UK Telecommunications

John Redwood Excerpts
Tuesday 14th July 2020

(4 years, 4 months ago)

Commons Chamber
Read Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Oliver Dowden Portrait Oliver Dowden
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

The hon. Gentleman is right to raise the D10 alliance, which was proposed not by the UK Government but, I believe, by the Atlantic Forum. We are working with all the D10 countries on this, and with Japan, South Korea and others, where we have a lot of interest in that.

John Redwood Portrait John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
- Hansard - -

There could be offsets to the delay and cost if, as a result of this, we design and manufacture many more of the components we need here at home. What exactly can the Government do to make that more likely to create jobs and technology?

Oliver Dowden Portrait Oliver Dowden
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

My right hon. Friend is right to raise the point, which is the opportunity created by open RAN technology. It will take a very long time, were the UK minded to do so, to create a new mobile vendor like Ericsson, Nokia or indeed Huawei, but with open RAN we can get UK technologies into the provision of telecoms infrastructure, and that can sit alongside contributions from other like-minded countries around the world. That is how we will create jobs and provide a long-lasting solution.