The heads of 18 small British telecoms companies met at a London bank two months ago to discuss investment, strategy and mergers. As an icebreaker, they were asked if they thought the Chinese could eavesdrop through “backdoors” in Huawei equipment. Every single hand went up. 

One of the bankers then asked, for balance, if they thought the US could access communications through key Cisco equipment. “All the hands went straight back up without hesitation,” said a banker present at the meeting. 

As the UK and other countries begin to build 5G, the next generation of mobile networks, the telecoms industry is keen to show it can live with such risks. “We don’t trust anybody whether they sit in China or the US and no operator should,” said Scott Petty, chief technology officer at Vodafone UK. “Our job is to protect our customers.”