With ASKAR SHEIBANI

Chair, DBF and CEO Comtek Network Systems

For the past couple of years, the US President, Donald Trump, has accelerated the trade war with China. The US has banned the Chinese Telecoms manufacturer, Huawei, from involvement in American telecoms infrastructure for national security reasons. The US president has also asked all its allies, especially the UK, to follow the USA and ban all Huawei involvement with their 5G infrastructure.

The UK government has an ambitious plan to link all the buildings in the country with Gigabit speed broadband by 2025. 5G is the latest Gigabit speed wireless technology and is essential for the UK Government to deliver its manifesto promise within the time limit it has set.

Most telecoms providers in the UK, such as EE (BT), O2 and Vodafone, have already invested billions of pounds in their core infrastructure and 4G technology using products from the Chinese provider Huawei. In doing so the UK telecoms sector followed the UK government's policy of a closer trading relationship with China.

There are mainly three manufacturers of 5G products globally; Nokia (Finnish), Ericsson (Swedish) and Huawei. Huawei's 5G technology is the most advanced and ready to be deployed. Huawei is at least two years ahead in the technology field and is also a financially much more stable company than its rivals, Nokia and Ericsson.

As part of its trade war, the US government has imposed sanctions against Huawei and forced the US component manufacturers not to supply parts to Huawei. However, Nokia and Ericsson are reliant on Chinese component supply chains to manufacture their 5G products. Hence the trade war initiated by the US could lead to a further negative impact in the UK's already struggling economy.

The UK and the EU have come up with a much more compromising policy. They have decided to cap and limit the involvement of Huawei in developing their 5G infrastructure. The UK's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) believes the risk is manageable if Huawei has limited involvement in the UK's 5G. The industry body MobileUK said banning Huawei would cost £7bn pounds and would delay our 5G network by 24 months.

Why did we end up in this mess? We are now relying on a high-risk Chinese Telecoms manufacturer to build our most critical core infrastructure.

The UK, in the 80s and 90s, was second only to the US in leading telecommunications technology. We had world-beating telecommunications companies such as STC, Racal, GEC, Marconi, Ferranti and Plessey. Successive UK governments have allowed our leading telecoms technology companies to be acquired by overseas countries or just to disappear.

As a result, sadly, we have to now rely on the Chinese to build our sensitive infrastructure.

In North Wales, we have a plan to build first-class digital connectivity. 5G rollout is an integral part of that plan. Any delays in building the Gigabit Speed telecoms infrastructure will have a severe impact on North Wales's economic development.

The UK needs to be self-sufficient and self-reliant in implementing its own sensitive critical infrastructure. Our universities have the best expertise to help and develop our industries. Huawei's 5G technology was practically developed at Surrey University. Bangor University has also developed an amazing technology called DSP to be used within 5G. Huawei has been pouring money into our universities to help develop such technologies.

What a shambles we have created! We all know that Trump's policy is "America first" but why should this be UK policy too? Why is the UK sacrificing its own interests to support the US trade war? Why should we put our digital connectivity on the back burner and further damage our fragile economy to stroke the vanity of a waning president?

We need to continue to follow the EU policy which mitigates the risks whilst prioritising the prosperity of each nation. I call on the UK Government to support our home-grown high-tech businesses and put in place an industrial strategy that protects the UK's key infrastructure based industries.