German intelligence agency says Huawei can't be trusted to build 5G networks

The German intelligence agency BND has stated that Huawei isn’t a trustworthy partner and shouldn’t be a part of the country’s 5G network deployment. The agency bases this on “security-relevant incidents” from the past. Previously, Norwegian intelligence raised similar concerns and Denmark agreed.

Of course, the biggest pressure comes from the US – the US embassy in Berlin has warned that a potentially compromised 5G network could endanger the future of intelligence sharing between the two countries.

The worry is that Huawei has built backdoors into its hardware that will be used by the Chinese government, a charge that Huawei is denying. The company is even suing the US government for banning it and damaging its reputation.

BnetzA, the German regulatory body responsible for telecommunications (among many other things) will start the auction for 5G bands in a few days (on March 19).

Four carriers have been admitted to the auction (press release here): Drillisch Netz, Telefonica, Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile) and Vodafone. 420MHz total will be auctioned off from the 2GHz and 3.6GHz bands. However, uncertainty about who will provide the hardware may cause a delay in the the auction.

Source