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Major Win for Trump Admin: UK Bans Huawei from 5G Network

Trump administration sanctions 'significantly changed' the landscape, according to the Brits.
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In a major victory for the Trump administration, the United Kingdom has banned mobile providers from buying new Huawei 5G equipment, and by 2027, they must also remove all Huawei 5G equipment from their wireless networks, the BBC reports. The move reversed  a January decision that allowed the embattled Chinese tech giant a limited role.

The Tuesday decision is a major victory for the Trump administration, which has been urging allies to exclude Huawei from building overseas 5G networks. The Trump administration claims the Chinese firm poses a national security threat.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson faced growing pressure from lawmakers within his own party who argue that the Chinese government could use Huawei for sabotage and spying, jeopardizing intelligence sharing between the U.S. and U.K.

While Huawei claims it is owned by Chinese citizens and denies that it would help the Chinese government to spy, under Chinese law, Beijing can order the company’s direction and actions.

The UK decision follows U.S. sanctions imposed on the Chinese company in May, which “significantly changed” the landscape, according to Digital and Culture Minister Oliver Dowden.

Those sanctions restricted Taiwan-based company TSMC from exporting computer chipsets and other critical components to Huawei.

Without these parts, “Huawei can’t build 5G base stations and other equipment,” reports  CNN.

Huawei had operated in Britain for 20 years, and this decision may delay the rollout of 5G across Britain by over a year. The cost of changing operator equipment is not insignificant.

“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,” said Dowden.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said last month that “the tide is turning against Huawei as citizens around the world are waking up to the danger of the Chinese Communist Party’s surveillance state.”

On Tuesday, Pompeo celebrated the news: “The UK joins a growing list of countries from around the world that are standing up for their national security by prohibiting the use of untrusted, high-risk vendors.”

China’s ambassador to the UK called the decision “disappointing and wrong.”

Huawei threatened that the move is “bad news for anyone in the UK with a mobile phone” and that it will “move Britain into the digital slow lane, push up bills and deepen the digital divide.”

“It has become questionable whether the UK can provide an open, fair and non-discriminatory business environment for companies from other countries,” tweeted Liu Xiaoming, China’s amabassador to the UK.

Chinese firm Huawei didn’t give in without a fight: they lobbied the U.K. government hard with an advertising campaign celebrating their investment in UK employment and threw in a sprawling $1.25 billion research facility in Cambridge to boot.

In the end, though, it wasn’t enough.

European companies are all too happy to fill the void.

Nokia said in a statement that it has the “capacity and expertise to replace all of the Huawei equipment in the UK’s networks at scale and speed” while the Swedish company Ericsson said they have “the technology, experience and supply chain capacity” to help the United Kingdom achieve 5G status.

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