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BT have missed their end-of-year deadline to remove and replace Huawei equipment from their network core
According to a Telegraph report, BT has confirmed that it has failed to complete the kit removal in time for the deadline of 31 December 2023. The end-of-year deadline, which had already been extended twice, required the complete removal of Huawei equipment from the core of BT’s network.
UK law requires that all Huawei equipment must be removed from all the UK’s mobile networks, both the core and the radio access network (RAN), by the end of 2027.
BT is currently in the process of replacing the Huawei kit with Ericsson technology. Exactly how much Huawei equipment remains in BT’s network is unclear, though BT says that “99% of all core traffic is now being served by non-Huawei kit”, with the remaining 1% being carried on older 2G and 3G networks.
In 2020, the UK banned Huawei products from the critical parts of the country’s telecommunications infrastructure following security concerns. Network operators were warned by the UK government that failure to meet the replacement deadlines would result in fine of up to 10% of their revenue or £100,000 for every day there was a failure to comply. It is unknown whether the government intends to follow through with these potential fines.
It is worth noting here that while the challenge of removing Huawei equipment from UK networks is shared by all of the country’s national operators, the scale of the task is far larger for BT. Three UK, for example, whose core network is supplied by Nokia, only had a small amount of Huawei equipment implemented and was therefore easily able to meet the deadline. Virgin Media has also confirmed that it has met the deadline.
The only official word from BT on the issue has been the following, which was released by a spokesperson before the deadline passed:
“We’ve met our initial targets – both RAN traffic levels and sites were below the levels required by the Government for its July 2023 deadline. Our focus is now on work in the core for the Government’s deadline”.
The government had said very little on the deadline recently, stating only that that they “continue to work with operators to remove Huawei technology as quickly as possible while minimising disruption for consumers, and operators remain on track to remove it from 5G public networks by the end of 2027.”
Back in 2020, BT’s CEO Phillip Jansen emphasised the sheer scale of the removal process, adding: “If you wanted to have no Huawei in the whole of the telecoms infrastructure across the whole of the UK, I think that’s impossible to do in under 10 years.”
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