News
The move will be seen as a snub to the US government, which has been aggressively lobbying its allies to ban Huawei
Germany has confirmed that it will not ban Chinese tech giant, Huawei, from being involved in its 5G mobile network infrastructure.
Germany had been reviewing its security protocol for its 5G networks, but said that it found no evidence to exclude Huawei, or any other vendor, from its 5G rollout campaign.
“We are not taking a pre-emptive decision to ban any actor or any company,” a spokesman for the German government told journalists from Reuters.
The move can be seen as a snub to the US government, which has waged a long term campaign to strong arm its allies into banning Huawei, through a combination of aggressive diplomacy and outright threats. The US has repeatedly said that it will withhold crucial security information from any country that has a working relationship with Huawei. The US is yet to furnish its allies with any proof to corroborate its allegations, which claim that Huawei’s networks are more susceptible to acts of state sponsored espionage.
The decision will be a huge boost for Huawei, as it awaits similar reviews in other key markets across Europe. In the UK, for instance, Huawei accounts for around 30 per cent of the country’s mobile network infrastructure. The Chinese tech giant will be hoping that the UK follows Germany’s lead and allows it to continue
Operators in the UK, Germany and elsewhere in Europe have rallied around Huawei, claiming that any ban implemented on their technology would cost European telcos hundreds of millions of pounds and could set 5G network densification back by around 18 months.
The UK is set to rule on whether it will allow its mobile network operators to use Huawei’s network equipment later this quarter.
