France is showing us how 5G can be done safely
‘What is the alternative?” Boris Johnson asked, when justifying the decision to let Chinese telecoms giant Huawei build part of our 5G network. France, we’ve discovered, has a simple answer: Ericsson and Nokia.
Yesterday, the French announced that they have chosen those two companies to build their 5G network. The two Scandie suppliers are about a year behind Huawei, according to industry experts, but that isn’t the end of the world. France, though, has no legacy of terrible decisions that its civil servants feel bound to defend. Currently, there is very little Huawei in its critical infrastructure, whereas
Britain is chock-full of the stuff.
So when Mr Johnson claims that the UK is going to phase out Huawei, but just not today, I listen with a cynical ear. If we are ever going to phase them out, this was the time.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday, telecoms nerds gathered at the Institute of Engineering and Technology’s “5G Unleashed” conference. There was relief among Huawei staff and deep frustration among the company’s smaller rivals, several British, who have watched their own Government seduced by an untrusted corporate predator undercutting the whole market on the back of billions in subsidies from the Chinese state.
This, after all, is what
Huawei is. The company is officially deemed untrustworthy. That is why its equipment will be forbidden near UK military sites. The state would never risk its own data, you see, but ordinary citizens can get stuffed.
Most sensible people in this country trust our security services, but we likewise trust the security services of our close allies. Here is what a former senior official at the Australian Signals Directorate, Simeon Gilding, thinks: “No number of impressivesounding mitigation measures or cybersecurity standards can provide confidence.” Letting
Huawei into our 5G means “the threat is inside your network”.
In other words, this debate is not settled. Familiarity breeds comfort, however. In places like the IET’S conference, Huawei is just part of the furniture, and it has been for years. Plenty of nice and brilliant people work for the company, both Chinese and Brits. Its logo pops up constantly on kit featured in presentations by other companies, because it is simply ubiquitous.
We are in this situation because, as the Government says, “the market is broken”. Well, who do you think broke the market? And how are we going to fix it when we have shown ourselves incapable of accepting any upfront cost?