With Boris Johnson’s government deciding to allow Huawei into Britain’s ‘non-core’ 5G networks, London is charting a new path for Western nations dealing with Huawei. The UK is not the first European nation to accept Huawei as part of their national 5G systems, but it is perhaps the most significant. London’s success in limiting Huawei’s influence in the system, not to mention ensuring cyber security, will be the test of whether the world truly can live with Huawei, or whether resistance is futile against the dominant global telecommunications company. It also will force the American government to decide whether its current information-sharing arrangements with the UK are now at risk.
In attempting to mitigate a potentially major role for Huawei, the UK government announced that the company would be limited to providing 35 per cent of the ‘non-sensitive’ parts of the system, such as antennae and base stations, and will be entirely blocked off from sensitive areas such as military and intelligence networks.
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