Iswaran: Singapore never excluded any 5G vendors

Singapore’s communication minister said the government never excluded any company from being vendors for the nationwide rollout of high-speed 5G technology, and is satisfied with the outcome of its telecom operators’ selection.

Singapore’s biggest telecom operators chose Ericsson and Nokia as their main 5G network providers, leaving China’s Huawei Technologies with less significant contracts after the city-state gave final approval for the rollout of nationwide 5G coverage on June 24. Singapore Telecommunications chose Ericsson while a group that includes StarHub opted for Nokia.

“We never explicitly excluded any vendor,” and the city-state has very clear security and resilience requirements, Minister for Communications and Information S. Iswaran. “You have a diversity of vendors involved in different aspects of the 5G system and that is in fact a positive outcome from our perspective,” he said.

Huawei, which has become a point of contention in tensions between the US and China, still has a foothold in the market as a provider for TPG Telecom’s smaller, local network system. — Bloomberg