KPN: Excluding Huawei from 5G network will not incur extra costs

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Dutch telecom company KPN will strip out equipment made by China's Huawei from its existing core mobile telecommunications network at the same time as it upgrades to 5G technology, the company's Chief Financial Officer said on Friday. Jan Kees de Jager said on a conference call that normally dropping a key vendor would lead to greater procurement costs, but that was not true in this case.

KPN earlier said it would select a Western supplier to build its core 5G mobile network.

KPN plans to use Huawei to supply non-core radio equipment. De Jager argued that Nokia, Ericsson and other suppliers would be as affordable as Huawei for the 5G infrastructure.

(Reporting by Toby Sterling; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)