"Finally there is progress on these much-delayed plans to mobile-enable the London Underground. The project has been delayed for years because of revenue sharing, infrastructure sharing and installation challenges. Most of those challenges remain, and we expect this project will continue to prove troublesome. It is unlikely that the underground portions of the mobile network will all be fully operational by 2012.

"The contract is certainly no gift from China: it gives Huawei yet another commercial foot in the door in Western markets from which it should be able to build to secure further contracts. Huawei is already succeeding at overcoming the cultural issues faced by its transition from a Chinese to a global company and it has already won widespread deals with mobile network operators. The suspicion that Huawei's award of large UK contracts masks a security threat is overstated. While the threat of cybersecurity is usually underestimated, it would be extremely difficult for a cybersecurity attack to be launched using just one vendor's equipment. Instead, successful cybersecurity attacks require a co-ordinated multi-faceted assault on UK critical national infrastructure.

"The benefits of the new network are more significant than the threats. The London Underground has been one of the UK's worst mobile blackspots and is almost unique among major European city metro networks in not having mobile coverage. Now Londoners can look forward to being more productive on the move. This network will bring real and measurable economic benefits that the UK badly needs."

"The contract is certainly no gift from China: it gives Huawei yet another commercial foot in the door in Western markets from which it should be able to build to secure further contracts. Huawei is already succeeding at overcoming the cultural issues faced by its transition from a Chinese to a global company and it has already won widespread deals with mobile network operators. The suspicion that Huawei's award of large UK contracts masks a security threat is overstated. While the threat of cybersecurity is usually underestimated, it would be extremely difficult for a cybersecurity attack to be launched using just one vendor's equipment. Instead, successful cybersecurity attacks require a co-ordinated multi-faceted assault on UK critical national infrastructure.

"The benefits of the new network are more significant than the threats. The London Underground has been one of the UK's worst mobile blackspots and is almost unique among major European city metro networks in not having mobile coverage. Now Londoners can look forward to being more productive on the move. This network will bring real and measurable economic benefits that the UK badly needs."