The Reader: Britain should ensure it is a global 5G leader

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14 July 2020
WEST END FINAL

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Your editor-in-chief no doubt had some choice words when the Office for National Statistics issued correction last week. Overnight, telecoms went from a productivity laggard to a leader, with the resulting implication that economic growth was underestimated for the past decade. Why? Statisticians couldn’t keep up with the pace of improvements in quality and unit price that private-sector investment in the best of global telecoms technology provided.

This casts new light on the economic benefit that 5G — a step change in what has come before — can deliver to headline GDP and regional levelling-up.

For the companies involved in building our 5G future, any restriction to our access to a global provider of 5G technology needs to be grounded in fact, proportionate and with a full appreciation of its impact.

The UK should be a global leader in 5G. Whatever the Government chooses to do before summer recess, it mustn’t lose sight of the economic and societal prize.
Julian David, CEO, techUK

Editor's reply

Dear Julian

You delicately refer to whether Huawei’s Chinese tech should be allowed in our telecoms infrastructure, and delicacy is the right approach. For, while it is easy for the sabre-rattlers to demand we rip their kit out and send it back to Shenzhen, it isn’t that simple.

Concerns about having Huawei in our network are understandable given China’s increasing belligerence towards the West. But, rather stupidly, European and UK phone networks sleepwalked over the past decade into handing it a controlling role over a large part of our network. If we were to take it all out straight away, some services would probably collapse, and it would certainly delay the arrival of 5G rollout.

4G brought us Uber, Zoom and Deliveroo. We don’t want to be left behind on whatever the next generation of tech can bring. By all means rein in Huawei, but do it sensibly, and over time.
Jim Armitage, Business Editor

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