Removal of Huawei equipment started by BT at a cost of £500 million France followed

The process of removing 4G and 5G Huawei equipment from thousands of network towers in Europe has begun, Bloomberg said on Friday, and Britain and France are fulfilling their own decisions to support the U.S.-led anti-Huawei campaign. The U.S. considers Huawei a Communist Party appendage and a threat to national security.

Removing Huawei equipment that has been embedded in the country’s major communications infrastructure for decades is expected to cost BT hundreds of millions of pounds and years, and the removal process is now underway.

In Hull, Yorkshire, BT is working to axe all Huawei equipment there by early July. Bloomberg reporter Tom Steele bravely climbed one of the towers to see how big a challenge it really is.

Steele told the crowd, “To remove the 40 base stations that have been installed in Hull over the last 10 years is much more difficult than people think. Not only do you need to get permission from the owner of the land or property where the tower is located, but it also requires multiple engineers, who spend days strapping themselves into harnesses, to perform the component removal. Removal of equipment along the highway or railroad is also operated in this way, and the cost is definitely not cheap. Replacing Huawei equipment along rail lines, according to UK wires last year, is expected to cost £500 million, not including the cost of buying and installing new equipment.”

France’s second-largest mobile network operator, Altice (Altice Europe NV) and Bouygues Telecom, have also begun removing Huawei equipment in major French cities. The work began in early 2021 when the French Constitutional Council signed a ruling forcing telecom operators to remove Huawei equipment not only in rural areas but also in densely populated areas, according to people familiar with the situation.

The companies are removing Huawei’s 4G equipment in cities in order to be able to deploy new mobile networks. Bouygues Telecom said last year that it must remove Huawei equipment from 3,000 towers by 2028 and replace it with Ericsson’s equipment. Altes Telecom is switching to Nokia equipment.