House Energy & Commerce Committee Republicans are applauding the UK's decision to exclude technology form Chinese telecom Huawei from their 5G networks.
The country had pondered pushing such tech to the edges where it would be less of a security issue, but instead said it needed to exclude it after the U.S. decided not to allow its chips to be supplied to Huawei.
Related: UK Bans Huawei from 5G Network
The U.S. government has concluded that it will not allow broadband subsidy money to be used for network buildouts with Huawei tech and will likely fund a rip-and-replace program to weed out existing tech.
After the UK announced its ban, House Energy & Commerce Committee ranking member Greg Walden (R-Ore.), Communications Subcommittee ranking member Bob Latta (R-Ohio), and Oversight Subcommittee ranking member Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) said that China will "stop at nothing" to dominate in tech and that the pandemic has put an exclamation point on the need to secure supply chains and networks.
“The U.S. has taken unprecedented steps to ensure U.S. leadership in wireless and emerging technologies and to hold China and other bad actors accountable for their continued efforts to compromise the security of our networks," they said.
Related: FCC to Declare Suspect Tech Item Fills Hill Bill
That includes moves by both the FCC and Congress to exclude suspect tech from the Universal Service Fund broadband subsidy program, as well as Congress' decision to exclude them from government contracts and the Trump Administration decision to put Huawei and ZTE on the list of companies considered national security threats, which means U.S. chip makers can't supply them.
Related: FCC Seeks Input on Excluding Foreign Tech
"Our nation’s leadership has proven important today with the U.K.’s announcement to ban Huawei from its networks, and we encourage other countries to follow suit," the legislators said. "We applaud this decision by the U.K, and must continue our efforts to remain a global leader on the world stage and work with our allies on shared goals."
