A new law being proposed in the UK will impose hefty fines on telecoms that will fail to increase their security.
The proposed law, dubbed the Telecommunications Security Bill, threatens telecoms with fines to compel them to tighten their security as well as bans the involvement of Chinese firm Huawei in the UK 5G network.
Additional initiative to ban Huawei
While there have been numerous steps the UK government has taken to ban Huawei from the country's 5G network, the proposed bill is the first attempt at including such ban in a legislation that provides details on how it will be enforced.
In July, the UK has decided to ban the Chinese tech giant from its 5G network, doing a turnabout on its January decision to grant it a limited role.
Digital and Culture Minister Oliver Dowden explained that the new US sanctions imposed on the company in May had "significantly changed" the landscape.
Dowden said: "Given the uncertainty this creates around Huawei’s supply chain, the UK can no longer be confident it will be able to guarantee the security of future Huawei 5G equipment."
As a result, British telecommunications holding company BT Group decided to sign a deal with Ericsson for its 5G equipment, abandoning its former provider Huawei.
The 5G equipment deal with Ericsson is part of the move by BT to remove Huawei from its EE mobile network without becoming entirely dependent on its other radio access network (Ran) equipment provider, Nokia.
It is also in compliance with the UK government’s ban on the Chinese tech giant’s products from its 5G network.
The bill will grant the government national security powers that will enable it to order big telecoms firms such as BT on ways they should use "high risk" vendors including Huawei.
Hefty fines for violators
Under the Telecommunications Security Bill, companies that will not meet deadlines for higher security requirements will receive big fines that could reach up to 10% of turnover, or more than £100,000 a day.
However, the government stated that the £100,000 daily fine will only be imposed in he case of "continuing contravention",
The bill gives the Office of Communications (Ofcom) the mandate to implement the rules as well as new powers that it may need to accomplish this job.
Secretary Dowden said: "We are investing billions to roll out 5G and gigabit broadband across the country, but the benefits can only be realized if we have full confidence in the security and resilience of our networks."
"This groundbreaking bill will give the UK one of the toughest telecoms security regimes in the world and allow us to take the action necessary to protect our networks," he added.
Dr. Ian Levy, the technical director of the National Cyber Security Centre, emphasized that "our national networks and operators need to know what is expected of them".
"We are committed to driving up standards, and this bill imposes new telecoms security requirements which will help operators make better risk-management decisions," Dr. Levy continued.
In response to the proposed bill, Huawei vice-president Victor Zhang said: "This decision is politically motivated and not based on a fair evaluation of the risks. It does not serve anyone's best interests as it would move Britain into the digital slow lane and put at risk the government's levelling-up agenda."
