NO Huawei – UK Gov BANs New 5G Mobile Kit from Dec 2020 UPDATED
The UK Government has today confirmed a dramatic U-turn, which means that new core and non-core 5G kit from Chinese tech giant Huawei will be banned from use in mobile networks from 31st December 2020. But existing kit will get until 2027 for removal and a decision on FTTP broadband ISPs will come later.
The move represents a significant shift from the UK’s adopted position in January 2020 (here), which only banned operators from installing Huawei’s kit in the sensitive core part of their networks, but allowed its continued use in non-core parts (e.g. 5G antennas, FTTC cabinets, FTTP ONTs in homes etc.). A cap of 35% was also placed on the company’s kit to ensure that operators made use of other suppliers (BT alone forecast a £500m hit from this).
Part of the reason for January’s decision was because completely banning Huawei could have made the roll-out of new 5G mobile, and also some fixed broadband ISP networks, both much slower and more expensive to achieve. Such a ban would have thus impacted PM Boris Johnson’s recent £5bn pledge to ensure that every UK home can access gigabit (1Gbps) speed broadband networks by the end of 2025.
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Since then several further events have conspired to damage the perception of China within the UK, not least their questionable response to the early outbreak of COVID-19 (Coronavirus) and the country’s new security law for Hong Kong. The imposition of even stricter sanctions against Huawei by the USA (i.e. perhaps forcing it to rely on less trustworthy components) is another big issue.
Meanwhile the looming trade deal between the UK and USA (as well as between the USA and China) is also a consideration. In short, whatever the realities or falsehoods of the original security concerns directed toward Huawei (major security vulnerabilities can crop up anywhere, just ask Cisco etc.), wider politics and pressures may now be starting to weigh on the Government and hence today’s significant change of strategy.
Recap of Security Concerns
At this point it’s worth remembering that the original decision in January followed a 2019 report from the oversight board of the Huawei Cyber Security Evaluation Centre (HCSEC), which warned that “further significant technical issues” had been identified in Huawei’s engineering processes, leading to “new risks in the UK telecommunications networks” (full summary). At the same time it also said that “no material progress has been made by Huawei in the remediation of the issues.”
The board said it could “only provide limited assurance” that all risks to national security from Huawei’s involvement in the UK’s critical networks could be sufficiently mitigated long-term. Naturally Huawei has always denied accusations that they are a security threat and in a public letter said, “Huawei has never and will never use UK-based hardware, software, or information gathered in the UK or anywhere else globally, to assist other countries in gathering intelligence. We would not do this in any country.”
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However, critics of the company often point toward China’s new National Intelligence Law, which was passed in 2017 and demands that organisations “support, co-operate with and collaborate in national intelligence work.” The absence of true democracy in China might thus, they argue, make it very difficult for any company to refuse such a request.
Google’s former CEO, Eric Schmidt, has also claimed “there’s no question that information from Huawei routers has ultimately ended up in hands that would appear to be the state … However that happened, we’re sure it happened.” Schmidt, who now chairs the Pentagon’s Defence Innovation Board, says it’s better to think of the company as doing “signals intelligence” work, much like a spy agency.
Meanwhile Donald Trump has taken a strict line and effectively banned companies around the world from working with Huawei, with some limited exceptions. The move has stunted the firm’s Smartphone and other consumer products, such as by removing access to Google’s popular Apps, although that aspect is less relevant to their mobile and broadband infrastructure business.
Sadly, we can’t examine the substance of the security fears that surround Huawei because such issues are a matter for national security and intelligence agencies (i.e. they’re secret), which is impossible for ordinary folk to judge. We wouldn’t be so bold as to assume we know better. However, it seems unlikely that so many countries would be creating such a fuss if there wasn’t a serious concern, which has been going on since long before Donald Trump came to power.
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The New Strategy
A few weeks ago there was talk of imposing a total ban by 2023, except a significant amount of Huawei’s kit currently exists across various fixed broadband and mobile networks (including inside homes, on masts and in street cabinets etc.). Ripping all of that out in such a short space of time would have been both practically and economically unworkable, particularly given the COVID-19 situation.
Last week BT and Vodafone warned that they would need at least 5-7 years to wean themselves off Huawei (here) and the costs involved could be in the high hundreds of millions or even single digital billions of pounds per operator. But those comments were largely made in reference to 4G and 5G mobile networks, which didn’t consider fixed line broadband.
Since then BT’s CEO, Philip Jansen, has further suggested that it would be “impossible” to totally remove Huawei’s kit from everywhere in under 10 years. Failure to factor for this could thus result in service “blackouts,” warned both operators. Lest we forget the need to continue support for existing Huawei kit until such time as it can be removed or replaced (operators are thus stockpiling kit to cover network faults etc.).
