BERLIN (Reuters) – Deutsche Telekom said no telecoms equipment vendor should be barred from Germany on political grounds, reiterating its opposition to calls from some lawmakers to bar China’s Huawei Technologies on national security grounds.
CEO Tim Hoettges’ comments on Thursday came as officials put the finishing touches on legislation to anchor a rules-based framework for assessing vendor risk that is expected to foresee a judgment call by key government departments.
Huawei is the main supplier of radio access equipment for Deutsche Telekom’s new 5G network in Germany, but Hoettges stressed that his company would “never” become dependent on a single vendor.
He also called for the use of open, cloud-based technology for networks – known as OpenRAN – to be anchored in German legislation as this would be an important of Deutsche Telekom’s network development in future.
(Reporting by Douglas Busvine, editing by Thomas Escritt)
