Huawei 5G role being capped in the UK will cost £500 million: British Telecom

BT (British Telecom) has stated that Britain’s decision to limit Huawei‘s involvement in building 5G infrastructure would have increased the cost of its gigabit-communications plan by about 500 million pounds over five years.

British Telecom is the largest mobile broadband network provider and its Chief Executive, Philip Jansen, said he welcomed the use of vendors such as Huawei. Both companies have been known partners in the region for a while now and this further extends their collaborations.

The senior executive also revealed that the company is ” in the process of reviewing the guidance in detail to determine the full impact on our plans and at this time estimate an impact of around 500 million pounds over the next 5 years.” in other words, the company stands to lose roughly $657 million over the course of the next 5 years, since the local government has put a hard cap on the company’s total involvement in the 5G market.

On the other hand, BT is on similar sides with the government’s decision by stating that the security of the UK’s communications infrastructure should be the top priority. As or right now, Huawei is allowed to develop only “non core” 5G infrastructure and can only have a market share of 35 percent in the local 5G market.

Recently, BT had unveiled its financial report for 2019 which had the company see a weak performance in Q3 of 2019, dropping by 3 percent or 5.78 billion pounds lower than initial expectations. The company is also witnessing a fall in core earnings which is estimated to be around 1.98 billion pounds. BT has blamed higher spectrum fees, investment in customer experience and rising operating costs as reasons for the decline.

(Via)