Sky suffers mobile outages in push to strip Huawei from UK 5G networks

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The government’s drive to rip out Huawei kit from Britain’s telecoms network has led to mobile outages for customers of Sky, in the first sign of disruption long warned about by industry executives.

Ministers have told mobile groups that they need to remove Huawei equipment from their “core” 5G networks by the end of this year given national security fears over use of the Chinese equipment. 

This deadline was extended by a year in 2022 given warnings of a significant risk of network disruption and impact on consumers, despite the added national security risk. 

However, even with this extension, recent mobile outages for Sky Mobile customers have been linked to the removal of Huawei from its network equipment, according to two people familiar with the situation. One added that there could be other factors also contributing to outages.

Sky is one of the largest so-called “mobile virtual network operators” in the UK with more than 3mn customers. Although it uses the O2 network infrastructure, Sky provides its own equipment to offer mobile services.

Sky declined to comment on the outages but added: “Sky is fully complying with government requirements on our mobile network, whilst making every effort to ensure we limit any potential impact on customers.”

The outages are the first sign of the disruption caused by the massive task of ripping out and replacing Huawei kit across the UK’s mobile providers. 

In 2020, Philip Jansen, chief executive of BT, warned about outages if it moved too quickly in stripping equipment from its 5G network.

Jansen said the industry could need at least five years — and ideally seven — to remove the Chinese infrastructure. Taking Huawei out of both its mobile and broadband networks would cost £500mn over five years, he said at the time. 

The government has said that Huawei needs to be removed from “core” network functions by January 2023, and asked operators to provide an update on their progress by July this year.

Ministers have said that the use of the Chinese equipment in the UK network poses a “severe national security risk”. Huawei has always denied its technology was a national security risk.

The government order covers 35 mobile operators and networks. Telecoms executives said that the industry was now entering an intense period in moving customers off Huawei, with teams working flat out to minimise disruption whilst meeting all necessary deadlines.

One said: “High risk vendor (to use the government term) extraction was always going to be a challenge — the scale and speed of the work is unprecedented in the industry.”

That person also said that it was costly, pointing out that in other countries such as the US there have been government subsidies to support the work.

Sky Mobile customers earlier this year took to social media to complain that their mobile internet was no longer working. Some were left with no mobile signal. 

One person close to the situation said that this was linked to the “migration” of Huawei equipment, although another said that there was no certainty that this was the sole or main cause of the outage at that time.

Executives said that other mobile networks were also at risk of disruption given the speed of the shift away from Huawei equipment, which is used at phone mast sites and telephone exchanges.

Analysts have also warned that the slower rollout in the UK of 5G networks, compared with other countries, is linked to disruption caused by the government’s ban on kit from Huawei.