BT clarifies seeking more time from govt to remove Huawei tech

As a follow-up to yesterday’s item about BT seeking more time from the UK government to remove Huawei technology from its core network, the UK national operator has provided the following statement : “We continue to liaise with DCMS and the NCSC [National Cyber Security Centre] to ensure our programme can be completed as quickly and safely as possible and remain confident that the final 2027 deadline for delivering new equipment throughout the 5G network is achievable. We are continuing to work towards the proposed date of January 2023 for that work to happen in our core, but believe a short extension would be reasonable to reflect the significant, Covid-driven impacts to the programme over the past two years.” All UK operators are tasked with removing Huawei technology from their core platforms by 28 January 2023 as part of the network security directive outlined by the government in 2020, but BT is the only one of the four major UK operators to have deployed the Chinese vendor’s mobile core technology and thus faces the difficult task of replacing it.

CT Bureau