Suffice to say that the Government’s final strategy has sought to strike a degree of balance between the demands for a BAN and what is actually workable. The idea being to prevent new deployments, while allowing support to continue for existing kit until a more natural (end-of-life) progression can be adopted for the removal or replacement work.
Today’s Key Decisions
* From 31st December 2020 telecommunications providers must not buy any 5G equipment from “high risk vendors” like Huawei or ZTE (legal requirement).
* Removal of existing 5G equipment must take place by the end of 2027.
* Existing ban on Huawei from most sensitive “core” parts of 5G network remains in place during this period.
* A different approach is to be taken for “full fibre” (FTTP) and older fixed broadband networks. The Government are advising FTTP operators to “transition away from purchasing new Huawei equipment” and a technical consultation will be launched to determine the transition timetable, “but we expect this period to last no longer than two years.”
The above requirements will be set out in law by the Telecoms Security Bill (due to be introduced into parliament this autumn 2020). However the UK Digital Secretary, Oliver Dowden, noted that the earlier January 2020 decision (partial ban) “had already set back [the 5G] rollout by a year and cost up to a billion pounds,” before adding that the new change would add another year to that delay (2 years) and “will add up to half a billion to the costs.” But it gets worse.
“Requiring operators, in addition, to remove Huawei equipment from their 5G networks by 2027 will add hundreds of millions to the cost and further delay roll out. This means a cumulative delay to 5G rollout of two to three years and costs of up to two billion pounds,” added Dowden. In other words, the quicker the removal, the bigger the cost and delay.
Naturally providers that don’t make much (or any) use of telecoms kit from the Chinese firm, such as O2, will have a better time of things. Meanwhile those that do harness a lot of kit from Huawei, such as BT (EE and Openreach) and Vodafone, are likely to face a much bigger challenge in adapting to the Government’s new strategy.
Nevertheless, mobile and broadband providers now face the stark reality of a significant shift in the national relationship with one of the market’s key suppliers, which is not only going to be extremely costly to tackle but will inevitably cause some delay and disruption.
Crucially though they seem to have left the decision on fixed broadband and related Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) networks until a later date, pending the outcome of another technical consultation.
Oliver Dowden MP, UK Digital Secretary, said:
“5G will be transformative for our country, but only if we have confidence in the security and resilience of the infrastructure it is built upon.
Following US sanctions against Huawei and updated technical advice from our cyber experts, the government has decided it is necessary to ban Huawei from our 5G networks.
No new kit is to be added from January 2021, and UK 5G networks will be Huawei free by the end of 2027. This decisive move provides the industry with the clarity and certainty it needs to get on with delivering 5G across the UK.
By the time of the next election we will have implemented in law an irreversible path for the complete removal of Huawei equipment from our 5G networks.”
The big question now will be whether or not the Government’s harder stance will be enough to placate the 60 or so rebels MPs who have advocated for a ban that can be implemented sooner. The MPs had recently adjusted their position and sought to prevent the purchase of new kit in the next 12 months, while allowing until 2025 or 2026 for it to be completely eliminated.
At the time of writing we haven’t yet had a chance to read the latest report from the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), which has provided much of the fuel for today’s announcement. However, as above, we already have a reasonable idea of the line it will tow.
One final point to make is that the Government have pledged to bring new scale vendors into the UK market by “removing barriers to entry, providing commercial incentives and creating large scale opportunities for new vendors to enter the UK market.” No details of this were provided.
UPDATE 1:32pom
Few will be surprised to see that one of the first reactions has come from Huawei’s arch rival, Ericsson.
Arun Bansal, Ericsson’s President of Europe and Latin America, said:
“Today’s decision removes the uncertainty that was slowing down investment decisions around the deployment of 5G in the UK. It is now time for the industry to come together and start delivering on the promise of creating a world-leading 5G network for the people, businesses and economy of the UK.
Ericsson has the technology, experience and supply chain capacity to help accomplish this, and we stand ready to work with the UK operators to meet their timetable, with no disruption to customers.”
UPDATE 2:33pm
Now it’s the turn of the UK Internet Service Providers’ Association (ISPA).
Andrew Glover, ISPA Chair, said:
“The Government’s 5G announcement today provides some welcome clarity to our members who are rolling out networks and providing broadband to consumers and businesses across the UK. We look forward to further consultation with Government to determine the policy for fixed networks with a clear focus on ensuring that our members can roll out new gigabit-capable networks at pace.
