Huawei Unplugged

As politicians grapple with the question of whether to let the world’s biggest mobile-phone technology provider, Huawei, be involved in our 5G network, Peter Griffin investigates how the company has landed in the proverbial.

- Peter Griffin

Chinese company Huawei, which has 180,000 employees and supplies networking equipment used by three billion people, was everywhere to be seen last week in the Spanish city of Barcelona, host to the annual Mobile World Congress. In eight pavilions the size of football fields, the world’s networking and mobile-phone companies joined in a hypefest focused on the technology of the moment – 5G, the fifth generation of cellphone technology.

The 5G networks that will be switched on around the world from later this year will offer connection speeds dozens of times faster than current technology. That means using your phone for broadband speeds you presently enjoy on a fixed-line fibre connection, more impressive mobile gaming and streaming video services.

Further down the track, 5G will connect smart cities and driverless cars, creating an “internet of things” network, a web of connected devices.

Billions will be invested in building 5G networks and the phones that run on them in the coming years. But the company leading the charge to 5G could be left out of the picture as it faces the prospect of a ban on its technology in the US being extended across the world, from the UK and Germany to Australia and New Zealand.

In November, the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) said it had identified major network security risks with Huawei, which phone company Spark plans to contract to build a 5G network next year.

That mirrored assessments from intelligence agencies in Australia, Germany and the UK, where a special oversight committee had already been established to scrutinise Huawei’s technology.