Vodafone’s Italian unit has a secured conditional approval from Rome to use the equipment made by China’s Huawei in its 5G radio access network, the sources close to the matter mentioned. Italy can block or impose difficult conditions on deals that involves the non EU vendors under “golden powers” which have been used thrice since 2012 to block foreign interest in industries which seems to be of strategical importance.
The government of national unity led by Prime Minister Mario Draghi authorised the deal between Vodafone and Huawei on on May 20, one of the two sources mentioned to Reuters, asking them not to be named due to the sensitivity of this matter.
As in similar deals, government forced a set of prescriptions including the restrictions on remote interference by Huawei to fix the technical glitches and an extremely high security threshold, added by the source. Vodafone and Huawei declined to comment.
The United States has lobbied Italy and also other European allies to avoid the use of Huawei equipment in their next generation telecommunication networks and to closely inspect rival ZTE, stating the companies could pose a security risk. Huawei and ZTE strongly deny the allegations.
In the last 12 months, Italy has adopted a stronger stance on Huawei, while not banning entirely from the 5G infrastructure. Under preceding Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, Rome prevented telecommunication group Fast web in October from signing the deal with Huawei to provide the equipment for its 5G core network, where data of high sensitivity is processed.