Former BT CEO to lead task force that will advise UK.gov on diversifying the nation's telecoms supply chain
- Reference: 1600936206
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/09/24/uk_telecoms_diversification_task_force/
- Source link:
Assembled ahead of the publication of the UK's Telecoms Diversification Strategy, the group brings together experts from industry and academia. Chairing it is former BT CEO Lord Ian Livingston, who previously also served as the UK's Minister for Trade.
Also serving are Vodafone CTO Scott Petty, Openreach CEO Clive Selley, Professors Rahim Tafazolli and Dimitria Simeonidou of the Universities of Surrey and Bristol respectively, UK5G Advisory Board chair Rosalind Singleton, Copper Horse chief David Rogers, and Dr Scott Steedman of the British Standards Institute.
Collectively, this task force is intended to provide advice to help inform the government's diversification strategy, which aims to infuse competition into the market beyond that offered by the existing incumbent players: Nokia, Ericsson, and Huawei.
This will include looking at "targeted measures" to attract additional vendors, as well as development in vendor-agnostic platforms like OpenRAN. It's not clear what these measures will specifically entail, although the government said it's in talks with third-party firms to see how it can support their entry into the telecoms infrastructure market.
The task force will also look at how to develop homegrown competition. Since the departure of Marconi from the infrastructure market, UK carriers have largely relied on foreign vendors for their core network and RAN equipment. Nokia and Ericsson are both based in Scandinavia. ZTE and Huawei are Chinese. And Samsung, although it doesn't have much of a toehold in the UK market, is South Korean.
In a statement, Digital Secretary Oliver Dowden said: "To deliver the revolutionary benefits of 5G networks for people and businesses, we need to be confident in their security and resilience. A more diverse supply chain is essential to reducing our dependence on individual suppliers and improving telecoms security – as well as a great economic opportunity for the UK.
"Under Lord Livingston's leadership, this task force will use industry expertise to turbo charge the delivery of our Diversification Strategy. Together we will push ahead with bold ideas to break through the barriers stopping suppliers from entering the UK and put us at the forefront of innovative new mobile technologies."
Upon announcing [1]the looming ban of Huawei from the UK's network, Dowden was especially critical of the state of competition in the telecoms market, describing the dependence on Huawei as a "market failure".
"Put simply, countries around the world, not just in the United Kingdom, have become dangerously reliant on too few vendors," Dowden told the House of Commons.
Diversifying the market will likely prove easier said than done. Developing new products takes not just time, but motivation.
As Amy Karam, fellow at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, [2]told the House of Commons Science and Technology committee earlier this year, there's reluctance in the telecoms industry to build products deemed less profitable. This is irrespective of any pressing national security needs.
Describing the problem as a "failure of capitalism", Karam said: "Free markets essentially failed the US, Canada, and the UK in creating this gap. Creating Radio Access Network (RAN) equipment is not very lucrative. So when you look back and ask why the US doesn't have this, it's because its network providers – Cisco was the giant – didn't invest. They were beholden to shareholders, Wall Street." ®
* Also known as the Department for Digital, Media, Culture, and Sport.
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[1] https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/14/huawei_ban_uk/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/22/huawei_commons_sci_tech_committee/
[3] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Vendors wriing specs
Lazy procurement allow vendors to write the requirements specifications for them with all of the proprietary features, shutting out rival bids
30 years too late
If the government are suddenly worried about this, perhaps they shouldn't have been so willing to standby and watch the likes of Plessey, GEC, Racal, Ferranti, Marconi, etc., go down the tubes. We used to develop and make our own telecomms kit in the UK AND export the stuff around the world! Almost unbelievable, I know.
The perils of short-termism of previous governments comes back to bite on the arse.
Re: 30 years too late
Short-termism of the stock market is likely to have been just as potent.
What's next chair of the meat board advising on veganism, head of the coal board advising on renewable energy?
It's "In the Thick of IT" come to life.
Our government - From bean to cup you fuck it up.
seen it
I've witnessed first support, then product development be moved offshore over the past 30 years. Most western IT companies are just shells of management, sales and project managers, with everything else located in cheaper labour territories.
Maybe we Reg readers can create a product, something like 5G AI-adaptive Multi-layer Blockchain On K8s Managed Above Cloud Storage (5G-AIM-BOG-KMACS). Requires a mere 100000 micro-satellites consisting of a RPI-zero, a USB-drive and a transceiver. Give it a pretty GUI and senior civil servants will leap on it.
Re: seen it
You mean like this https://www.windriver.com/products/cloud-platform/vran for the first line of your spec. before you lost it in the second line?
Multiple large customers around the world...
"Department for Digital, Media, Culture, and Sport"
Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.actually but I prefer to omit the second comma - leaving the door agar for other interpretations.
The last thing they want.
No Govt, or more to the point, Civil Servant in charge of purchasing, wants diversification. They like a cosy band of a few suppliers that keeps life easy. Far less work than undertaking and managing competitive frameworks - just make up some excuse to single source to your favourite / easiest to deal with and off we go!