The United Kingdom has reportedly decided that Huawei telecommunications equipment should not be entirely banned from that country's 5G networks, although the China-based vendor's participation will be limited.

A report from the Daily Telegraph said the U.K.’s National Security Council (NSC), chaired by Prime Minister Theresa May, had agreed to allow Huawei to contribute non-core parts of 5G mobile infrastructure such as the antennas. According to the Financial Times, May approved “in principle” a recent assessment by the National Cyber Security Centre that the risk from Huawei equipment could be mitigated.

The decision has been presented by news outlets as either a defiant response to U.S. calls for a full ban on Huawei equipment or a blow to Huawei that could risk upsetting the Chinese government and cause problems for U.K. ministers as they seek new trade deals in a post-Brexit universe.

It has certainly been a tough call for the British government. On one hand it faces strong pressure both from international trade partners and U.K. senior ministers to block Huawei over the perceived security threats. Furthermore, a recent report from an oversight board in the U.K. found that the software Huawei uses to power its equipment is flawed, fails to meet security standards, and poses significant vulnerabilities for operators and their respective customers.

At the same time the government will no doubt have taken note of the European Commission’s approach, which is to recommend a set of actions that all member states should use to assess the cybersecurity risks of 5G networks while stopping short of an outright ban on any supplier. Britain will also likely have been listening to warnings from major telecom operators that fear banning vendors could have an impact on 5G network rollouts.

For example Vodafone Group CEO Nick Read said during the recent MWC Barcelona event that a concentration of the vendor market to two players (Ericsson and Nokia) would be “an unhealthy position not just for us as an industry but also for national infrastructure in the country.”

Huawei has always denied having any ties to the Chinese government and continues to defend itself in an increasingly hostile international environment. However, it seems the allegations of espionage, intellectual property theft, security vulnerabilities in its software, and the detention of its CFO Wanzhou Meng (at the request of the U.S. government) have yet to impact the company’s bottom line. The vendor recently reported a 39% year-over-year increase in revenue for the first quarter of 2019, and said it had signed 40 contracts for 5G commercial networks by the end of March.