As the Secretary of State emphasised today, supply chain interventions have a direct impact on the speed at which networks can be rolled out, so any new restrictions need to be counter-balanced with an appropriate level of support for the sector.
The Government has rightly made upgrading our digital communications infrastructure a priority, we now need to see a clear, ambitious plan from policymakers to help the companies that are leading this charge.”
UPDATE 15th July 2020
BT has estimated that the cost impact from today’s decision “can be absorbed within BT’s initial estimated implementation cost of £500m, as announced by BT on 30th January 2020 in order to comply with the previous proposal by the National Cyber Security Centre,” but this only considers the impact on 5G and not any future measures against fixed line broadband.
Philip Jansen, BT Group CEO, said:
“The security of our networks is an absolute priority for BT. Clearly this decision has logistical and cost implications for communications providers in the UK market – however, we believe the timescales outlined will allow us to make these changes without impacting on the coverage or resilience of our existing networks. It will also allow us to continue to rollout our 5G and full fibre networks without a significant impact on the timescales we’ve previously announced. Whilst we have provided our initial view on the estimated impact today, we will continue to evaluate the details of this decision thoroughly.”
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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I wonder if this will just be the beginning as Western governments have to face up to the massive debt pile from covid that likely came from the Wuhan lab.
I will miss Huawei mobile routers though, nothing else comes close to them.
@Mike
There is no evidence that Covid-19 came from a Wuhan lab and it’s clearly barely tangentially relevant (at best) to the story at hand. There are sadly plenty of sites where you can share misinformation and fake news if that is how you want to spend your time, I don’t believe that this is one of them.
The story is it came from the markets but the Wuhan lab had and is studying Bat virus and has bats brought to the facility for sampling and studies. Visiting scientists have remarked on the low levels of bio security seen, which were lower than expected for that type of facility. It could just be an enterprising lab technician disposed of the Bats via the local market for some extra income and the virus then jumped to a human.
Absolutely. Lets hope so.
The UK did not borrow money from China to fund the pandemic relief packages.
They borrowed from the Bank of England, which is to say, they don’t really owe anyone that money, except that injecting so much money into the economy so quickly may come back to bite in some way in the future, and then tax rises or spending cuts might become necessary to maintain stability.
misinformation is the biggest issue.. by the same logic you could pull into question the poisoning of the the skirples due to labs working with those very same chemicals.. my point being at present all evidence is circumstantial, but l digress.
regardless tensions with China have been very strained for year, more so since Trump became president, our government is so desperate to obtain a trade deal with the US that its caved in to demands, Trump had literally told Boris to stop doing business with Huawei at points.
I really wouldn’t be surprised if Openreach get told to off load Huawei on their network, would be some task replacing cabinets etc but can see it happening.
In a way the move toward FTTP, which is still at an early stage, could make this less of an issue, provided the Government allow enough time for the transition. Otherwise ripping out 75,000 or so FTTC street cabinets just isn’t realistic, but if the time-scale were naturally aligned to the existing ‘copper to FTTP’ transition plan then that’s another matter.
Obviously, there’s also the issue of Openreach’s Huawei based FTTP kit, which requires further consideration as much of that remains a recent investment.
As the plan is to replace FTTC DSLAMs with FTTP over pretty much that timescale I’ll be surprised if we see any DSLAMs being replaced.
I do see the a small % of them being retained to house active elements of the fibre network – forward postponed headends etc to cope with very long lines.
Yeah assuming sensible alignment this is largely a non story for fttp
Would it be possible to swap out just the electronics in a cabinet with alternative equipment?
Its not ‘just’, its not trivial and other things follow but it can be done. But as above there is not really a need as they can be retired at EoL/fttp for all the fttc
Aren’t the ONTs form Openreach Huawei based?
@James Yes I believe largely the ONTs and OLTs from Openreach are Huawei. In addition the GPON architecture favoured by Openreach (and many others) involves encrypting and broadcasting the data to/from you and neighboring properties, which combined with a high risk vendor doesn’t sound like the right strategy. It will be interesting to see whether this changes too.
Bonkers.
A almost entirely political play that will cost the country massively – not to mention the consumers who will foot the gigantic bill.
The reverse. The old policy put politics of a fast rollout and price over security.
Completely agree with Joe
@joe
*Perceived* security.
So many palms will have been greased to facilitate this.
No real security. Held by the west generally..
Joe +2
@Joe et al
Evidence please, the politicians have produced none to date and I have asked them directly.
Where is the Ericsson kit made?
In a factory I would assume.
