The Ministry for Digital said the country will regulate network security, without banning specific vendors.
Background: In 2018, Norway was one of the countries that were considering a ban preventing mobile operators from using Huawei equipment for 5G networks. The country’s former justice minister made statements in early 2019, saying that the government shared the same concerns as the United States and Britain on possible espionage on private and state actors in Norway.
The stance has shifted: This week, the Minister for Digitalisation, Nikolai Astrup, said that Norway has no plans to block Huawei from supplying equipment to the country’s mobile operators for their future 5G networks. In an interview, the minister said “we impose general security requirements on telecommunications companies and not on individual suppliers, and therefore it is not a current issue for the authorities to exclude individual suppliers. We have a good dialogue with the telecommunications companies about safety requirements. The companies will make risk assessments and choose their own equipment suppliers”. For example, Telenor is carrying out tests across the country, with the involvement of several vendors (Huawei in Kongsberg, Ericsson in Elverum and Trondheim).
An EC-style approach: Norway’s new approach to the issue mirrors the one taken by the European Commission earlier this year: EU member states were required to submit their risk assessments by July 2019. The cybersecurity agency ENISA is now carrying out a pan-european assessment, which should complete by October and result in any necessary measures by the end of 2019.
