The United Kingdom announced Tuesday that Huawei would be banned from its high-speed 5G telecommunications network, in a decision that will anger China but please the United States.
The United Kingdom announced Tuesday that Huawei would be banned from its high-speed 5G telecommunications network, in a decision that will anger China but please the United States.
The role of the Chinese tech giant has become a central theme in London’s increasingly uneasy relationship with Beijing.
The U.K. has faced months of pressure from Washington, which says Huawei is a security risk because the company could be used by the Chinese government to spy on the West. Both China and Huawei have repeatedly denied this.
“There’s no such thing as a perfectly secure network,” Media Secretary Oliver Dowden told the House of Commons, but he said that the U.K. had to make sure its system was “as secure as it possibly can be.”
He announced that all new Huawei 5G equipment would be banned in the U.K. starting next year, and that the government would remove all of the company’s existing infrastructure by 2027.
The decision attempts to balance technology, geopolitics and the practical impact on consumers. Dowden conceded that banning Huawei would delay the U.K.’s 5G rollout by two years and cost up to 2 billion pounds, around $2.5 billion.
Source: NBC News