UK to proceed carefully on Huawei, says PM Johnson

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Thursday he would proceed carefully on making a decision on Huawei because the government did not want any critical infrastructure to be controlled by "potentially hostile state vendors".

"I don’t want to see our critical national infrastructure at risk of being in any way controlled by potentially hostile state vendors," Johnson told the Evening Standard when asked about the Chinese telecommunications giant's possible involvement in Britain's 5G network. "So we have to think very carefully about how to proceed now," he said, as per a Reuters report.

It is worth noting that the statement comes shortly after the US' Federal Communications Commission termed China-based Huawei's and ZTE as national security threats. This means that telecom companies in the US cannot use funds from the country's $8.3B Universal Service Fund on equipment or services produced or provided by Huawei or ZTE.

“Both Huawei and ZTE have close ties to the Chinese Communist Party and China’s military apparatus. And both companies are broadly subject to Chinese law, which obligates them to cooperate with the country’s intelligence services,” FCC Chairman Ajit Pai wrote in a Twitter thread.

Meanwhile, Huawei has received approval to break ground on a 1 billion pound research and development site near Cambridge in England. As per a Bloomberg report, the site will focus on optoelectronics.

(With Reuters Inputs)