Huawei removal affected Vodafone 5G, replacement to take 2027

One of the largest telecom service providers, Vodafone has expressed concerns about rolling out 5G services across the UK and other regions due to the replacement of Huawei, which may take beyond 2027.

The operator was forced to replace the 5G kit deployed by Huawei within its 5G network following the UK’s ban on the vendor, which was imposed back in 2020. That year, Vodafone said it would cost around €200 million (then $220 million) to replace the equipment from its European networks.

Huawei has long been a partner of telecom companies in the UK and across Europe and 5G wasn’t an exception. However, the largest telecom equipment supplier is being targeted by the US and its allies. After UK’s decision to strip Huawei from core network infrastructure, all of the telecoms were instructed to remove the Chinese telecom giant.

Vodafone Chief:

Vodafone UK chief network officer Andrea Dona told that Vodafone’s swap out of Huawei’s equipment from its 5G network is going according to plan, revealing that Vodafone is using the opportunity to switch 2,500 Huawei sites to Open RAN.

On the flip side, he admits that the situation has severely slowed down Vodafone’s 5G rollout in the UK. And won’t be done ahead of the government’s initial deadline of 2027.

“Although it’s going to plan, it has slowed us down considerably on our 5G rollout, because we can’t rollout out 5G with Huawei as we would have otherwise been able to do. We have to swap before we can roll out.

“If you’ve got an existing Huawei site, such as 2G, 3G, or 4G, and you want to put 5G there, you can’t just do that as you have to rip this up and replace it, and is obviously much more costly, intrusive, and therefore slowed us down. So when I say Vodafone is on track, we’re on track with the slowed down plan [removing Huawei kit].”

The UK was pretty good with Huawei before the US intervened, which is now causing a major issue for telecom operators. Also, the extended deadline to 2027 to remove Huawei equipment from Vodafone 5G network proves the level of problems these companies are facing.

(source)