U.K. grants Huawei limited role in building its 5G networks

The U.K government has granted Huawei a limited role in the rollout of 5G in Britain, despite U.S. pressure to deny the company from any involvement.

Canada is now the only country in the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance that hasn’t made a decision on Huawei yet. The other countries in the alliance include, Australia, New Zealand, the U.K and the U.S.

The U.S. has been pressuring Canada and the U.K. to not allow Huawei to participate in the deployment of 5G because it believes China could get a hold of state secrets.

U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said that “high-risk vendors” will be able to participate in the “non-sensitive” parts of the deployment of 5G. He ruled that they cannot participate in more than 35 percent of the deployment.

He says that Huawei will be excluded from the sensitive core of networks, and is going to be banned from critical networks and sensitive locations, including military bases and nuclear sites.

The U.S. government previously said that if the U.K. used Huawei, it would scale back intelligence co-operation. Further, the U.S. national security advisor has similarly urged Canada to not use Huawei for 5G networks because it would jeopardize intelligence sharing between the two countries.

Source: CBC News