The new Portuguese government will maintain the ban on 5G equipment from China

Portugal’s centre-right government will maintain the previous administration’s ban on telecom companies using Chinese equipment in their 5G networks, a minister said, despite the estimated cost of a stance that is among the toughest in Europe.

In May 2023, under the previous Socialist government, Portugal’s CSSC cyber security council banned Chinese equipment from high-speed 5G mobile networks as well as the 4G platforms used as the basis for the new technology.

The CSSC is the prime minister’s advisory body and its move was a blow to Chinese tech giant Huawei’s efforts to enter Portugal’s 5G market and possibly extend existing contracts.

The new government took over in April.

“There are certain policies that must have continuity, and security is one of them,” Infrastructure Minister Miguel Pinto Luz told the NOW station Monday night.

Europe and the United States are concerned that China’s involvement in critical infrastructure could compromise security, a view rejected by Beijing and Huawei. In September, Huawei filed a lawsuit in a Lisbon court against the CSSC move.

Pinto Luz said the working group that supported the CSSC’s position highlighted the need to make the telecommunications system “less permeable” to potential threats.

He acknowledged that Portugal was taking a tougher line than some European countries and more in line with the United States, but said “the world has changed … and there is an ever-increasing economic and geopolitical war between the two poles.”

Portugal’s main telecoms operators, Altice, NOS and Vodafone, have already said they will not use Huawei technology in their core 5G networks, but will still have to remove the equipment from all of their infrastructure.

A study by consultants EY for Huawei published on Monday estimated that the exclusion of Chinese technology could cost the economy more than 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion), including 339 million euros in replacement costs.

But the minister downplayed this, saying operators would have “a wide window of time” to replace the equipment.

(1 USD = 0.9062 euros)

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China