UK National Cyber Security Centre: Do not use ZTE equipment and services in the telecommunications industry

The National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) of the UK issued new recommendations warning the telecommunications industry not to use ZTE’s equipment and services. On the same day as the proposal was released on April 15, the U.S. Department of Commerce also prohibited US companies from purchasing components from ZTE.

Although the NCSC statement did not mention the relevant US ban, the statement mentioned that ZTE received a $1.2 billion fine in the United States in March of last year after it violated the ban.

By Brücke-Osteuropa [Public domain], from Wikimedia Commons

According to a report in the Financial Times, NCSC technical director Ian Levy said in a letter to network operators: “the use of ZTE equipment or services within existing telecommunications infrastructure would present risk to UK national security that could not be mitigated effectively or practicably.”

The NCSC added in its brief statement posted on its website that the agency “has the responsibility to emphasize the potential risks to UK national security and provide advice based on our technical capabilities.”

The wording of the NCSC shows that they mainly aimed at ZTE’s infrastructure equipment instead of smartphones. According to statistics from IHS Markit, ZTE is the fourth largest telecommunications equipment supplier in the world and its market share is less than half of Huawei’s. Huawei is a large-scale infrastructure equipment supplier in the UK. This seems to be a headache for the NCSC.

ZTE and Huawei have been listed as potential security threats by US security advisers in the past few months. Huawei’s agreement with AT&T and Verizon has obviously been affected as well. ZTE has not responded to this news.