Vodafone warns ban on Huawei will delay 5G deployment in UK

Vodafone said that a ban on using Huawei gear will delay 5G deployment and lead to huge costs to the company and the UK, BBC reported on Thursday, quoting the mobile operator's chief technology officer.

Amid security concerns and pressure from the U.S., the British government is currently reviewing whether Huawei should participate in the rollout of 5G.

Vodafone's chief technology officer, Scott Petty, said that now a ban would require his company to strip Huawei equipment out of its existing 4G network, according to the report.

"The cost of doing that runs into the hundreds of millions and will dramatically affect our 5G business case," he was quoted as saying in the report. "We would have to slow down the deployment of 5G very significantly."

However, there was no evidence that Huawei's equipment posed a security threat, said Helen Lamprell, Vodafone's general counsel, "so far we haven't seen any evidence."

Currently Vodafone only uses Huawei's equipment at a very low risk area radio masts and U.S. firm Cisco's product used at the core of its most sensitive 5G network and also equipment from Sweden's Ericsson elsewhere.