Why aren’t British companies competing with Huawei to provide 5G?
sir – The issue of whether Huawei should be allowed to build our 5G infrastructure (report, January 28) would never have arisen if BT had fulfilled its designated role.
It was Tommy Flowers of the Post Office (BT’S predecessor) who built the first computer, Colossus, in the Forties. According to BT, its research and development establishment at Martlesham in Suffolk currently has 4,000 people and supports 150 PHD students. However, the only invention (apart from some development of fibre optics) to come out of it was the videotex service Prestel, which at the height of its “popularity” only had 88,000 users nationally, was pathetic in scope and was dumped long ago.
The people at Martlesham obviously should have been working on 5G so that we wouldn’t have to import the technology. BT lost the battle for network supremacy to Vodafone and will now lose it to Huawei. What exactly is the point of BT?
William Beckett
Andover, Hampshire sir – New 5G networks are not just about communications. They will form the basis of the so-called “internet of things”, to which a vast range of consumer goods and commercial products, as well as military hardware, will be connected.
The provider of the network will specify the way these items are connected, which will in turn have a profound effect on their actual design.
Since China is already the largest source of electrically powered consumer goods in the UK, its manufacturing firms will, if allowed, form numerous partnerships with Huawei to achieve a virtual monopoly of the UK and other Western electrical goods markets.
The way for Britain to work with Huawei on 5G is through a formal joint venture with a wholly British-owned company set up for the purpose by the Government. Huawei would provide the technology in return for access to the UK market. The exploitation of any technology generated by the joint venture would be shared too. This would protect British security from the inside, vastly enhance British industrial capability, and be a real test of Huawei’s sincerity.
Emeritus Professor Stephen Bush University of Manchester
sir – Charles Moore (Comment, January 28) is quite right to highlight the risks of China’s involvement in our core infrastructure.
All attention may currently be on Huawei, but meanwhile China General Nuclear, also blacklisted by the United States, is EDF’S partner in building Hinkley Point nuclear power station, is a potential partner in the proposed plant at Sizewell C in Suffolk, and wants to build its own reactor at Bradwell in Essex.
Alison Downes
Theberton, Suffolk
sir – Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War: “To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.”
John Mccammon
Coleraine, Co Londonderry