Huawei 5G equipment removal reportedly raising security concerns for UK

UK has instructed its telecoms to adhere to Huawei 5G equipment removal scheme due to security risks. However, ripping and replacing the existing Chinese 5G network core can become more risky for the sovereign country.

A new report suggests the UK is concerned about security following the Huawei ban and open RAN failures. Despite the strict rip and replace plan, many base stations in the UK still run on Huawei 5G network equipment.

But that’s not the point! Huawei 5G equipment removal scheme is still live, and the UK has directed its telecom operators to increase the security of the network core.

However, this action could leave the country dependent on just two firms selling the same products. Huawei already highlighted this danger for UK, five years ago.

The company said that removing Huawei from the 5G network core could majorly impact the network segment of the countries and will make it a Nordic. Looks like, Huawei’s prediction is becoming true to some extent in the UK.

The Chinese tech giant was the biggest 4G network supplier in the UK for BT before the sanctions. It even signed a contract to develop 5G RAN for the three smallest UK telecom operators. The company also provided one-third of RAN to Vodafone.

Among many top telecoms, only O2 remained with Ericsson and Nokia as network suppliers at that time. Now, the UK is suggesting these two firms as the alternative for Huawei, but that might not be a good idea.

Huawei 5G equipment removal reportedly raising security concerns for UK (Image Credits: Huawei)

LightReading highlighted a response:

“Huawei’s slow eviction has increased our reliance on a small number of technology vendors, which poses different security and resilience concerns.”

It simply suggests that if Ericsson and Nokia stop working in the future, then the UK won’t have any other option to proceed with. While dependency on these two network companies was already expected, there’s no answer to security concerns yet.

Ericsson and Nokia have been dominating the network market in the UK for years after Huawei and ZTE were banned. Apart from these two, the third viable alternative is Samsung Networks.

Further details suggest that even though Ericsson and Nokia earned $24 billion in mobile network sales last year, they both are struggling. The former dropped by 8% while the latter went down by 21% in the network sales.

UK planned to deploy Open RAN technology against Huawei. But it didn’t work as expected. Telecom operators who have already removed Huawei 5G equipment from their network core are now stressed as they don’t want to make another switch in the coming years.

Overall, a limited number of vendors in the network market can limit the ability of the UK to deliver resilience, security, and innovation benefits associated with a more diverse supply chain.

(source)