German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives and their Social Democratic Party (SPD) partners have delayed until next year a decision on security rules for the nation’s 5G network that could bar China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為), a highly divisive issue in an unhappy alliance.
Merkel’s right-left government, under pressure from the US to bar Huawei, wants to toughen up technical certification and scrutiny of telecoms equipment suppliers, without excluding any specific country or vendor.
SPD lawmakers on Tuesday backed an internal proposal that, if adopted by the government, could effectively translate into shutting out Huawei.
Lawmakers said their goal was nevertheless to reach a common position with Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) / Christian Social Union (CSU) group.
“I think we will have a solution in January,” SPD lawmaker Jens Zimmermann said. “We will have a common blueprint and it will be considerably more severe.”
He was referring to rules for the buildout of 5G mobile networks finalized by Merkel’s government in October that foresaw an evaluation of technical and other criteria, and was largely interpreted as keeping the door open to Huawei.
Merkel’s conservatives are divided on the issue. Hawks opposed to the chancellor’s careful approach are eager to go ahead with the SPD’s strict standards, which stipulate that suppliers from countries without “constitutional supervision” should be excluded.
Moderates eager to avoid a showdown with Merkel suggested that the stringent security criteria should apply to the core network only.
A paper prepared by moderate conservatives also stipulates that no single company should become dominant by supplying more than 50 percent of the 5G network components. The rules would be stricter for non-EU suppliers.
German operators are all customers of Huawei, and have said that banning the Chinese vendor would add years of delays and billions of dollars in costs to launching 5G networks.
“There is no agreement in the CDU parliamentary faction on the Huawei paper,” said Thorsten Frei, deputy leader of the CDU/CSU group in parliament.
“The faction will have a position in the new year; then there will be talks with our SPD coalition partners on a common position,” he said.
One of the main bones of contention is whether the strict rules should just apply to the core 5G network or also include peripheral parts.
The SPD and conservative hawks want the condition of “constitutional supervision” to apply for suppliers of parts for both the core and peripheral network.
Separately, the US government is weighing new limits on sales of chips and other vital components to Huawei, sparking another furious round of lobbying by technology companies.
Industry associations representing US chipmakers, software companies and manufacturers have written to US Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross arguing against the changes, according to copies obtained by Bloomberg News.
They urge US President Donald Trump’s administration to at least hear them out before introducing tougher rules to close what US officials consider loopholes letting US companies keep working with Huawei.
The current threshold effectively kicks in when 75 percent of the work occurs overseas.
The Trump administration is considering raising that to 90 percent and broadening the list of products, people familiar with the discussions said.
The change could come as soon as next month, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing policy deliberations.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
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