Stefan Mileschin

To stop company exclusions

The telecoms industry has called on European governments to join mobile operators in establishing a testing regime to protect network security without having to resort to the disruptive step of excluding vendors from the market.

The GSMA, which represents 800 operators worldwide, comes as the United States steps up pressure on its allies to ban China’s Huawei on national security grounds. Something the industry sees as pretty unfair as Huawei makes the cheapest kit.

Operators warn that such a step would disrupt the supply of equipment, increase costs to them and their customers, delay the rollout of next-generation 5G services by years and potentially hobble existing networks.

GSMA said in a statement said that significant consequences, intended or not, are entirely avoidable.

The GSMA said it was assembling a task force of European operators to identify ways to enhance existing testing regimes run by individual operators, by third-party laboratories or in partnership with 3GPP, the 5G standardisation body.

It recommended that governments and mobile operators work together to agree on an assurance and testing regime for Europe “so that it ensures confidence in network security while maintaining competition in the supply of network equipment”.

https://fudzilla.com/news/network/48...testing-regime