the cumulative cost of this, and earlier restrictions against Huawei would amount to £2bn.

The UK’s mobile providers are being banned from buying new Huawei 5G equipment after 31 December, and they must also remove all the Chinese firm’s 5G kit from their networks by 2027.

Because the US sanctions only affect future equipment, the government has been advised there is no security justification for removing 2G, £G and 4G Huawei equipment.

The decision is further to President Donald Trump’s sanctions which claim the firm poses a national security threat –something Huawei denies.

Huawei said the move was “bad news for anyone in the UK with a mobile phone and threatened to move Britain into the digital slow lane, push up bills and deepen the digital divide.”

Both BT and Vodafone had warned that customers could face mobile blackouts if they were forced to remove all of Huawei’s 5G kit in less time.

Huawei says it employs 1, 600 people in the UK and claims to be one of Britain’s largest source of investment from China. The firm on Monday, announced a 13 per cent rise in sales for the first half of 2020 compared to the same period in 2019, totalling  $51.7 bn (454bn yuan).

Huawei’s UK chairman and the ex-CEO 0f BP, Lord Browne, would be leaving the Chinese company before his term had expired, as he had given his notice a few days ago and would formally step down in September.

BT is set to be telecoms operator most affected by the decision given it runs both the EE mobile network and Openreach, which provides fixed=line infrastructure to individual internet providers. The move however will benefit Nokia and Ericsson, which are the other two 5G kit vendors.

In June, the US Department of Defense published a list of 20 companies it claimed had close ties to the Chinese military, which included Panda Electronics – the firm with which Ericsson jointly runs a manufacturing facility in the Chinese city of Nanjing.