Following deliberations, the U. K. government will slowly remove Huawei gear from its cellular networks, at massive cost and with delays to 5G rollouts.
(Reuters) — Prime Minister Boris Johnson ordered Huawei equipment to be purged completely from Britain’s 5G network by 2027, risking the ire of China by signalling that the world’s biggest telecoms equipment maker is no longer welcome in the West.
The seven-year lag will please British telecoms operators such as BT, Vodafone, and Three, which had feared they would be forced to spend billions of pounds to rip out Huawei equipment much faster.
From the end of the year, it will be illegal for operators to buy any 5G equipment from Huawei, Britain’s Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport secretary Oliver Dowden told Parliament.
He said the decision would delay the rollout of 5G by two to three years and add costs of up to 2 billion pounds ($2.5 billion).
The United States had long pushed Johnson to reverse a decision he made in January to grant Huawei a limited role in 5G. The U. K. has also been dismayed by a crackdown on Hong Kong and the perception China did not tell the whole truth over the coronavirus.
Dowden said the cyber arm of Britain’s GCHQ eavesdropping agency, the National Cyber Security Centre, had told ministers it could no longer guarantee the stable supply of Huawei gear after the United States imposed new sanctions on chip technology.
