Huawei Technologies will be banned from Britain’s 5G network, the British government announced on Tuesday in a major policy reversal.
By tearing up his earlier decision to allow Huawei up to a 35 per cent share in the non-sensitive parts of Britain’s 5G networks, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has ignored threats from Chinese officials that there will be “consequences” if the UK treats China as a “hostile partner”.
Ahead of Tuesday’s announcement, Huawei’s UK chairman John Browne, the former BP chief executive and a member of the House of Lords, announced that he would be leaving his post.
Under Britain’s new 5G plan, British phone companies will not be able to buy any new Huawei components for their 5G networks after the end of this year. “It will be illegal for them to do so,” Dowden said.
After that, all existing equipment made by the Shenzhen-based company will be removed from the 5G infrastructure by 2027, which Dowden called a “necessary and prudent timetable”.
The US has already blocked the company from using American technology in its microchips – a decision that prompted the Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre to conclude that Huawei would have to use potentially insecure technology and the resulting security risks would be impossible to control.
Huawei said that the “disappointing” decision was bad news for anyone in Britain with a mobile phone.
“We remain confident that the new US restrictions would not have affected the resilience or security of the products we supply to the UK,” Edward Brewster, a spokesman for Huawei UK said in a statement. “Regrettably our future in the UK has become politicised, this is about US trade policy and not security. We will conduct a detailed review of what today’s announcement means for our business here”.
After that, all existing equipment made by the Shenzhen-based company will be removed from the 5G infrastructure by 2027, which Dowden called a “necessary and prudent timetable”.
