No technical reason for Huawei 5G ban, claims House of Commons Science and Technology Committee

Telecoms operators haven't seen evidence of security risk from Huawei hardware - but will keep Huawei out of core networks anyway

The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee have concluded that Huawei should not be barred from UK 5G and conventional telecoms networks.

In a letter last week to the Security of State for Digital, Jeremy Wright MP [PDF], the Committee chair Norman Lamb MP claimed: "We have found no evidence from our work to suggest that the complete exclusion of Huawei from the UK's telecommunications networks would, from a technical point of view, constitute a proportionate response to the potential security threat posed by foreign suppliers."

The letter was written following an inquiry by the Committee that took evidence from, among other organisations, UK mobile network operators. "Regardless of the actual security risk posed by equipment from Huawei or any other vendor, telecommunications networks are designed such that they are secure even if their individual components are not," the letter added.

Lamb went on to assert that operators had not yet seen any evidence that Huawei equipment posed an increased security risk.

Nevertheless, Lamb admitted, telecoms operators "have mostly kept Huawei equipment out of the ‘core' of their existing networks to reduce the impact that any potential threat could pose. They also told us that they intended to continue this exclusion for their 5G networks".

Although regulators in Australia have suggested that the distinction between core and non-core is less clear cut with 5G, that, according to Dr Ian Levy, technical director of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) may be down to geography.

"The UK and Australia have very different geographies, so our laydowns will be very different to Australia's laydowns. So, we may have exactly the same technical understanding, but come to very different conclusions," Levy told the Committee.

Despite all this, the Committee recommended that "the government should mandate the exclusion of Huawei from the core of UK telecommunications networks", but making clear the grounds on which Huawei is excluded.

There might also be grounds, it added for establishing something similar to the Huawei Cyber Security Evaluation Centre (HCSEC) for other providers, such as Nokia and Ericsson, the two vendors most likely to scoop up contracts in the UK for core 5G networking equipment, especially in the absence of competition from Huawei.

Huawei has been at the centre of US claims this year that its networking hardware could be used by China's intelligence services to spy on network traffic.

At the same time, China's government has warned of "serious consequences" for companies that comply with US government sanctions against Huawei.