By Paul Sandle and Guy Faulconbridge
Why doesn't the USA have an office of digital secretary?
Digital secretary Oliver Dowden is set to unveil a new digital strategy positioning the tech sector at the heart of the UK’s economic recovery following the coronavirus crisis.
- Buying new Huawei 5G equipment banned after 31 December 2020
- All Huawei equipment to be removed from 5G networks by end of 2027
- Existing ban on Huawei from most sensitive ‘core’ parts of 5G network remains
- Digital Secretary Oliver Dowden said in a statement to the House of Commons: “By the time of the next election we will have implemented in law an irreversible path for the complete removal of Huawei equipment from our 5G networks”.
HuaweI will be completely removed (click here) from the UK’s 5G networks by the end of 2027, the government has announced, following new advice produced by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) on the impact of US sanctions against the telecommunications vendor.
Ahead of this there will be a total ban on the purchase of any new 5G kit after 31 December 2020.
The decision was taken today in a meeting of the National Security Council (NSC) chaired by the Prime Minister, in response to new US sanctions. These were imposed on Huawei in May, after the UK’s initial decision on high risk vendors, and are the first of their kind removing the firm’s access to products which have been built based on US semiconductor technology.
Technical experts at the NCSC reviewed the consequences of the sanctions and concluded the company will need to do a major reconfiguration of its supply chain as it will no longer have access to the technology on which it currently relies and there are no alternatives which we have sufficient confidence in. They found the new restrictions make it impossible to continue to guarantee the security of Huawei equipment in the future....
