Two Huawei 5G kit-removal deadlines put back- PublishedThe government has extended two deadlines for the removal of Huawei equipment from the UK's 5G networks.The NCSC decided the security of Huawei's products could no longer be managed, in 2020, following a US decision to place the company under sanctions, and the UK government said all its equipment had to be stripped out of the UK by the end of 2027.'Network outages'The US authorities fear Huawei's 5G equipment makes countries vulnerable to their data being accessed by the Chinese state or having critically important services switched off.'Security risk'The direction to remove Huawei equipment is also being put on a legal footing through the handing of notices called designated-vendor directions to all 35 UK telecoms network operators, under the Telecoms Security Act, which came into force in November 2021.NCSC technical director Dr Ian Levy said: "The Telecoms Security Act ensures we can be confident in the resilience of the everyday services on which we rely and the legal requirements in this designated-vendor direction are a key part of the security journey.""