Telecommunications (Security) Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Miriam Cates and Lord Beamish

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 14th January 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Miriam Cates]

Q You have said in your written evidence that you fully support the objectives of the Bill, to improve security in the networks, but 20 years ago we could not possibly have anticipated the kind of threats that we face today, so it is safe to assume that we cannot perceive the kind of threats that we will face in the future. Do you think that the Bill is wide-ranging and flexible enough for the Government to be able to respond to future threats and, if not, what could be done to make it more future-proof?

Howard Watson: I actually think the structure of the Bill accommodates that quite well. It allows secondary legislation and guidelines to be upgraded. We note the critical role of the National Cyber Security Centre working with Government in doing that. I think, actually, you have taken care of that well with the way the Bill is structured.

Alex Towers: Yes, I would completely agree with that. I suppose our concern, slightly, at the minute, is to see some of the detail that is going to sit underneath the Bill in terms of a code of practice, in particular, and secondary legislation, because that is where it will become clear exactly what the implications are for operators. The sooner we can see some of that detail and get into the teeth of that, that would be great; but the way the Bill is structured, to allow that sort of detail to be updated on a regular basis as the world changes around us, seems totally sensible.

[Mr Jones]

Q The debate to date has mainly been around hardware, but you raised the issue—the bigger threat, certainly that I see, is from hacking and the vulnerability there. In terms of diversification, to be honest, we will have two vendors for the next considerable time, so when we talk about the diversification strategy and getting new vendors into the market, what timescales are we looking at? Are we actually putting all our eggs into the open RAN basket? I agree that there is the possibility of advancing that sector in the UK. Realistically, we will have those two, one of which, we know, is financially vulnerable. What difference would having just one vendor make to you?

Howard Watson: Let me work through that. First, from our perspective, given that we do have quite a large amount of BT in our mobile network, which is with the high-risk vendor, we have a large swap-out programme already under way. Effectively, we already use Nokia to extend their reach, but also to introduce Ericsson. That essentially means that I will be replacing a significant amount of my network over the next seven years.

It is quite difficult for me to start introducing new opportunities and new options into that, certainly in the early part of that. For my network, I see the opportunities in the latter part of this decade, not the early part. That does not mean that there will not be opportunities to try open RAN in some of the rural areas or to conduct some trials with the other vendors that we have talked about. It is very much an industry approach that we are taking here. Some of my colleagues may be able to move a bit earlier. It is important that we collaborate and work as a UK set of operators with the Government to make sure that we have the right rich set of solutions.

We would not want to come down to just one vendor. That would certainly be a worry for many reasons, so we need to continue to ensure that, in the short term, we absolutely have the choice of two.

Alex Towers: Given the timeframes that Howard has described, it is a five to seven-year cycle of replacement for the vendor. That is why it makes sense, we think, to go big now on large-scale trials of things like open RAN. The important investment in R&D and the £250 million is a good step towards that, but we will probably need some more, because we need to be ready for the next cycle if it is going to be a workable solution in future.

Telecommunications (Security) Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Miriam Cates and Lord Beamish

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

[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.