The Finnish Parliament (Eduskunta) has passed a law that would let authorities ban the use of telecom network equipment if they have serious grounds for suspecting that it would endanger national security or national defence, according to Reuters. The law does not ban any particular vendor by name or country of origin.
The regulation only applies to the critical parts of the network through which traffic flows. The communications agency Traficom is expected to work on defining those network elements and would be in charge of enforcing the measures.
The provisions of the Finnish law can be applied retroactively, the news agency said. It also states that if any equipment is ordered to be removed, the government must pay compensation.
Huawei said that only fiveopposition MPs out of 200 members of parliament had signed an alternative proposal to exclude it and ZTE from participating in telecom tenders in Finland. The bill called for a ban on the use of their equipment and the elimination of all Chinese companies' 5G and ancillary technology, citing national security concerns and competition benefits, referring to domestic supplier Nokia.
"It is unfortunate that the international network security debate has focused only on Chinese vendors when we know that vulnerabilities may be found in all manufacturers’ equipment," a Huawei spokeswoman said. "Finnish law, however, takes more realistic approach focusing on equipment instead of vendors."
While Nokia and Ericsson are major equipment suppliers in Finland, operators Elisa and DNA have also used parts supplied by Huawei to start rolling out 5G networks in the country. More recently DNA and Telia opted for Nokia to upgrade their RAN.
