Telecommunications (Security) Bill (Second sitting)

Miriam Cates Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 14th January 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Chi Onwurah]

Q So, what are other countries doing that you are aware of?

Hamish MacLeod: The States, New Zealand and Australia have all excluded Huawei, among others. We could supply you with a full list if that is needed.

[Miriam Cates (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Con)]

Q The Government’s diversification strategy goes alongside the Bill. Obviously, the principle driver of the diversification is security reasons, but it will also open up the networks to smaller operators—I imagine, Matthew, many of your members are much smaller companies. Do you think that it will have a positive effect on the sector, in that sense, and are there any other barriers to entry for the smaller tech companies that you can identify and that could be addressed in the Bill?

Matthew Evans: Thank you for that question. As I said at the start, we welcome the Government’s diversification strategy. It looks to tackle four issues, really, which are supporting incumbent suppliers to the UK market; attracting other global-scale suppliers; accelerating open interfaces and interoperability; and then the fourth area, which we could probably do with more detail on, which is really building on that domestic capability. I know that the taskforce that helped Government to frame the strategy is working on that aspect of it. As I say, I think we could do with some more detail.

However, we welcome the funding that has come alongside that strategy, and I think that we have a real opportunity in the UK in some of the areas where we have traditional strengths, in the software side in particular, to build some world-leading capability. As for the Bill itself, I do not think that it necessarily presents a barrier to that domestic capability; it is more in how we develop the strategy that sits alongside the Bill.

Hamish MacLeod: Just to add to what Matt said, yes, we very much welcome the diversification strategy. It is an absolutely necessary step to mitigate the risks of having to rely on two incumbents. It gives the UK an opportunity to have a leadership role in the development of exciting new technologies, such as open RAN, and, as Matt said, to grow the supplier base in the UK in the mobile sector.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

Q I think we have heard from the witnesses here now and from other operators that the 2027 deadline is important, in terms of not changing. We hear a lot about diversification, but let us be honest: we are going to have to have two vendors up until 2027 and possibly for a long time after. That is because, regarding the investment decisions taken by mobile phone operators, they are clearly not going to put kit in and then suddenly take it out post-2027. So, being realistic about the diversification strategy, which I support in terms of its ambitions, in practical terms—in terms of influencing what is in our telecoms—it is going to be a long way off yet, is it not?

Hamish MacLeod: Yes. As I just said, the 2027 deadline is very important, because that will give time for realistic competitive alternatives to develop. The open RAN is being deployed in the UK in sort of rural areas and in the less high-performance environments, and that will change over time. The investments that this diversification strategy talks about in research and development will help to develop open RAN, and also in the test bed programmes. All these things will help to build the capability of alternative vendors.

Matthew Evans: Just to add to Hamish’s answer, there is a reason that we have a relatively constricted number of scale providers for telecoms, and it is the level of R&D required—that is the risk associated with each generation of technology if it is not taken up on a global scale by operators. To be realistic, we are likely to be focused around two incumbent vendors in the short term.

I think that what the diversification strategy sets out, though, and in fairness it is a strategy and not a complete plan, is a path to open up the UK market to those scale providers who at the moment do not participate in it. That is through trying to reduce the commercial and regulatory barriers that we face, such as on spectrum defragmentation and on providing a single RAN solution —at the moment in the UK, there are obviously 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G. But it also then opens up the possibility of greater use of technologies such as open RAN, which really breaks away from that proprietary architecture, whereby we have both the hardware and the software from the same provider.

That will be a challenge in the short term, but in the medium to long term there are actions that can be taken both to attract the scale providers not in the UK market and to make the UK market attractive to people who work in the open RAN area as well. So I think a dual-track approach helps to bring diversification to the UK market.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

In that case, let us go to Miriam Cates, please.

[Miriam Cates]

Q This is a question for Chris from NEC. I think that you have partially answered it already, so do not feel that you have to repeat what has already been said. It appears to me that, if the open RAN trial is successful and the open RAN technology is adopted, it has the potential to significantly disrupt the telecoms market in a way similar to how APIs have disrupted the software market. First, how do you think that it will change the shape of the industry over the medium to long term? And secondly, what experience and capabilities does NEC have that give you the confidence that you will be able to run this trial and it will be successful?

Chris Jackson: First of all, the answer is yes in terms of, “Do I think it is a game changer?” Absolutely. You only have to look at what happened in the IT industry to see what open standards have done for that, so I absolutely think it is the right thing to do and we very much support it.

In terms of NEC’s capability, if you look at the work that we have done with Rakuten and NTT DOCOMO in Japan, we have shown that we have proven experience and open RAN capabilities. We also have a long history of R&D capability, and we have the capability on the ground now, with the launch of the global open RAN centre of excellence, to take that development further forward in the UK. Those are the main reasons I think the NEC is well placed to take advantage.

A final point that I would make is that, one of the things that we are going to see, which we would want to see, is a lot of smaller companies coming into this marketplace. That is very healthy, and they would certainly play an important part in driving innovation. There is also definitely a need for large companies with strong balance sheets, and NEC certainly ticks that box.

[The Chair]

Q Do any of the rest of you have anything to add to that?

John Baker: Yes, I will jump in. Mavenir is heavily invested in the UK as well. We have addressed the 2G, 3G, 4G solution with the recent acquisition of ip.access in Cambridge. We are building up a significant open RAN solution centre in the UK and we have made several press announcements about that.

In terms of hardware versus software, we have demonstrated that with some of the networks that we have deployed, such as T-Mobile in the US, which has 150 million subscribers essentially running on disaggregated software and hardware platforms. That demonstrates that you can build secure, reliable mobile networks with a software architecture. That is the way of the future. Obviously, that now has to fit into the cycles of deployment and rip and replace that the various carriers have.