Ministers had to weigh competing interests when deciding whether to exclude Huawei from Britain’s 5G networks.

On the one hand, the UK’s closest ally has been leading a protracted campaign to bar the Chinese supplier from next generation communication systems. Washington has long accused Huawei of being a patsy of the Chinese state — an allegation the company denies.

Against that are two commercial advantages. First, Huawei dominates the telecoms equipment industry.

Freezing out Huawei would leave the likes of EE and O2 beholden to two suppliers — Nokia and Ericsson. More importantly, Huawei’s 5G technology is perhaps a year more advanced than those of its Scandinavian rivals.

“Ban Huawei and Europe falls a long way behind China and the US in 5G,” Neil Campling,