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Prime Minister Boris Johnson is reportedly preparing to remove Huawei equipment from United Kingdom’s 5G networks, according to the Financial Times .
The UK has cited national security concerns for phasing out Huawei from its telecom networks. According to the report, the UK is deciding to prepare a three-year plan to execute the same. Members of the UK’s Conservative party have been pushing for the removal of Huawei technology from its 5G infrastructure for a while now. It is possible that the UK may remove Huawei technology from its 5G infrastructure and the rest of its telecom network by 2023, it said.
The UK has also been facing some pressure from the United States for a complete ban on Huawei. The US President Donald Trump earlier this month had his executive order barring US companies from working with or purchasing telecom equipment from companies that pose a national security risk through May 2021, according to a Reuters report.
President Trump had signed an executive order on May 2019 invoking the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and barring US companies from using telecommunications equipment made by blacklisted firms, Reuters ad reported.
According to the report, US lawmakers said that the order was aimed specifically at Chinese companies such as Huawei Technologies Co. and ZTE Corp. which could no longer work with US companies such as Google and Microsoft for software and licenses. For instance, Huawei phones no longer had access to Android services like Google maps.
The US has argued that the company’s telecom equipment can aid the Chinese government’s spying efforts, a charge that Huawei has repeatedly denied, The Verge reported.
The UK government had been mulling the decision for a while now. But Vodafone, in March, said that the removal of Huawei’s technology from its telecom infrastructure could lead to a loss of millions of dollars and “dramatically affect their 5G business case," BBC reported.
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