No measures in Germany to exclude Huawei from roll-out of 5G networks’.

Germany will not take measures to explicitly exclude Chinese Huawei from its future networks. The United States is actively trying to persuade its allies not to allow Huawei to build 5G networks. In fact, it is a top priority for the country.

But the efforts of the United States do not seem to have been successful so far. At least that’s what the German Handelsblatt says. Several German ministers would have jointly decided not to exclude the Chinese manufacturer of telecom components. That is not to say that this will not be done indirectly.

Implicitly exclude

The aim is to establish guidelines for network security in Germany. These directives could contain specific requirements, which would make it impossible for the Chinese manufacturer to build the 5G networks in Germany. The Germans would also insist that Huawei should at least not cooperate in setting up the core of the networks, which process telephone and Internet traffic.

The reason for this lies in the fact that security services suspect the Chinese government of wanting to spy on Western countries via the 5G networks. This can be done through a legal obligation for companies such as Huawei, which have to cooperate with requests for information from the Chinese government. The fear of the United States, among others, is that this will lead to the leakage of secret information via the 5G networks and that there are loopholes in them.

The Chinese government, of course, denies these accusations. But that will not be enough to convince Western governments that there is indeed no espionage via the networks. However, economic arguments do seem to play a role. 5G networks are the cheapest and quickest to set up using Huawei technology. A ban on Huawei products would slow down the roll-out of the 5G networks and be detrimental to the competition of countries.