British telecommunications company Vodafone recently said that if Britain tries to stop the equipment manufactured by China-based Huawei from being utilized in any of the new 5G networks, then it could result in the telecom conglomerate losing millions of pounds and would also quite significantly slow down the development process for the arrival of 5G technology in the country.
The US-Huawei controversy
For quite a while now, the United States has been warning other nations not to employ any of the products made by Huawei as it could be a way for the Chinese regime to spy on the operations of various countries.
Huawei, however, has denied these spying accusations.
About a month ago, Vodafone completely stopped the usage of Huawei products in its day-to-day operations until the European government has evaluated all the risks that come with using Huawei components.
5G technology
Scott Petty, the chief technology officer of Vodafone UK, said on Thursday that the radio equipment provided by Huawei was used in almost a third of the firm's 18,000 base stations in the UK. He further stated that it is also expected to become quite a substantial part in the development of 5G technology.
The Vodafone UK CTO has also said that if the company is forced to completely remove Huawei from its telecom network, then it would have to entirely replace the Huawei technology from all of its base stations that are presently using it for radio.
Some other company's technology would be needed and they would need to build 5G from scratch with the new technology. This would be an extremely difficult and time-consuming process for the telecom conglomerate.
Vodafone UK decided around five years ago not to use any Chinese equipment or technology in its core business units that are at a much higher risk of being compromised.
As of now, Vodafone has planned to roll out 5G technology in 19 towns and cities across Britain by the end of this year, apart from the seven cities that are already using or are about to use 5G technology as a part of the company's UK-wide trial.
Last month, a statement was issued by the head of Britain's National Cyber Security Center saying that so far the country has not managed to discover any form of malicious acts pulled together by Huawei. The British Government is currently under the process of reviewing the telecom supply chain and a report on that is expected to come out in about a few months.
