UK to exclude Huawei from role in high-speed phone network

Britain's government on Tuesday backtracked on plans to give Chinese telecommunications company -Huawei a limited role in the UK's new high-speed mobile phone network in a decision with broad implications for relations between London and Beijing.
As noted by a news agency Associated Press, Britain imposed the ban after the US threatened to sever an intelligence-sharing arrangement because of concerns Huawei equipment could allow the Chinese government to infiltrate UK networks.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson was under pressure from rebels in his own Conservative Party who criticized China's new Hong Kong security law and its treatment of ethnic Uighurs, as well as Huawei's links to the Chinese government. Ten Conservative lawmakers sent a letter to Johnson demanding that he remove Huawei from “the UK's critical national infrastructure.”

The new decision, however, disppointed Huawei. The spokesperson of Huawei UK, Edward Brewster, said: "This disappointing decision is bad news for anyone in the UK with a mobile phone. It threatens to move Britain into the digital slow lane, push up bills and deepen the digital divide. Instead of ‘levelling up’ the government is levelling down and we urge them to reconsider. We remain confident that the new US restrictions would not have affected the resilience or security of the products we supply to the UK."

News Source Indiatoday.in