Johnson chooses Huawei expediency

There’s a fine line between a fudge and a workable compromise. In Britain’s handling of Huawei Technologies Co., Prime Minister Boris Johnson has just about managed to secure the latter.
The UK has brushed off the US’s complaints and decided to allow its telecoms operators to install equipment made by “high-risk vendors” — read: Huawei — in their networks. But the government drew a line, excluding it outright from sensitive core parts of the network and capping its gear’s presence in the non-sensitive parts at 35% of the total.
Outwardly, President Donald Trump won’t like the solution. But if the US’s loudest protestations about security concerns were genuine, and not in fact an effort to stymie Chinese economic influence, then it should be able to stomach the compromise. American concern has focused on the risk of Huawei building backdoors into networks that can be readily exploited by Chinese state-sponsored actors. After all, China passed a law in 2017 obliging companies to assist the state with espionage efforts. And while no such backdoors have yet been found, that isn’t proof that they don’t exist.
But at the same time, a great deal of capital, both political and actual, has been invested in the promise of fifth-generation networks. Globally, revenue from the so-called Internet of Things will quadruple to $1.1 trillion by 2025, industry body the GSMA estimates. With about a third of the $50 billion global telecoms equipment market, Huawei has become the biggest player, with some of the best technology and lowest prices. Banning it would have ramifications for the pace of the 5G rollout.
That is why the UK approach is a pragmatic one. It’s allowing Huawei products into the radio-access network — essentially the antenna and base stations — but keeping it out of the core: the server hubs that direct data around the network. Network security focuses on three pillars: confidentiality, integrity and availability. The first one focuses on ensuring that bad actors can’t see your data. The second is about making sure no-one is altering data during transmission. And the third is about guaranteeing network access when it’s needed.
By those criteria, the UK decision seems to eliminate most, though not all, of the risk. If there are indeed backdoors into the parts of the network using Huawei gear, then they will likely only have access to data from that 35% of the network using it. It should still be possible to keep the equipment out of sensitive networks, such as those running the power grids and police communications.
At any rate, telecommunications firms’ cybersecurity efforts will be on heightened alert where the slice of their operations that do still contain Huawei products is concerned. It might be easier to spot disturbing anomalies. If a base station is siphoning off gobs of data to somewhere in Asia, that will be more noteworthy than if it’s coming from the core network. As the distinction between core and edge networks blurs in the move towards full 5G, Huawei’s role must be managed even more carefully.
British carriers are much more cost-sensitive. Knocking Huawei out of the running in the radio-access network would have left a duopoly of Nokia Oyj and Ericsson AB, giving the suppliers a huge amount of pricing power. Samsung Electronics Co. is accelerating into the industry, but its gear is often even pricier. And US suppliers such as Juniper Networks Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc. compete more effectively in the core network.
The European Union looks set to issue guidelines that imitate the UK approach. The US may not like it, but Johnson was never going to keep everyone happy.

—Bloomberg

Alex Webb is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Europe’s technology, media and communications industries. He previously covered Apple and other technology companies for Bloomberg News in San Francisco