What a Government’s U-Turn on Huawei in The UK Would Mean?

Even after continuous pressure from one of its closest ally, the United States of America during the previous year to not allow Huawei to operate in the UK, the British government did not oblige and in the month of January, allowed Huawei to roll out its 5G service in the country with certain restrictions. This move came after the United States of America started considering delisting many Chinese companies from all the stock exchanges in the USA, in the month of September 2019.

After it was announced that Huawei would be rolling its 5G services along with certain other telecommunications carriers in the UK, the US administration had put immense pressure on the UK government to not allow Huawei to roll its 5G services as there was a significant threat of illegal data activities being conducted by the company through such services. The US government even threatened the UK with economic and financial sanctions. But not coming under the pressure of the entire situation, the UK government, led by the Prime Minister Mr Boris Johnson, on 29^th January 2020, gave a green signal for Huawei to roll out its 5G data services, but with certain restrictions.

Background of US-Huawei Conflict

The story behind the conflict, began around 2 years back, when in the month of February 2018, FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) Director first warned the citizens of USA not to buy Huawei smartphones. This was followed by a report, which revealed that Facebook gave Huawei illegal access to user data, following which a lot of major countries such as Australia banned Huawei and asked telecommunication and technology companies to stop working with Huawei. Later that year, Huawei was also caught cheating on a benchmarking test. This was followed by the United States of America, in January 2019, putting Huawei under 23 indictments for theft of trade secrets as well as fraud. In the meanwhile, US officials stated that any country using the technology from Huawei poses a threat to the United States. Google also withdrew its products as well as Android support from all Huawei devices, causing the Chinese Giant to develop its own operating system to support its devices.

After the meeting between the US and British Officials in the middle of January, the UK government sources reported that they had already estimated the kind of threat from Huawei that the US presentation demonstrated, and those threats and risks were already considered in terms of planning of the rolling out of the 5G technology by Huawei in the country. After this, it was also reported that the UK doesn’t plan to change its decision post this presentation, as the experts believed that any threats or risks coming forward were manageable. However, currently, the MPs seem divided on the decision regarding giving permission to Huawei to implement its services in the country or not. Previously, the current prime minister Mr Boris Johnson had also stated that it was up to the US to provide an alternative to Huawei’s 5G technology, but UK wouldn’t want to spoil its intelligence- sharing relationship with the US.

What Changed after government’s permission?

In the month of March 2020, a large number of Member of Parliaments of the ruling Conservative Party in the United Kingdom voiced their differences against the government’s position to allow Huawei to continue with rolling out its services. At the beginning of the March, the group of 38 rebel MPs brought a new bill in the Parliament, for Huawei to end all of its services within the country, and for this particular project, that is supposed to begin in the year 2023, to end.

The line of the rebel MPs, as well as the leaders of the opposition parties, was the fact that allowing Huawei to roll out its 5G service could be a huge risk to the National Security of the United Kingdom, as there have been reports and rumours around the fact that the company is an arm of the Chinese State and has been involved in various data breaches in other countries as well. Countries like the United States of America and Australia have already banned Huawei from operating within their borders, and this stance has been loudly echoed by the rebel Parliamentarians within the chambers of the House of Commons.

Now currently, there have been various rumours doing the rounds, which say that China is behind the Covid-19 Pandemic. This has increased the pressure on the government to act on the China based Huawei and its operations in UK. Most experts have suggested that it would be important to restrict or completely ban the company’s operations.

Huawei’s appeal to the UK Government

The Vice President of Huawei’s UK Operations, Victor Zhang has recently written an open letter, which was an effort to make the appeal to the UK government to allow the operations of the company to continue in the country. The letter mentioned that the company is completely following the government’s and the NHS guidelines strictly, and they will beat the pandemic by working together with everybody else. The letter mentioned that the usage of mobile data had increased by approximately 50 per cent in the country, since the beginning of the lockdown period, which has put the telecommunications systems in the country under intense pressure. And hence, some of the company’s executives, who have been deemed to be “essential workers” are still continuing to work, to make sure that the entire country remains connected, along with some of the other major players, the likes of which include Vodafone, BT, EE as well as Three. The company also mentioned that it is working in close association with its peers to support the continuity of supply of network and data during these tough times for the British citizens.

The VP of Huawei Technologies, while concluding, also said that they believe that once this crisis is over and everybody is back to their routine, the company expects to be back in its role as a key player in the telecommunications segment, and hopes that they can continue to drive the UK’s mobile network and telecommunications industry forward. No doubt, the letter of the VP, most definitely sounds like an appeal to the government to allow them to operate within the country and roll out their 5G services, without any restrictions, even after this crisis.

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