Pledge mobile customers will not suffer blackouts

Mobile phone customers will not suffer signal blackouts as a result of the decision to strip Huawei equipment from the UK’s 5G network, the government has claimed.

Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden said the timetable to take such action by 2027 was partly influenced by a desire to avoid people suffering disruption to their service.

Executives from Vodafone and BT last week warned they would need at least five years to completely remove the Chinese firm’s equipment without causing people to lose phone signal for several days.

Labour’s Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) highlighted these concerns and asked for assurances that this will not happen.

Mr Dowden replied in the Commons: “(Ms Siddiq) is absolutely right to raise the risk of that kind of disruption and blackouts, and that’s one of the reasons that led us to the timetable we’ve set out.

“Put bluntly, the shorter the timetable for the removal, the higher the risk of that happening.

“But I can give (Ms Siddiq) and indeed her constituents and people up and down the country, (the assurance) that this risk will not materialise in relation to the proposals that we have outlined today.”

Mr Dowden also told MPs: “I would caution that cyber attacks will not be prevented by removing Huawei equipment from the system.

“There are vulnerabilities across the network and that’s one of the reasons why we’re introducing the Telecoms Security Bill to start to address some of those.”

Oliver Dowden