* UK to purge Huawei from 5G by 2027
* No new 5G components to be bought from end of 2020
(Adds details)
By Paul Sandle and Guy Faulconbridge
LONDON, July 14 (Reuters) - Prime Minister Boris Johnson
ordered Huawei equipment to be purged completely from Britain's
5G network by 2027, risking the ire of China by signalling that
the world's biggest telecoms equipment maker is no longer
welcome in the West.
The seven-year lag will please British telecoms operators
such as BT, Vodafone and Three, which
had feared they would be forced to spend billions of pounds to
rip out Huawei equipment much faster.
From the end of the year, it will be illegal for operators
to buy any 5G equipment from Huawei, Britain's Digital, Culture,
Media and Sport Secretary Oliver Dowden told parliament.
He said the decision would mean a delay to the roll-out of
5G by two to three years, and add costs of up to 2 billion
pounds ($2.5 billion).
The United States had long pushed Johnson to reverse a
decision he made in January to grant Huawei a limited role in
5G. London has also been dismayed by a crackdown in Hong Kong
and the perception China did not tell the whole truth over the
coronavirus.
Dowden said the cyber arm of Britain's GCHQ eavesdropping
agency, the National Cyber Security Centre, had told ministers
it could no longer guarantee the stable supply of Huawei gear
after the United States imposed new sanctions on chip
technology.
Telecoms companies will also be told to stop using Huawei in
fixed-line fibre broadband within the next two years.
"This has not been an easy decision, but it is the right one
for the UK telecoms networks, for our national security and our
economy, both now and indeed in the long run," Dowden said.
"By the time of the next election, we will have implemented
in law an irreversible path for the complete removal of Huawei
equipment from our 5G networks."
Huawei said the decision was a political one which
was about U.S. trade policy and not security. It was bad for
Britain and its phone users, it added.
"It threatens to move Britain into the digital slow lane,
push up bills and deepen the digital divide," a spokesman said.
In what some have compared to the Cold War antagonism with
the Soviet Union, the United States is worried that 5G dominance
could lead towards Chinese technological supremacy that could
define the geopolitics of the 21st century.
With faster data and increased capacity, 5G will become the
nervous system of the future economy - carrying data on
everything from global financial flows to critical
infrastructure such as energy, defence and transport.
After Australia first raised alarms about the risk of 5G
being hijacked by a hostile state, the West has become steadily
more worried about Huawei. https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/huawei-usa-campaign/
White House national security adviser Robert O'Brien is
meeting representatives of France, the UK, Germany and Italy in
Paris this week to discuss security, including 5G.
Dowden said Britain was working with its intelligence allies
to create a group of rivals to Huawei to build 5G networks,
naming firms from Finland, Sweden, South Korea and Japan.
"The first thing we need to do is ensure that we protect the
other two vendors in this market, so: Nokia, and
Ericsson," Dowden said. "Secondly we need to get new
suppliers in, that starts with Samsung, and it
starts with NEC."
END OF 'GOLDEN ERA'?
Hanging up on Huawei, founded by a former People's
Liberation Army engineer, marks an end to what former Prime
Minister David Cameron cast as a "golden era" in ties, promoting
Britain as Europe's top destination for Chinese capital.
Trump has repeatedly asked London to ban Huawei, which
Washington calls an agent of the Chinese Communist state - an
argument that has support in Johnson's Conservative Party.
Huawei denies it spies for China and says the United States
wants to frustrate its growth because no U.S. company offers the
same range of technology at a competitive price.
China says banning one of its flagship global technology
companies would have far-reaching ramifications and last week
Beijing's ambassador to London warned that a U-turn on Huawei
would send out a bad message to other Chinese businesses.
($1 = 0.7978 pounds)
(Additional reporting by William James; Writing by Paul Sandle,
Guy Faulconbridge and Michael Holden
Editing by William Maclean and Peter Graff)
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