Sir John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con): There could be offsets to the delay and cost if, as a result of this, we design and manufacture many more of the components we need here at home. What exactly can the Government do to make that more likely to create jobs and technology?
The Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Oliver Dowden): My right hon. Friend is right to raise the point, which is the opportunity created by open RAN technology.
It will take a very long time, were the UK minded to do so, to create a new mobile vendor like Ericsson, Nokia or indeed Huawei, but with open RAN we can get UK technologies into the provision of telecoms infrastructure, and that can sit alongside contributions from other like-minded countries around the world. That is how we will create jobs and provide a long-lasting solution.
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