The UK’s dependency on just two companies for its 5G rollout poses risks to both network resilience and security, a report by the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee has found.

The committee said reliance on these companies is due to poor “strategic foresight”, and comes after years of telecommunication market consolidation, as well as the more recent exclusion of Huawei from the marketplace.

The report warns that while the government’s 5G supply chain diversification has come “too late” to prevent a varied market, it must “urgently assess” its potential dependence on suppliers of other emerging tech.

MPs have called on the government to publish a new assessment of the risks of global technological divergence of standards, and the UK's action plan, within the next year.

"A lack of strategic foresight in 5G has seen the UK become dependent on only two vendors for a crucial technology,” said chair of the Science and Technology Committee, Greg Clark MP. “We must learn from this experience to avoid making our economy and security vulnerable from a lack of acceptable alternatives in emerging technologies.”

He warned that AI and quantum technologies are just two examples of fields of development which can greatly advance the economy and society, but can also “pose potential threats.”

"While the Committee welcomes the Government's 5G diversification strategy, it has come too late and contains little by way of detail,” explained the committee chair. “The Government needs to take an activist approach to encouraging research and development, and must now co-operate internationally to build common regulatory approaches with like-minded nations.

He concluded: "As technologies develop at an ever-faster rate, more time must not be lost. In a White Paper, the Government must urgently lay out a strategy for the most important technologies of the future to avoid repeating the supplier squeeze we have ended up with in 5G."

The House of Commons report sets out a number of key recommendations for the current telecommunications rollout, which was recently addressed in the Government’s 5G Supply Chain Diversification Strategy.

The committee recommends there should be:

• A programme of research and development actively managed by the Government: the Government must drive the effort with industry and academia to meet its long-term objectives rather than take a passive approach;
• A range of measures to diversify the market: OpenRAN is one route to diversification, but as its success is uncertain, it should not be regarded as a 'silver bullet' for 5G supplier diversification; and
• International co-operation: the UK accounts for a small proportion of the global telecommunications market, so international co-ordination will be critical. The Committee recommends that the Government establish a standing forum for international co-operation on diversifying the telecommunications market.

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