The debate about Huawei’s role in the 5G network rollout in India continues. This comes at a time when the government has made its intentions clear to start with the 5G trials soon. A leading newspaper reported that a high-level committee on 5G is opposed to including Chinese vendors including Huawei in the 5G trials. There is a persistent fear that equipment being sold by Chinese vendors includes a backdoor which can allow the Chinese government to access data from 5G networks. Principal scientific adviser K Vijay Raghavan, who heads a high-level committee on 5G, believes India should “go for trials immediately with all, except for Chinese vendors”. The committee includes officials from the Intelligence Bureau, ministry of external affairs, home ministry, telecom and IT ministry and the department of science & technology. This report comes just days after the US president Donald Trump lifted the trade ban on Huawei, and has asked US based companies to continue working with Huawei. In India, Huawei still doesn’t have the permissions for the 5G trials, and getting these will be crucial. The company has already made repeated assurances that it does not share any data with any entity. On this edition of the big picture we analyse the 5G saga.

Guests - N. K. Goyal, Chairman, Communication Multimedia & Infrastructure Association,
Anil Choudhary, Former Secretary, Internal Security, Ministry of Home Affairs,
Rishi Raj, Executive Editor, Financial Express,
Harsh V. Pant, Head, Strategic Studies, Observer Research Foundation,

Anchor - Frank Rausan Pereira

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