According to the latest news, the Italy based unit of Vodafone has received conditional approval from Rome to use the equipment made by Huawei in its 5G radio access network. This was first reported by Reuters. Reuters reported that as per the sources aware of the development, the government of Italy led by Prime Minister Mario Draghi has authorized the deal between the two companies on 20th May of this year.
However, the Italian government has reportedly imposed a set of prescriptions, including restrictions on remote intervention by Huawei to fix technical glitches. It also prescribed an extremely high security threshold.
Italy can block or impose tough conditions on deals involving non-European vendors with the help of “golden powers” which have been used as many as three times since 2012 to block foreign interest in industries deemed to be of strategic importance.
It is interesting to note that this development comes at a time when the United States has banned Huawei in its country and is also lobbying its allies to block Huawei from participating in the deployment of next-generation 5G infrastructure.
It is to be noted that the list of allies includes Italy along with other European countries. In the lobby, the US government is citing national security risk as a reason behind sanctions against China-based companies like Huawei and ZTE.
It seems instead of straight away banning the company from its 5G infrastructure, Italy has adopted a tougher stance against the company. Back in October last year, Italy prevented telecoms group Fastweb from signing a deal with Huawei to supply equipment for its 5G core network where there is exposure to highly sensitive data.
