Defying Trump, UK’s Johnson refuses to ban Huawei from 5G

Prime Minister Boris Johnson granted Huawei a limited role in Britain’s 5G mobile network yesterday, frustrating a global attempt by the United States to exclude the Chinese telecoms giant from the West’s next generation communications.

Defying Britain’s closest ally in favour of China on the eve of Brexit, Johnson ruled that “high-risk vendors” such as Huawei would be allowed into the non-sensitive parts of the 5G network.

Yet such high-risk companies’ involvement will be capped at 35 per cent, they will be excluded from the sensitive core, where data is processed, and they will be banned from all critical networks and locations such as nuclear sites and military bases.

5G, which will offer much faster data speeds and become the foundation stone of many industries and networks, is seen as one of the biggest innovations since the birth of the internet itself a generation ago.