After setbacks in Australia and Japan, Huawei is confident the UK will continue to sell its 5G equipment
Huawei is confident the
UK government will be able to continue selling 5G equipment for any
operator that wants to use it.
Huawei president of
global government affairs Victor Zhang told journalists in London
last week that:
“The UK will make a
smart decision to make sure it will have the most advanced digital
infrastructure. Huawei is the leader of 5G and is one of the most
important vendors for the technology.
“I am confident that
the UK will choose Huawei for future 5G development.”
Zhang did not comment
on whether the firm will be limited to building on the edge part of
networks rather than the core, through which more sensitive data
passes.
The UK government was due to publish a review of the telecoms supply chain in spring, but this has seen many delays and a verdict on Huawei’s fate may not even be published.
In the US, Huawei is still struggling with the Trump administration’s perception that its technology can be used by the Chinese government for espionage – with the country currently on a campaign to spur other nations to ban the firm from their networks.
So far, Australia and Japan have opted to not use Huawei kit.
A Huawei spokesperson
said: “We have always said if people have evidence around the
accusations, they should publish them and we’d be happy to address
those concerns.
“To date, no one has published that kind of evidence; there’s never been any evidence in 30 years of operation of the business that our equipment has been used for espionage.”
At the Mobile News XPO
5G Symposium in April, Vodafone chief technology officer Scott Petty
said that not using Huawei equipment would be detrimental to the
national rollout of 5G.
Recently, US deputy
assistant secretary for cybersecurity Robert Strayer said the US
would have to reassess its stance on information sharing with the UK
if Huawei is allowed to build.
He labelled the firm a
“substantial risk to communications infrastructure.”