The UK government’s decision to ban Chinese tech giant Huawei from participating in the development of the country’s 5G infrastructure, purportedly to protect citizens from potential Chinese government surveillance, has proven to be a costly move for the telecom industry. BT’s Chief Security and Networks Officer, Howard Watson, revealed that this decision incurred an estimated cost of £500 million (approximately $612 million) for the company.
Rather than being able to build upon existing infrastructure, UK telecom providers were compelled to first replace existing Huawei equipment. This replacement process not only significantly slowed down the overall 5G rollout but also added substantial expenses to the bill.
Andrea Donà, Chief Network Officer for Vodafone, emphasized that the ban and the subsequent replacement of Huawei gear with equipment from other providers placed an “additional burden on an already constrained capital prioritization process.” He noted that telecom companies did not receive additional funding to cover these unexpected costs, resulting in a scaling back of 5G deployment plans.
Nonetheless, the telecom organizations are nearing the completion of the gear replacement process. BT is making substantial progress in replacing Huawei equipment with Ericsson technology and anticipates completing this transition by the end of the year. Approximately 90% of BT’s 5G mobile data is now operating on Swedish infrastructure. Vodafone’s Donà also reported that the company has made “good progress” in this regard.
For the government, network resilience remains the primary focus. A government spokesperson emphasized the importance of long-term security and the enduring resilience of the UK’s telecoms network. They noted that the UK has one of the most robust telecoms security regimes globally and that the decision to designate Huawei as a high-risk vendor was made to safeguard critical national infrastructure. The government has issued clear directions to telecom operators to manage Huawei’s presence in their networks to ensure this protection.
