British telecom operator BT's CEO Philip Jansen on Monday urged the UK government not to move too fast to ban China’s Huawei from the 5G network, cautioning that if it did, there could be outages and possibly even security issues. 

“If you are to try not to have Huawei at all, ideally, we would want seven years, and we could probably do it in five,” Jansen told BBC radio. 

Asked what the risks would be if telecom operators were told to do it in less than five years, Jansen said, “We need to make sure that any change of direction does not lead to more risk in the short term.” 

“If we get to a situation where things need to go very very fast, then you are into a situation where, potentially, service for 24 million BT Group mobile customers is put into question - outages,” he said.

(Cover image: An attendee wears a lanyard with Huawei's logo and the 5G sign at the World 5G Exhibition in Beijing, China, November 22, 2019. /Reuters)