Under U.S. Pressure to Stop Using Huawei Equipment
LG Uplus is under renewed pressure from the U.S. government to refrain from using communications equipment produced by China’s Huawei.
Robert Strayer, deputy assistant secretary of state for cyber and international communications and information policy, reiterated the U.S. government’s call for a ban on Huawei equipment in a video briefing in New York on July 22 (local time). "We urge companies like LG Uplus to move from unreliable suppliers to reliable ones," Strayer said, referring to LG Uplus using Huawei's communications equipment.
The Korean government and industry have been cautious not to be involved in the United States-China trade war. Responding to lawmakers’ questions, Minister of Science and ICT Choi Ki-young said on Oct. 18, 2019, “We have not found security problems with Huawei products."
LG Uplus also said several times that it has confirmed that there was no problem with the security of Huawei's equipment.
When seen from the business standpoint, requesting LG Uplus to exclude Huawei's equipment is unrealistic. As part of the digital New Deal policy, the Ministry of Science and ICT has decided to advance investment in 5G and complete a nationwide 5G network by the first half of 2022. Under these circumstances, it is not easy for LG Uplus to establish a national network within the target deadline if it is forced to exclude equipment from certain hardware vendors.
In particular, if there are security problems with Huawei's telecommunication equipment, as claimed by U.S. authorities, LG Uplus needs to remove Huawei equipment from its 4G network as well as the 5G network, since the current 5G service is non-standalone mode, which means the service partially uses the 4G network. Yet removing Huawei equipment from the 4G network is an impossible project.