What's the Story? For BT, good riddance to Huawei would be a Christmas miracle

Light Reading's Iain Morris joins the podcast to explain the challenges BT is facing in meeting the UK government's deadline to remove Huawei tech from its mobile core.

At a Glance

  • BT's Mark Henry explains the difficulty of moving customers and systems off one mobile core and onto a new one (01:03)
  • Will the UK government grant BT an extension on the Huawei removal deadline? (07:05)
  • Why some service providers are hesitant to go all-in on the public cloud (08:48)

For BT, Huawei is an ex whose left-behind vinyls and Van Halen t-shirt make one wonder if they're ever completely gone. Nearly a decade into the breakup, BT is still trying to rid its mobile core of Huawei tech, with a fast-approaching year-end deadline from the UK government. 

Light Reading's Iain Morris joins the podcast to explain the challenges BT is facing in meeting that deadline. We also discuss BT's and other service providers' concerns about using the public cloud for certain aspects of their network.

For lightly edited transcript, please click the caption button in the video toolbar. 

Here are a few topics we covered:

  • BT's Mark Henry explains the difficulty of moving customers and systems off one mobile core and onto a new one (01:03)

  • Challenges BT faces in meeting the end-of-year deadline to remove Huawei tech from its mobile core (03:15)

  • The trouble with sunsetting one mobile core and testing a new one (04:51)

  • Will the UK government grant BT an extension on the Huawei removal deadline? (07:05)

  • Why some service providers are hesitant to go all-in on the public cloud (08:48)

About the Author(s)

Kelsey Ziser

Senior Editor, Light Reading

Kelsey is a senior editor at Light Reading, co-host of the Light Reading podcast, and host of the "What's the story?" podcast.

Her interest in the telecom world started with a PR position at Connect2 Communications, which led to a communications role at the FREEDM Systems Center, a smart grid research lab at N.C. State University. There, she orchestrated their webinar program across college campuses and covered research projects such as the center's smart solid-state transformer.

Kelsey enjoys reading four (or 12) books at once, watching movies about space travel, crafting and (hoarding) houseplants.

Kelsey is based in Raleigh, N.C.

Iain Morris

International Editor, Light Reading

Iain Morris joined Light Reading as News Editor at the start of 2015 -- and we mean, right at the start. His friends and family were still singing Auld Lang Syne as Iain started sourcing New Year's Eve UK mobile network congestion statistics. Prior to boosting Light Reading's UK-based editorial team numbers (he is based in London, south of the river), Iain was a successful freelance writer and editor who had been covering the telecoms sector for the past 15 years. His work has appeared in publications including The Economist (classy!) and The Observer, besides a variety of trade and business journals. He was previously the lead telecoms analyst for the Economist Intelligence Unit, and before that worked as a features editor at Telecommunications magazine. Iain started out in telecoms as an editor at consulting and market-research company Analysys (now Analysys Mason).

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