Britain Bans Huawei, US welcomes the step
Britain has banned Huawie from its existing 5G network on Tuesday. Operators like Vodafone and BT have been given time till 2027 to remove all Huawei mobile equipment from the country’s 5G network.
Digital and Culture Minister Oliver Dowden said that new sanctions that the US had imposed on the company in May had “significantly changed” the landscape. “Given the uncertainty this creates around Huawei’s supply chain, the UK can no longer be confident it will be able to guarantee the security of future Huawei 5G equipment,” Dowden said.
The decision comes as a welcome news for US, as it is trying to get its allies to exclude Chinese companies from their 5G network. Even though the decision has been taken by Britain, however it faces some negative steps that the wounded dragon would take against them.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had said last month that “the tide is turning against Huawei as citizens around the world are waking up to the danger of the Chinese Communist Party’s surveillance state.”
The decision taken by the UK comes as great shock for the “Chinese Giant” as it has been operating in the UK for the past 20 years and accounted for 24% of its sales in the previous year. The phone has become quite unattractive since, US blocked it from using Google apps.
Huawei said it was confident that the recent US sanctions would not have affected “the resilience or security” of its products and described the UK announcement as disappointing. “It threatens to move Britain into the digital slow lane, push up bills and deepen the digital divide,” said Ed Brewster, a spokesperson for Huawei UK.
“Regrettably our future in the UK has become politicized, this is about US trade policy and not security.””Based on the current direct export rule that the US put on, I really think that Huawei’s 5G equipment business is in grave danger,” Jefferies analyst Edison Lee said last month.
The European rivals of Huawei said they were ready to fill the 5G void left by Huawei.
Nokia said in a statement that it has the “capacity and expertise to replace all of the Huawei equipment in the UK’s networks at scale and speed.” Arun Bansal, Europe and Latin America president for Ericsson, said in a statement that the Swedish company “has the technology, experience and supply chain capacity,” to help the United Kingdom reach its 5G goals.
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