France will not ban Huawei, but encouraging 5G telcos to avoid it
The head of the French cybersecurity agency ANSSI said there
would not be a total ban on using equipment from Huawei in the rollout of the
French 5G telecoms network, but that it was pushing French telcos to avoid
switching to the Chinese company.
"What I can say is that there won't be a total
ban," Guillaume Poupard told Les Echos newspaper in an interview.
"(But) for operators that are not currently using Huawei, we are inciting
them not to go for it."
The US government has urged its allies to exclude the
Chinese telecoms giant from the West's next-generation communications, saying
Beijing could use it for spying.
Huawei has denied the charges.
Sources told Reuters in March France would not ban Huawei
but would seek to keep it out of the core mobile network, which carries higher
surveillance risks because it processes sensitive information such as
customers' personal data.
France's decision over Huawei's equipment is crucial for two
of the country's four telecoms operators, Bouygues Telecom and SFR, as about
half of their current mobile network is made by the Chinese group.
"For those that are already using Huawei, we are
delivering authorisations for durations that vary between three and eight
years," Poupard said in the interview.
State-controlled Orange has already chosen Huawei's European
rivals Nokia and Ericsson.
Poupard said that from next week, operators which have not
received an explicit authorisation to use Huawei equipment for the 5G network
can consider a non-response after the legal deadline as a rejection of their
requests.
Poupard said the choice was made to protect French
independence, and not as an act of hostility towards China. "This is not
Huawei bashing or anti-Chinese racism," Poupard said.
"All we're saying is that the risk is not the same with
European suppliers as with non-Europeans."
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