CBI members, EE and Huawei have announced that they will continue to work together on building capacity across EE’s 5G network in the UK. Britain’s biggest mobile operator, EE will switch to the next generation service on May 30th.
EE chief executive, Marc Allera said its planned 5G launch was “The start of the UK’s 5G journey and great news for our customers that want and need the best connections.”
The British government is expected to rule imminently on whether Huawei will be allowed to officially participate in supplying the UK’s 5G network. However, following the high-profile leaking from the UK National Security Council earlier in April that the government had, or would, agree to allow Huawei to supply 5G technologies, it is presumed that the ‘green light’ has been given for the launch, which will see six cities including London, Cardiff and Edinburgh switched over to EE’s networks next week.
EE did add two caveats to its announcement however, making clear that Huawei would not be supplying networking equipment to its core network, and that EE would be pulling a Huawei smartphone from its 5G launch line-up because of uncertainty about support by Google’s Android after a U.S. move to block the Chinese firm’s access to its technology.
Allera said: “EE believes that it is important for the UK that we are in the pack of leading nations for 5G. At the moment [EE] have no instructions [from government] to change our plans.”
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