US urges UK to reconsider its decision allowing Huawei to build 5G networks

Mike Pompeo, US Secretary of State, has urged the British government to reconsider its decision allowing Chinese telecom giant Huawei a limited role in building the country’s 5G and fibre networks.

During his visit to the United Kingdom, Mike Pompeo talked with Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab on the Huawei issue. As per the reports, he has described the Chinese company as “real risk” to cyber security.

He has also warned that the US intelligence information would not be allowed to pass across untrusted networks, which includes any networks running hardware sources from Huawei or ZTE, both Chinese brands.

In May last year, the United States said that it considers Huawei a national security threat without showing any proofs and also alleged that the equipment supplied by the firm could be used by China’s government to spy. The U.S. also added Huawei to the Department of Commerce’s Entity List in May 2019, effectively banning it.

A few days ago, Boris Johnson, Prime Minister of UK, gave Huawei the go-ahead for building 5G networking in parts of the country. However, the Chinese company can only develop “non core” parts of the newer and faster bandwidth and its market share is hard-capped at 35 percent.

Following UK’s decision, the European Union has also allowed the Chinese telecommunications manufacturer to help build its 5G network. Similar to the UK, this decision comes with a set of guidelines for its member nations which suggests to omit high-risk vendors like Huawei from the ‘core’ 5G network infrastructure.

(Via)