French telecom operator Bouygues Telecom is to dismantle 3,000 Huawei-made mobile antennas in France’s highly populated areas by 2028, the latest blow to the Chinese tech giant which is the target of countries labelling its 5G equipment as a potential national security threat.
Bouygues’s deputy CEO Olivier Roussat confirmed the plan during a conference call, without detailing which company’s equipment it will use to replace Huawei’s.
Roussat also revealed that the installation of Huawei’s mobile gear was already halted in the cities of Brest, Strasbourg, Toulouse and Rennes.
“A number of sites will gradually have to be dismantled,” Bouygues’s deputy chief executive Olivier Roussat told reporters on a call, adding there were 3,000 sites with Huawei equipment.
“The dismantling will be carried out over a period of eight years, with a limited impact on our operating results,” Roussat said.
In July, Guillaume Poupard, head of the French cybersecurity agency ANSSI, said that government permits with durations from three to eight years would be granted to French carriers that were already using Huawei’s 5G equipment, but discouraged those that were not using Huawei’s gear to switch to Huawei in a bid to avoid complete dependence on the Chinese company’s technology.
