Norway Mulls Huawei 5G Decision That’s Not Black and White

Norway is facing a tough political decision on who should be allowed to build out its 5G network amid a push by the the U.S. to shut out Huawei, according to Bloomberg. In an interview, Norway’s new digitization minister, Nikolai Astrup, said the decision isn’t “black and white.“

Norway is looking over the compliance with its security laws ahead of a pending tender where suppliers such as Ericsson and Huawei are set to compete in the roll-out of the 5G networks. Norway’s Telenor has used Huawei technology in its 4G network, and so far there are no security issues, according to the minister.

“We have no indication that the security in the network is not good today,“ Astrup said on Friday in an interview at his office. “We have a close dialog with the companies, and there are no indication of this.“

Astrup declined to give a timing on his decision, saying he hopes to make one before next year’s 5G roll-out. “Obviously, there is a major political dimension here, but my task must be to pay attention to what I will contribute to solve, to combine security and a rapid roll-out of 5G,“ he said.

Astrup is focused on the risk of having just one supplier providing the technology for what are critical data networks. Testing equipment from several providers and ensuring they can communicate with each other is now a priority. “If the operators choose an approach of vendor diversity, then national dependency on one vendor would be reduced,“ he said.

Hanne Tangen Nilsen, chief security officer at Telenor, said in an email that they have a good dialog with the Norwegian authorities about the security in the infrastructure. She also said that they haven’t yet set a date for when they will chose suppliers, but that they are currently running 5G pilots with Huawei, Ericsson and Nokia in Norway and Denmark through 2019.