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If the UK is limiting a vendor because it believes it to be malign, or more likely to be malign, or more susceptible to being turned malign by its Government, t

If the UK is limiting a vendor because it believes it to be malign, or more likely to be malign, or more susceptible to being turned malign by its Government, then limiting it to 30% or 3% isn’t going to help much. One fox in the henhouse is enough. As for being able to mitigate a “man in the vendor”, whether the “man” is acting according to the vendor or whether the vendor themselves have been coercively controlled or infiltrated matters very little. Mobile operators generally don't even run their own networks today, they outsource the management of the critical platforms to the vendors themselves who often finance the deal too. UK dropped the ball on this, but it dropped it 10-20 years ago, and now this kind of problem is going to keep coming up again and again. Some of you might enjoy this examination I made of the topic and the context for all this. https://blog.eutopian.io/huawei-5g/ https://blog.eutopian.io/huawei-5g/

mtgx 7y ago
It is clear they made this compromise because the telecoms didn't want to lose their investments. Pure and simple. Same in Germany.
gnfargbl 7y ago
From the NCSC themselves: The cap at 35% ensures the UK will not become nationally dependent on a high risk vendor while retaining competition in the market and allowing operators to continue to use two Radio Access Network (RAN) vendors. In other words, the limit isn’t there to mitigate the risk of Huawei being malign (there are other mitigations in place for that risk, such as keeping them away from sensitive network functions). The limit is there to prevent the operator from becoming entirely beholden to Huawei.
- iso1631 7y ago
  In general no single supplier should provide more than 35% of any source. Anyone beholden to a single supplier is opening themselves up to be ripped off at best. Problems of course come when suppliers merge. I have contracts with 8 different supplier for my business, one goes bust, or jacks up prices, and I simply increase supplies of the other 7. Then those 8 companies start merging, and before long you're left with a single supplier, or at best a cartel.

mtgx 7y ago

It is clear they made this compromise because the telecoms didn't want to lose their investments. Pure and simple. Same in Germany.

gnfargbl 7y ago

From the NCSC themselves: The cap at 35% ensures the UK will not become nationally dependent on a high risk vendor while retaining competition in the market and allowing operators to continue to use two Radio Access Network (RAN) vendors. In other words, the limit isn’t there to mitigate the risk of Huawei being malign (there are other mitigations in place for that risk, such as keeping them away from sensitive network functions). The limit is there to prevent the operator from becoming entirely beholden to Huawei.

iso1631 7y ago
In general no single supplier should provide more than 35% of any source. Anyone beholden to a single supplier is opening themselves up to be ripped off at best. Problems of course come when suppliers merge. I have contracts with 8 different supplier for my business, one goes bust, or jacks up prices, and I simply increase supplies of the other 7. Then those 8 companies start merging, and before long you're left with a single supplier, or at best a cartel.