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FRANKFURT, Oct 14 (Reuters) - A new German security rulebook
will not exclude Chinese telecoms equipment maker Huawei
Technologies from supplying gear for the country's 5G
mobile networks, a senior government source said on Monday.
The 'security catalogue', due to be published this week,
will confirm Germany's decision to keep a level playing field
for suppliers to next-generation telecoms networks, despite
calls by the United States to ban Huawei.
Operators had warned that banning Huawei could add years of
delays and billions of dollars in costs to rolling out 5G
networks in Germany that could power super-fast home broadband,
connected factories or, one day, self-driving cars.
"Germany's approach did not and does not foresee any clause
that would exclude any one company," a senior government
official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The federal network regulator and cybersecurity watchdog
have been working to finalise the rulebook after setting basic
criteria in March on technical standards and governance at
suppliers.
Network operators, all of them Huawei clients, have opposed
Washington's calls to ban Huawei on concerns that its kit may
contain 'back doors' open to cyber spies and that under Chinese
law it must collaborate in state espionage efforts.
The company denies the allegations.
The United States imposed export sanctions on Huawei in May,
hobbling its smartphone business and raising questions over
whether it can maintain its lead on the global telecoms
equipment market, where it has a 28% share.
The European Union last week warned of the risk of increased
cyber attacks to next generation 5G mobile networks by
state-backed entities, but a report compiled by member states
stopped short of naming China as a threat.
Network operators Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone
and Telefonica Deutschland would be required
to identify and apply enhanced security standards to critical
network elements, the Handelsblatt daily reported on Monday,
citing the draft rulebook.
More broadly, vendors should be certified as trustworthy,
giving customers legal recourse to exclude them and seek damages
if proof is found that equipment had been used for spying or
sabotage.
Certification of critical equipment would meanwhile have to
be obtained from Germany's cybersecurity authority, the Federal
Office for Information Security.
(Reporting by Andreas Rinke;
Writing by Vera Eckert and Douglas Busvine; Editing by Alexander
Smith)
