BT said the telco was ‘well on the way’ to its target of removing Huawei from its mobile core by the end of 2023
The previous decision by the U.K. government to ban local telecoms firms from using Huawei equipment in the deployment of the country’s 5G networks has cost local carrier BT a total of £500 million ($612 million), local press reported, citing BT’s chief security and networks officer, Howard Watson, as saying.
The ban had been implemented on July 2020 over concerns that the use of Huawei gear in U.K. telcos’ network posed a risk to national security. The ban stipulated that all existing Huawei equipment must be fully removed from 5G networks by the end of 2027. Huawei had said its equipment did not pose any risk for national security.
Watson recently told a conference in London that BT is “well on the way” to its target of removing Huawei from its mobile core by the end of 2023.
Watson also noted that approximately 90% of BT’s 5G mobile data is currently running over its cloud network infrastructure with an Ericsson core, Watson said.
Meanwhile, Vodafone’s chief network officer Andrea Donà told the conference that the carrier has also made good progress in the removal Huawei tech. However, the executive highlighted that the fact of having to replace all the core infrastructure has been an “additional burden to an already constrained capital prioritization process.”
“We don’t get any additional money when these things happen,” he said. “The net effect of the Huawei high-risk vendor swap legislation means we’ve had to scale back 5G.”
The U.K. government had banned the use of Huawei components in local operators’ networks, following the sanctions imposed by the U.S. government.
In 2020, the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) of the U.S. Department of Commerce had announced restrictions on Huawei’s ability to use U.S. chipmaking equipment and software to design and manufacture its semiconductors abroad. Huawei was added to the Entity List in May 2019, after the Department of Commerce concluded that the vendor was engaged in activities that were contrary to U.S. national security or foreign policy interest, something that has been denied by the firm.
Germany’s interior ministry has recently proposed forcing local carriers to restrict their use of equipment made by Chinese vendors Huawei and ZTE, according to a Reuters report.
According to the report, the interior ministry is seeking to impose these new restrictions on 5G networks after an in-depth review highlighted the European country’s reliance on the two Chinese vendors.
The report added that Germany’s interior ministry has designed a staggered approach to try to limit disruption, by requiring local carriers to remove all critical components from Chinese vendors in their 5G core networks by 2026.
