Days after President Emmanuel Macron signaled that France did not intend to block Huawei from the country’s future 5G networks, the finance minister and telecoms regulator have also now indicated that France is maintaining its 5G schedule and does not plan to exclude any players from the market.

Finance minister Bruno Le Maire reportedly said this week that France would not rule out a specific supplier from 5G, noting that that any decisions about the next-generation mobile technology would be based on the security and performance of the networks. At the same time, Le Maire questioned whether Huawei had the best 5G technology, and said other providers, such as Ericsson, would also be assessed in the coming months.

Like Germany, the United Kingdom, and the European Union in general, France therefore also appears unwilling to bow to the dictates of President Donald Trump and the U.S. government over the use of China-based telecommunications vendors. As has been widely reported, the Trump administration last Thursday added Huawei to a trade blacklist — or the “Entity List” — and accused the company of aiding the Chinese government in espionage against the U.S. However, some reports have since noted those efforts have been temporarily eased.

Sébastien Soriano, the chairman of French telecoms regulator Arcep, also said this week that France’s 5G deployment schedule would go ahead as planned in 2020 despite the difficulties linked to Huawei. As things stand, the main goals are to allocate all 5G-enabling frequencies and complete commercial rollout in at least one major city by 2020 and cover the main transport routes by 2025.

Soriano did indicate that Arcep would adopt a flexible approach to operators should they decide to change 5G supplier but pointed out that none of the operators relied exclusively on Huawei in France’s major cities.

Arcep has already held public consultations on the terms and conditions for releasing and using the 3.5 GHz, 26 GHz and 1.4 GHz bands. In October 2018, it launched a new public consultation that is designed to “inform Arcep’s actions going forward” with a view to spectrum allocations in these bands. In May, the regulator launched a public consultation on a draft decision regarding the synchronization of terrestrial networks operating in the 3.4-3.8 GHz band in France. Licenses in the 700 MHz band were allocated to the operators in 2015.

With regard to the operators themselves, Orange has already indicated that it plans to test 5G equipment from Korean vendor Samsung in the city of Saint-Ouen near Paris this year. Orange is also working with other vendors, including Huawei, Ericsson, and Nokia, to test their technologies in the lab and in the field, and has said it will make a decision on its 5G suppliers by the end of the year. The operator has previously said it will deploy equipment in 17 European cities in 2019 and is adopting a multi-vendor approach to building its networks.

Altice-owned SFR has been testing 5G equipment from Cisco, Huawei, and Nokia, while Bouygues Telecom has been working with Ericsson and Huawei. The three operators have been making use of frequencies in the 3.5 GHz band that were allocated by French telecoms regulator Arcep on a temporary basis for 5G trials.