| India is the latest country to exclude Huawei. / Reuters |
By Jung Min-ho
India has excluded Huawei and ZTE from participating in trials to speed up 5G technology in the country amid security concerns surrounding the Chinese telecoms equipment providers.
Local media reported Friday that the Department of Telecommunications has asked Samsung, Cisco, Ericsson and Nokia to be project partners for the trials.
"We have excluded Huawei from these trials," the Economic Times, an Indian business daily, quoted telecom secretary Aruna Sundararajan as saying.
The paper reported that the department also did not reach out to ZTE.
India's government is planning to showcase India-specific 5G use cases by early 2019.
On the same day, SK Telecom, Korea's No. 1 mobile operator, said it has selected Samsung, Ericsson and Nokia as its preferred bidders for 5G equipment over Huawei.
All this comes after the United States and Australia acted against the Chinese companies due to cyber-espionage concerns.
Last month, the Australian government decided to ban the two from its 5G roll-outs. Before that, all U.S. government agencies had been barred from buying any technology from them.