EU's Huawei purge could cost taxpayers a staggering €40 billion, four times more than Brussels ever admitted

Huawei removal could cost Europe up to €40 billion, GSMA estimates GSMA expects reduced competition to increase telecom equipment prices significantly Experts disagree over the true financial impact of Huawei's removal The European Union's plan to remove supposedly high-risk telecom vendors such as

<![CDATA[ <article> <ul><li><strong>Huawei removal could cost Europe up to €40 billion, GSMA estimates</strong></li><li><strong>GSMA expects reduced competition to increase telecom equipment prices significantly</strong></li><li><strong>Experts disagree over the true financial impact of Huawei's removal</strong></li></ul><p>The European Union's plan to remove supposedly high-risk telecom vendors such as Huawei and ZTE could cost far more than Brussels currently estimates, new figures have claimed</p><p>The GSMA trade body has said that direct replacement costs would reach €30 to €40 billion - roughly four times higher than the European Commission's own estimate of €10 to €13 billion in total.</p><p>Under the Commission's own projections, the transition away from Chinese equipment would cost between €3.4 billion and €4.3 billion annually across a three-year rollout - that annual estimate equates to a total cost of roughly €10 to €13 billion once the full three-year period concludes.</p><h2 id="a-costly-clash-over-chinese-telecom-equipment">A costly clash over Chinese telecom equipment</h2><p>The push to remove Huawei and ZTE from European networks <a href="https://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobile-phones/uk-government-huawei-and-zte-are-safe-1103726">traces back to security concerns raised in the early 2010s</a>.</p><p>Several EU governments began <a href="https://www.techradar.com/news/huawei-could-be-banned-from-5g-networks-across-the-eu">restricting Chinese vendors</a> after the <a href="https://www.techradar.com/news/us-government-urges-allies-to-ditch-huawei-equipment">United States pressured allies</a> to exclude them from next-generation 5G infrastructure.</p><p>The debate intensified further as multiple <a href="https://www.techradar.com/pro/eu-set-to-crack-down-on-huawei-zte-hardware-in-member-countries">member states moved to ban Chinese equipment</a> from their national 5G core networks entirely.</p><p>The <a href="https://www.techradar.com/pro/security/the-eu-wants-to-overhaul-cybersecurity-to-shut-out-high-risk-foreign-entities">European Commission later proposed a formal ban</a> on high-risk suppliers as part of a new EU Cybersecurity Act now under active negotiation.</p><p>GSMA's €30 to €40 billion figure is a one-time total, and it breaks down into fixed networks at €5 billion and transport networks at €9 to €12 billion.</p><p>It also projects an extra €8.5 billion in costs between 2027 and 2030 from reduced competition among equipment manufacturers, a cost the Commission's figures do not appear to include.</p><p>GSMA attributes that added expense to fewer companies competing for contracts once high-risk vendors are excluded entirely from the market.</p><p>Telecom operators across the bloc have already begun pressing regulators for financial compensation tied to the mandated equipment replacement.</p><h2 id="experts-clash-over-whose-numbers-are-accurate">Experts clash over whose numbers are accurate</h2><p>Some economists dispute GSMA's figures, arguing the estimates fail to separate new costs from expenses that would have occurred regardless.</p><p>"GSMA estimates are gross, not incremental," said Hosuk Lee-Makiyama, director at think tank ECIPE.</p><p>He argued that subtracting replacement costs that would have occurred anyway would bring the totals close to the Commission's own figures.</p><p>Lee-Makiyama's critique suggests the true gap between industry and Commission estimates may be lower. The European Commission had not responded to requests for comment on the dispute.</p><p>GSMA's report arrives as negotiations over the Cybersecurity Act continue among EU member states and telecom industry representatives.</p><p>Any eventual compensation scheme would likely require agreement among national governments already divided over how quickly to remove Chinese vendors.</p><p>This is not the first time GSMA's figures have contrasted sharply with the European Commission's or individual analysts' estimates. </p><p>In 2019, GSMA projected that replacing Chinese-made telecommunications equipment <a href="https://www.techradar.com/news/cost-of-replacing-huawei-kit-in-europe-could-be-pound28bn">across Europe could cost as much as €55 billion in total</a>. </p><p>Strand Consult, by contrast, estimated the cost of replacing Huawei or ZTE equipment eligible for 5G upgrades at around $3.5 billion. </p><p>Whether the final cost this time lands closer to Brussels' modest estimate or GSMA's far larger figure remains genuinely unresolved for now.</p><p>Via <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/telecom-industry-estimates-huawei-ban-cost-europe-40-billion/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Politico</a></p><figure class="van-image-figure inline-layout" data-bordeaux-image-check ><div class='image-full-width-wrapper'><div class='image-widthsetter' style="max-width:676px;"><p class="vanilla-image-block" style="padding-top:31.51%;"><img id="diM9tpwF2Lz85R8q85CT78" name="tr-g_news" alt="Google logo on a black background next to text reading 'Click to follow TechRadar'" src="https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/diM9tpwF2Lz85R8q85CT78.jpg" mos="" align="middle" fullscreen="" width="676" height="213" attribution="" endorsement="" class="inline"></p></div></div></figure> </article> ]]>