France says oui to Huawei

In an interview with local press, the Director General of the national security agency has said there would not be an outright ban for Chinese telecoms equipment vendor Huawei.

On a day where it appears the UK Government is on the verge of delivering heart breaking news, France seems to be heading the opposite direction. Les Echos has said Director General Guillaume Poupard has deemed the vendor safe for French telecoms operators to work with.

“What I can say is that there won’t be a total ban,” Poupard said. “For operators that are not currently using Huawei, we are inciting them not to go for it.

“For those that are already using Huawei, we are delivering authorisations for durations that vary between three and eight years.”

While Orange has already said it will source network infrastructure equipment from Nokia and Ericsson, other French telcos are in less favourable positions. Both Bouygues Telecom and SFR have Huawei equipment embedded in 4G networks, and to ensure backwards compatibility, further work with Huawei in some manner would be almost a necessity. Today’s proclamation will come as a relief to some.

As Poupard has made it clear in the above statement, this is not a guarantee Huawei is safe in France for the long-term. Licences for between three and eight years suggest there will be additional investigations and policy decisions in the future, though this at least give breathing room for the Huawei lobby machines to go through the gears. The same might not be said in the UK, however.

Over the weekend, a Government leak suggested new rules would be implemented to force telcos to phase Huawei equipment and products out of networks. Timelines have not been offered by anyone as of yet, but this could prove to be either expensive and disruptive, or very expensive and very disruptive for the UK telecoms operators.

Some might suggest French President Emmanuel Macron is somewhat under the Trump thumb, but it seems to French are resisting the temper tantrums of the White House. It will be interesting to see whether the country remains defiant or succumbs to pressure as the UK is reportedly about to.