Lisbon May 26 2023: Portugal has banned companies from ‘high-risk’ countries and jurisdictions from supplying equipment for its fifth-generation phone network, becoming the latest western nation to effectively block China’s Huawei Technologies Co. from its market.
The country will prohibit the use of equipment in its 5G wireless network from suppliers based outside the European Union or from states that don’t belong to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, according to a government statement posted online Thursday.
Companies from outside these jurisdictions are considered to be a “high risk” to the security of national networks, the security assessment committee of the government’s Higher Council for Cyberspace Security said in the statement. That decision effectively excludes Chinese suppliers of equipment and services, including Huawei, which had previously worked with some Portuguese telecommunications firms to develop their 5G networks.
Altice Portugal in 2019 said it was working with Huawei to develop its 5G technology, although earlier this year it announced it had picked Nokia Oyj as the equipment provider for its core 5G network. A representative of Altice was not immediately available to comment.
The statement didn’t name any specific suppliers who are banned and didn’t set a date for when telecommunication companies in Portugal have to remove any equipment provided by now banned suppliers from their network. The decision was reported earlier by Portuguese business newspaper Jornal Economico.
