(Updates with government confirmation, comment)
By Andreas Rinke and Douglas Busvine
BERLIN, Oct 14 (Reuters) - Germany has finalised rules for
the build-out of 5G mobile networks that, in a snub to the
United States, will not exclude China's Huawei Technologies
.
Government officials confirmed that Germany's so-called
security catalogue foresaw an evaluation of technical and other
criteria, but that no single vendor would be barred in order to
create a level playing field for equipment vendors.
"We are not taking a pre-emptive decision to ban any actor,
or any company," German government spokesman Steffen Seibert
told a news conference in Berlin on Monday.
The United States has piled pressure on its allies to shut
out Huawei, the leading telecoms equipment vendor with a global
market share of 28%, saying its gear contained 'back doors' that
would enable China to spy on other countries.
German operators are all customers of Huawei and have warned
that banning the Chinese vendor would add years of delays and
billions of dollars in costs to launching 5G networks.
The Shenzhen-based company has denied the allegations by
Washington, which imposed export controls on Huawei in May,
hobbling its smartphone business and raising questions over
whether the Chinese company can maintain its market lead.
U.S. officials have also argued that, under China's national
intelligence law, all citizens and companies are required to
collaborate in espionage efforts.
GROUND RULES CONFIRMED
Officials said Germany's security catalogue was due to be
published shortly, confirming an earlier decision to keep a
level playing field for suppliers to next-generation networks
that will power ultra-fast mobile broadband services or run
'smart' factories, offices and cities.
With billions of devices, sensors and cameras expected to be
hooked up, 5G networks will be far more ubiquitous than their
predecessors. At the same time, the fact that 5G networks rely
more on software that can be easily updated makes it harder to
keep track of cyber threats.
The German rules come after the European Union last week
warned of the risk of increased cyber attacks on 5G networks by
state-backed actors. A report compiled by member states stopped
short, however, of singling out 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 earlier,
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 (BSI).
Those requirements were in line with key ground rules set
back in March ahead of the drafting of the full set of rules by
the Federal Network Regulator (BNetzA) and the BSI.
(Reporting by Andreas Rinke;
Writing by Vera Eckert and Douglas Busvine; Editing by Alexander
Smith)
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