What's the Story? BT awaits ruling on missed Huawei removal deadline

Cracking down on BT for narrowly missing the Huawei removal deadline might not be the best move for the UK government.

At a Glance

  • The 1% of BT's network still using Huawei equipment is 2G and 3G (02:32)
  • Why penalizing BT at this stage might be counterproductive (06:53)
  • Rumors that another UK operator requested an extension to remove Huawei from its core network (11:23)

Light Reading's Iain Morris joins the podcast to discuss whether BT will get dinged for missing the UK government's deadline to fully remove Huawei from its core network. BT revealed that 1% of its network traffic is still in the prohibited Huawei zone. Technically, BT missed the UK government's deadline but Iain explains why penalizing BT might be too harsh considering the progress the service provider has made.

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

Here are a few topics we covered:

  • Background on UK government's ruling that BT remove Huawei from its core network (01:29)

  • The 1% of BT's network still using Huawei equipment is 2G and 3G (02:32)

  • Why penalizing BT at this stage might be counterproductive (06:53)

  • UK telecom regulator Ofcom will report to the UK government by Spring 2024 regarding progress BT has made to remove Huawei from its network (09:30)

  • Rumors that another UK operator requested an extension to remove Huawei from its core network (11:23)

Read more about:

What's the Story

About the Authors

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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