Spark has renewed hope that its 5G rollout with Huawei will go ahead after the UK government gave the Chinese telecom the green light. 

Huawei is currently blocked from setting up its continuous infrastructure in New Zealand while our spy agency, the GCSB, investigates security concerns. 

Victoria University professor, Jason Young, told Tim Wilson the GCSB hasn't made their security concerns public, so it's hard to know whether the UK decision changes anything. 

He said when more details about the decision are released it will be easier to know how much affect the decision will have. 

However, Young said other Five Eyes partners will be watching the UK closely. 

"The leak that came from the National Security Council is still a little bit unclear. It basically says the UK has made some decisions to use Huawei in some non-core areas of the 5G network."

"I think the US and Australia and other Five Eyes partners will be looking very clearly at what the UK actually comes up with and whether it will cause any security risks for the Five Eyes partners. If it did you could assume there would be some tension."

Young said Chinese companies do work under certain rules and regulations that could cause problems. 

"Business and companies in China do operate under certain Chinese regulatory conditions where they have national security rules and regulations which would, in extreme cases, suggest that they would have to adhere to what their government were asking them to do."

He said the Chinese government argues that Huawei is a private company, however, Young said based on how the Chinese economy operates there would be some amount of crossover.

"If we look at how the Chinese economy operates, we see there are a lot of linkages between the private sector, semi-private state enterprises and the government."

He said Huawei hasn't been banned from investing in New Zealand technology, so the telecom may still be able to be involved in our 5G network.

"Huawei has not been banned from investing in our telecommunications network. In fact, Huawei has a lot of investment already and continues to invest. It was just that one bid that Spark put forward for the 5G network was rejected on the grounds of national security concerns, so this would suggest that a revised bid could potentially meet the demands of the GCSB."

Young said at the end of the day this is a domestic decision for New Zealand.