PARIS – The head of the French cyber security agency ANSSI said there would be no outright ban on the use of Huawei equipment in the deployment of the French 5G telecommunications network, but that he was lobbying French telecom companies to avoid switching to the Chinese company.
“What I can say is that there will not be a total ban,” Guillaume Poupard told Les Echos newspaper in an interview. “(But) for operators that are not currently using Huawei, we are urging them not to.”
The United States government has urged its allies to exclude the Chinese telecommunications giant from the next-generation communications from the West, saying that Beijing could use it to spy. Huawei has denied the charges.
Sources told Reuters in March that France would not ban Huawei, but would instead try to keep Huawei off the main mobile network, which carries increased surveillance risks because it processes confidential information such as customers’ personal data.
France’s decision on Huawei’s equipment is crucial for two of the country’s four telecommunications operators, Bouygues Telecom and SFR, as approximately half of its current mobile network is made by the Chinese group.
“For those who are already using Huawei, we are issuing authorizations for durations ranging from three to eight years,” Poupard said in the interview.
State-controlled Orange has already chosen Huawei’s European rivals such as Nokia and Ericsson.
Poupard said that starting next week, operators who have not received explicit authorization to use Huawei equipment for the 5G network may consider a non-response after the legal deadline as a rejection of their requests.
Poupard said the decision was made to protect France’s independence, and not as an act of hostility towards China.
“This is not the Huawei attack or anti-Chinese racism,” said Poupard. “All we are saying is that the risk is not the same with European suppliers as it is with non-European suppliers.”
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