For nearly 15 years, the Chinese group Huawei has seen the UK as a key market and a springboard to the other deals that helped it become the world’s largest telecoms equipment maker.
Huawei’s partnerships with the likes of BT and Vodafone have weathered bouts of unease over its rumoured links to the Chinese government and the People’s Liberation Army, which the company denies.
But as politicians from the UK and other countries start to consider the rollout of their 5G communications network, Huawei is suddenly facing a grave threat to its international business.
Until now the UK approach has been to surround or “island” Huawei kit with products and equipment provided by rival manufacturers such as Eriksson or Nokia. But Mr Levy says this is harder with 5G because more data are being processed away from central or core hubs. “If you’ve got a bit of Huawei kit we want to make sure the stuff around it is not Huawei,” he said. “But 5G does make that harder, so it’s probably likely you will end up with less Huawei just because of the collusion risk between the different bits.”
But suspicions of Chinese companies in the west have grown since the adoption last year of a National Intelligence Law which says that “organisations and citizens shall . . . support, co-operate with and collaborate in national intelligence work”. “The danger is that because of Chinese law, Huawei is required to provide support, help and information to the Ministry of State Security — a mix of the FBI and CIA,” said the Former National Security Agency’s deputy director Rick Ledgett. “The legal process and the protection is just not there.”
In recent weeks, US officials have toured Europe to warn against using Huawei equipment, while Australia and New Zealand have both joined the US in banning the Chinese company’s gear. In the UK, Huawei has already signed a contract with the mobile phone operator Three to provide 5G equipment and is conducting tests with Vodafone and EE.
The FT reports “5G is key to enabling the internet of things which will in itself provide a greater range of opportunities for attackers,” said Ewan Lawson from the Royal United Services Institute, a UK defence think-tank. “If you have security concerns about the backbone of the internet of things then that seems to be a significant change in the risk measurement for policymakers.”
