The roll-out of 5G networks in Britain could be delayed over fears the technology is not secure enough, Culture Secretary Jeremy Wright has warned.
Speaking before the Culture committee on Wednesday, Mr Wright said he would not trade off the economic benefit of using "cheap kit" with the potential risk to security.
"There is certainly the possibility of a delay in the process of the roll out of 5G," he told lawmakers.
"If you want to do 5G fastest then you do that without any consideration for security. But we're not prepared to do that. So I don't exclude the possibility that there will be some delay.
"The primary intention of this process is to get the security of the network right."
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The Culture Secretary's warning comes after Prime Minister Theresa May agreed to let Chinese telecoms giant Huawei help build the UK's forthcoming 5G network last month.
Her decision angered ministers, who favoured a total ban on the company's equipment, amid fears that Huawei could be used by the Chinese state as a route to spy on the West.
Huawei has repeatedly denied these allegations, claiming it has no ties to its native government beyond paying taxes.
Mr Wright said concerns raised about Huawei were less about the threat of espionage, and more about engineering issues with the firm's equipment.
"There is already a substantial amount of Huawei equipment within the telecoms network, so we are not starting from a standing start," he said.
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Mr Wright clarified that Huawei equipment is currently used in the broader UK telecoms network - not critical national infrastructure, from which Huawei equipment has been excluded for some time.
He added that Huawei is already the subject of stricter analysis than many other companies, because of the "nature of Huawei and where it comes from".
"It's also right, and the committee knows this, that there is a method of managing Huawei equipment which does not exist for other suppliers," he said.
"That's the oversight mechanisms, the evaluation centre. It is there for us to engage with Huawei and make sure we are confident in the equipment that it supplies."
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Mr Wright said a final decision on the inclusion of Huawei equipment in the UK's 5G network, based on the government's review of network security, would be made soon, but did not give a time frame.
The US and Australia have both banned Huawei's equipment from use in their respective 5G networks, and the US is pressuring allies to distance themselves from the company.
Robert Strayer, deputy assistant secretary at the US State Department, said last month that allowing Huawei any role in building a 5G network represented an “unacceptable risk” to security.
He said the US would have to reassess its intelligence-sharing arrangements with any country that allowed the company to become involved in building its network.
"It is our position that there is no way that we can effectively mitigate the risk to having an untrustworthy vendor in the edge of the network," he said.
"No part of the 5G network should have parts or software coming from a vendor that could be under the control of an authoritarian government."
Ahead of a meeting with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo yesterday, Mrs May assured the House of Commons she would not consider any options that would endanger national security.
Mr Pompeo said he had "great confidence" the UK would never act in a way that would "break the special relationship".
However, he said Washington accepted each country has a sovereign right to make its own decisions on the issue.
