5G: National Security

(asked on 21st July 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps he is taking to achieve 5G diversification and encourage competition whilst guarding against threats to national security from malign overseas vendors.


Answered by
Matt Warman Portrait
Matt Warman
This question was answered on 10th September 2021

The Government’s 5G Diversification Strategy sets out plans to deliver a more healthy, diverse and competitive supply base for UK telecoms networks, in order to increase quality and innovation, and to address the potentially significant risks to the security and resilience of our critical national infrastructure.

As a first step towards delivering this long-term vision, the Government has committed an initial investment of £250 million. The Government’s priorities have been informed by the expert advice of the Telecoms Diversification Taskforce, which was chaired by Lord Livingston of Parkhead, and which published its advice in the spring.

On 2 July 2021, the Government published its response, welcoming the recommendations and setting out the steps it is taking to implement them. These include the Future RAN Competition (FRANC) - an open competition, run by DCMS, that will allocate up to £30 million of R&D funding to projects that support the goals of the government's 5G Supply Chain Diversification Strategy. The competition is aimed at helping to incentivise industry to create new products and services to unlock the full potential of Open RAN.

DCMS has also partnered with Ofcom and Digital Catapult to fund the SmartRAN Open Network Innovation Centre (SONIC Labs) to fund an industry-facing testing facility to foster Open RAN in the UK helping to develop a supply chain with multiple suppliers at every stage. SONIC Labs went live on the 24th of June 2021.

Alongside efforts to diversify the telecoms supply chain, the Government is committed to ensuring the security of the UK’s telecoms networks. That is why we have introduced the Telecommunications (Security) Bill. This Bill will create one of the toughest telecoms security regimes in the world. It will protect our networks even as they grow and evolve, shielding our critical infrastructure both now and in the future. The Bill introduces a stronger telecoms security framework which places new security duties on public telecoms providers, and new national security powers to address the risks posed by high risk vendors.

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