A ban on Huawei's mobile kit will not propel Britain "into the digital slow lane", IT professionals have said, following stark warnings from the Chinese tech giant over its importance to Britain.
In a poll of professionals by the Chartered Institute for IT, more than half of the 3,000 people asked did not believe Huawei's claim that the UK's decision to block it from telecom and broadband networks would be damaging for the country, pushing up bills and deepening the digital divide. Another 20pc remained undecided.
The majority of IT professionals said they thought stripping out Huawei kit would make the UK safer, whilst most thought the 2027 target for removing the kit was possible.
The Government last month performed a sharp U-Turn on allowing Chinese company Huawei to provide kit for Britain's 5G networks, and instead ordered telecom operators to start stripping their existing equipment out of the networks.
The move prompted a sharp rebuke from Huawei, with UK spokesman Ed Brewster warning it would be damaging to innovation in Britain. "Instead of 'levelling up', the Government is levelling down and we urge them to reconsider," he said. The step "threatens to move Britain into the digital slow lane".
Huawei has been one of the largest providers of telecom equipment up until this point, and its systems are embedded in 3G and 4G networks.
However, Bill Mitchell, director of policy at BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, said the latest poll showed that "Huawei’s claim that the UK will somehow be thrown into a dark age without them looks like hubris" to most IT professionals.
"The Government’s challenge now is to build on public backing for the Huawei decision, by ensuring standards of high competence, ethics and trust throughout the tech industries, as it develops the alternatives.
"This will require intelligent planning for how the UK builds 5G capability to underpin digital transformation - without Huawei’s involvement and without damaging economic growth." The Government has said it is consulting other kit providers such as NEC and Fujitsu.
August 05, 2020 at 12:00PM
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Huawei ban will not 'move Britain into the digital slow lane' - Telegraph.co.uk
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