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Pence Says US Hopes to Work With Ireland to Seek Alternative to China's Huawei 5G Network

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - The United States urges Ireland and other European allies to seek an alternative to using China's Huawei to obtain 5G telecommunications infrastructure, US Vice President Mike Pence said during a joint press conference with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar in Dublin on Monday.
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“The United States urges Ireland and all our allies in Europe to reject [Chinese] equipment that could compromise the integrity of our shared telecom infrastructure," Pence said. "We're working with telecom companies across the world to develop 5G alternatives to Huawei and we hope to have the opportunity to work with the Republic of Ireland in this endeavour as well."

Pence said there is no place for what he called are untrusted vendors anywhere in the United States' 5G supply chain.

In May, the US government blacklisted Huawei and restricted the company's access to the purchase of US hardware. Washington also called on all allies to exclude Huawei from their plans to establish 5G networks.

However, the enforcement on the Huawei ban was postponed and is now expected to come into effect on November 19.

Huawei has already provided source code to the United Kingdom, Canada and Germany and is ready to do the same for Japan.

The three nations plan to use Huawei components in their high-speed 5G internet networks amid warnings from the United States that they could compromise the security of military communications.

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