Ericsson is made in Finland
I believe both Ericsson and Nokia kit is mainly manufactured in China. It’s also possible that some of it is made elsewhere. I guess it will be considered equally suspect if it’s made in China and so will need to be made elsewhere, in the medium term, to be be considered fully “safe”. As I understand it there is not a current USA made product, so at least we won’t have to contend with the CIA being more involved in UK telecommunications than currently.
@Michael V
The Ericsson company is in fact Swedish, however it sources its components globally, as does Nokia (Finnish). I’d be very surprised if you couldn’t find any components sourced from China in the products of both companies.
The problem with trade policy driven by political considerations rather than by evidence is that it rarely makes any sense, this being no exception. And making policy to appease the (hopefully) outgoing US President makes even less sense, especially when the President in question is Donald Trump!
Great news! Lets hope they ban the sale of all Huawei products in the UK too.
Unfortunately the caveat to all this was “Removal of existing 5G equipment must take place by the end of 2027.” which is more than long enough for China to destroy our way of life completely in the meantime, like they haven’t done enough damage already.
Rubbish
Tin foil hat alert!
Maybe provide some evidence or something???
Did David Icke just say “Tin foil hat alert!” to me??? 🙂
Holding my breath for power grid and internet blackouts and the obligatory NHS computers crashing in the UK from tomorrow.
Which will just confirm it was the correct decision.
Do you happen to know what kit KCOM uses in its 1Gbps FTTH network infrastructure?
For god’s sake why the UK govt has to follow Donald Trump?
I don’t know whether it’s an excuse or not, but apparently there are concerns that the US’s sanctions, etc. could cause problems in the future e.g. they’re unable to produce newer components.
something something, trade deal.
something something, five eyes.
HCSEC gives you some public reasons, coupled with the position of C law and their companies + the long-standing hacking of western companies/gov from C State entities
But as virtually every major Western country has expressed the same concerns or have moved to reduce ban H there is clearly more behind the scenes.
It’s a shame, it’s good kit. Clearly politically motivated but it’s not right to have significant Huawei kit in UK telecom infrastructure – VF, BT and EE to blame here.
Bring back Marconi.
I don’t think the telcos are to blame. If they buy kit that costs more their prices go up and they lose customers. The vast bulk of customers don’t care one jot for the quality of the network infrastructure and buy purely on price. Having a network that costs more to buy and operate than your competitors’ does is a good way to end your business.
Understood, but this political risk has been apparent for years. Management at some of these firms chose to ignore the risk and will now have to remedy by buying different kit. It may not be great for consumers in the short term, but in the longer run we don’t really want a state backed foreign power owning the entire supply market for key components.
Hope that the mobile broadband devices aren’t banned from sale. My AI cube for my home 4G broadband is also great.
Useful write up, thanks. Just one point of pedantry. You write “However, as above, we already have a reasonable idea of the line it will tow.” when of course the correct spelling would be “However, as above, we already have a reasonable idea of the line it will toe.”
So now we will be at the mercy of the Swedish instead of the Chinese. And I’m sure Ericcccsssons overpriced kit will not be going on sale any time soon after this news. Let’s hope they also renew their SSL certs on time next year so they don’t take down O2 for two days again.
What a stupid decision.. let’s remove kit from a Chinese brand to use kit made in the exact same Chinese factory (most likely) from another brand, just so we feel good about ourselves..
I’ll believe it when I see it with this one, based on governments history with these things and the public won’t want to fund it all. I would say it may mean faster FTTP roll out, but with the story run on here the other day about Boris backtracking, again, from his broadband promises I don’t see that happening.
But this decision will affect all communications across all networks in some way or another, both mobile and landline.
I also expect Chinese hacking attacks to increase on the U.K. from henceforth and out illustrious government to do absolutely nothing about it.
Let’s see if we get any communications blackouts from all this, and I’m not giving up my Openreach Huawei model that’s for sure!
“I also expect Chinese hacking attacks to increase on the U.K. from henceforth and out illustrious government to do absolutely nothing about it.”
Which will confirm the decision was correct. They’re annoyed they’ll not be able to use Huawei kit to spy on the west, so its “must save face and show how strong we are” time.
Like they did with Australia.
This is all well and good, as consumers we have driven ourselves in to this proverbial cul de sac, we have been activaly supporting the Chinese government for decade’s, with our race to the bottom line, we have enabled the Chinese to become a very rich country until technology is made in the our home countries then we will all be at risk, I would not be surprised if our own government required backdoors installed, in all honesty it does not matter a jot, the insidious decline in our personal privacy is being eroded year on year.
