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Britain will bar new deployments of Huawei equipment in its fledgling high-speed 5G network, the government said Tuesday, delivering a major blow to the Chinese technology giant and a significant win for the Trump administration, which has been pressing allies to shun the firm.
The British decision to unplug from Huawei, announced in the House of Commons by the government’s digital and media minister Oliver Dowden, will take full effect in January — and it will delay Britain’s rollout of 5G service by two to three years and cost billions of dollars.
The British announcement marks a significant moment in the movement away from China in the global 5G competition, especially among advanced democracies increasingly concerned that the company’s ties to the Communist government create unacceptable security risks.
In addition to intense pressure from Washington, the Chinese crackdown in Hong Kong and Beijing’s lack of transparency on the origins of the coronavirus have added to concerns in Western capitals about using Chinese technology, officials and analysts said.