Telecommunications (Security) Bill (Fourth sitting)

James Wild Excerpts

Committee Debate: 4th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 19th January 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Sara Britcliffe]

Q I have a quick question that I asked the previous witnesses. What is it that you support in this Bill?

Doug Brake: At a very high level, I would say cyber-security generally. The goal of Government intervention should be to make it easy, cheap and desirable for the private sector to do cyber-security well. I have some vague concerns that some increased costs might come from the Bill—the compliance costs—but identifying this as a serious issue that needs to be looked at and giving Ofcom the tools that it needs to investigate security challenges, especially with regard to the equipment and working with the private sector to mitigate those risks, is a big step forward.

On the diversification strategy, I think it is a very wise document. That to my mind is one of the best opportunities that we have to mitigate long-term risks, particularly where there are high-risk vendors in the area. So I think the diversification strategy is quite wise and would make the UK a real leader in this space in terms of policy.

[James Wild (North West Norfolk) (Con)]

Q What is your view on the implications of the Biden Administration for potential American involvement in the diversification strategy in telecoms more broadly?

Doug Brake: That is a good question. A lot of people are asking that question and trying to figure out exactly where this will go. I think that at a high level we have passed through the confrontation with Huawei and China over some of these innovational mercantilist policies that we have seen, which have undermined the global innovation of wireless equipment. I don’t think that will change at a high level. No politician in Washington in the US wants to be seen as soft on China. I think there will continue to be policies that attempt to roll back some of the innovation mercantilism that we have seen in the wireless equipment space. I expect and hope that it will be done with a more measured and co-ordinated effort with like-minded allies such as the UK and with less scattershot policies across the US Government.

What we have seen over the last several years in the United States is a variety of different agencies doing what they can to mitigate the risks. It is less a co-ordinated whole of Government approach in the US and more a disjointed and fragmented policy response across different agencies, so I am hopeful that under a Biden Administration we will see a much more co-ordinated effort and one that is more co-operative with allies.

[Mr Jones]

Q Regarding that co-operation between nations, clearly it has not just been the UK that has responded to the threat from Huawei; we were forced to go down our present track by the American sanctions against China over semiconductors. Going forward, how do you see that co-operation developing and how do we prevent a situation whereby, with its scale and obviously its resources, the United States dominates any future standards and also technology areas? They might talk about co-operation, which they do in a lot of areas, but when it comes down to brass tacks, it is America first in terms of business. And that is not a Trump comment.

Doug Brake: It is a good question. To start with, I will take the first part of your question, with regard to the export controls that the Administration put in place with the aim of trying to kneecap Huawei; I think it is fair to say that.

First, from our perspective, ours was not a very well-thought-through strategy—right? Without co-ordination and without a broad coalition to address those sorts of trade practices, in effect in the US we really only shot ourselves in the foot. It undermined any of the technology companies or equipment providers that were attempting to sell components and chips to Huawei. So to my mind, if you are not going to succeed in killing Huawei, or if there are ineffective strategies that undermine your own industry, I am hopeful and expectant that we will see a change in the policy going forward.

That said, if there was a desire from a broader coalition internationally to make some more extensive efforts—something like a NATO for trade, to address these unfair practices—that could be a very effective strategy, if it was done with a broader coalition.

In answer to your second question, the long-term goal of diversification of the radio access network supply chain is to allow for a much more diverse and modular system, in which any number of companies can compete within different niche areas of the market. Admittedly, there are some areas of that—high-performance, generic server infrastructure, as well as software—that the US does quite well. However, I think that opening up the supply chain would allow for a number of companies internationally to compete quite strongly.

Also I think there is a question about the extent to which different countries are willing to aggressively pursue an industrial strategy to support the sort of change that could give them a potential comparative advantage in pursuing this sort of transformational change to the telecommunications supply chain.