My Openreach ont is Huawei my local exchange is all Huawei and so was the old fttc I used to be connected to
Surely Openreach shouldn’t be depended on one company
They aren’t.
They had 2 FTTC Vendors but ECI equipment didn’t cut it.
Higher fault counts, more expensive, and a failed G.INP rollout just part of the problem
It also can’t be upgraded to the capacity necessary for faster FTTP speeds.
They since signed contracts with Nokia for G.Fast.
They have done deals with Nokia and ADTRAN for FTTP.
The reason you have all the same Vendor equipment is because a Huawei FTTC cabinet must be connected to a Huawei OLT, and that OLT needs a Huawei ONT for FTTP.
The ECI kit stopped being deployed in 2016 leaving Huawei as the sole Vendor for a while.
They are now installing Nokia OLT’s in some exchanges for FTTP which obviously comes with a Nokia ONT.
ADTRAN kit expected in 2021.
Thanks for the informative reply John
When everyone is moving towards VPNs and https connections… what is the real Risk of any security threat here for using potentially compromised routers?
The reason we use VPNs and https connections is because no one can guarantee the security of an external network.
It’s economic sanctions on the quiet. Nothing more, nothing less.
I have the same question as Oliver, and without further explanation can only agree with CartT that this is a politically motivated decision.
Why do we listen to Trump? Firstly it was the Russians spying on us via Kaspersky Internet Security. Now it’s Huawei spying on us via 5G. Once Huawei is fully blocked he’ll probably claim the Germans are spying on us through Siemens and Philips
Better have a word with Norfolk County Council.
now replacing all WAN and LAN with Huawei
A purely political decision taken to appease Trump, placate the Tory backbenches and punish Beijing.
Loving all the butt-hurt Marxists pillocks. 🙂
Loving a guy calling people Marxist while applauding state intervention in private enterprise and free markets.
This is a very stupid decision. Getting rid of Huawei kits means operators have to now use kits from Nokia or other manufacturers that will end up costing more!
This is the same as buying a Samsung phone from Carphone Warehouse, for the same specifications Huawei will make a cheaper device.
No wonder it is now costing 2 billion pounds more, that 2 billion could’ve been spent in deploying FTTP in a few more towns & cities and achieve at least another 10% coverage!
This is not the right time to try & take revenge against China, ultimately it will backfire as it is against UK’s interest. Pleasing Trump is only beneficial for Trump, not the UK.
Security risk is simply an excuse. Trump is basically angry and jealous that China’s economy is booming and he wants countries to ban Huawei to slowdown Chinese economic growth. The problem is that you also damage yourself in the process.
Maybe Trump doesn’t care, but ultimately he takes no responsibility for a slower 5G expansion. It will be you who will suffer as a customer, not Trump!
> … for the same specifications …
Tell me again about how Huawei phones have access to the play store, Google maps, etc. ? Ah, wait…
Ben, I have had the Huawei Ascend G300 since 2012, one of the first Huawei phones that came to UK market and I never had problems with the google play store.
There are guides on the web and youtube to show you how to install the Google Play Store app on a Huawei Device.
Some phones may require rooting the android OS. My dad has Huawei P30 Lite last few months for £250 from Carphone Warehouse with an 8 core processor, 48 mega pixel camera. You’d be hard pressed to find a phone with those specs from Samsung for that amount of money.
Yes, it may require some troubleshooting to get the google play store to install but in the end it’s totally worth it. Otherwise you’d have to pay £400-£500 for a device of similar specs from Samsung.
Because Chinese goods have cheap working labour these electronics are cheaper. It is daft to ban Chinese manufacturers as any electronics made in Western Europe will simply cost much, much more. This will slowdown 5G deployment and ultimately increase the cost of these packages.
The same goes for FTTP, if it uses Nokia for example it will be more expensive. That’s also one of the reason why Nokia, Siemens, etc have lost their popularity in recent years. They cannot compete with cheap Chinese electronics as their phones end up costing too much.
it’s not so much primarily following Trump I don’t think. Maybe there’s a small element of that but the most recent significant recent political change is the trashing of the accord between the UK Government and the Chinese Government over how HK was to be governed over the 50 years post-transition.
This move by China needed to be responded to for multiple important reasons, and likely there would be some personal afront in there too… the handover was negotiated by a Conservative after all. Huawei is rightly or wrongly, an obvious political football in this regard.
With this being a security risk Related to Spying you would think the UK Government would have thought this through instead installing lots of 5G equipment. Take a look Openreach’s FTTC VDSL2 Network they have over 70,000 FTTC Huawei Street Cabinets. The Government doesn’t have waste money. There talking about spying the uk government has GCHQ.