Telecoms operators including BT successfully campaigned to be given more time to rip Huawei tech out of so-called “core” parts of their networks after warning the removal process could disrupt services for millions of customers. They had originally been given a deadline of January 2023, but this was pushed back.
The ban has provided a major fillip to alternative Western suppliers Nokia and Ericsson.
The HCSEC, which is based in Banbury, Oxfordshire, is jointly staffed by personnel from Huawei and the National Cyber Security Centre, a branch of GCHQ.
It was set up with the aim of reducing “any perceived risks to UK national security arising from the involvement of Huawei in parts of the UK’s critical national infrastructure”.
Previous reports have issued damning assessments of the company’s poor quality engineering and cybersecurity, warning these could pose a risk to national security.
The report for 2020 found Huawei had made “no overall improvement” on UK demands for better security.
In its latest accounts for 2022, the company controlling the HCSEC said it had continued to provide reports to the oversight board “in the usual manner”. It is not clear why the reports are no longer being made public.
Huawei is facing doubts over the future of its business in the UK after auditors last year said there was a “material uncertainty” over its ability to keep operating for another 12 months.
The ban on UK companies buying equipment from the Chinese tech firm combined with US trade sanctions mean the British division is now in a state of managed decline.
Earlier this year Huawei quietly shelved plans for a £1bn research campus in Cambridge, which would have been used to develop broadband technologies, microchips and artificial intelligence software.
Huawei Technologies UK saw its sales halve to £481m in 2021, according to its latest accounts, while staff numbers dropped to 486 from 787.
A government spokesman said: “We do not comment on speculation.”
“Thanks to new laws we now have one of the strongest telecoms security regimes in the world, which we have used to designate Huawei a high-risk vendor and issued clear directions for telecoms operators to control its presence in their networks.
“The UK has maintained a world leading and thorough oversight of Huawei’s presence for more than a decade and that will continue.”
