Largest German telecom, Deutsche Telekom made great argument for Huawei

The largest German telecom operator, Deutsche Telekom is making a great argument for Huawei in the face of strict EU law against the Chinese tech maker. EU internal market commissioner, Thierry Breton is “the new law of EU” as he recalls himself as the law of the land. Mr. Thierry is now against many Chinese companies mainly Huawei.

Last week, he announced that European Commission to no longer buy network equipment from Chinese vendors including Huawei and ZTE. These are now somehow deemed as “high-risk”.

At the heart of the matter, Deutsche Telekom is one of the leading telecom operators that is causing attention to make the first move to remove Huawei. A step, which the company is certainly denying.

Great Argument:

Timotheus Höttges, CEO of Deutsche Telekom recently attended a conference organized by the Federation of German Industries. He said to work with Huawei until the union forcefully restricts the company from doing so.

“The question is ‘Is an antenna a critical element, yes or no?’ and, you know, we can argue that now,” he said. “Under the German law, it is not perceived as a critical element.”

He further explains why it is important to raise a question on this matter.

“By the way, every mobile phone is an antenna as well, so you can question that in this regard, and so we are fulfilling legal requirements,” he continued. “If Germany would decide we are banning Chinese equipment, fine, and we’ll immediately do everything to fulfill these requirements.”

Höttges mentioned that Deutsche Telekom doesn’t buy aggregation tools from Huawei and already replaced the core components in all of its terminals. Also, the company is using US-based software to manage these terminals. Therefore, there’s no space left for any company to track or hack the data.

Large impact

Analysts believe that the comment made by Deutsche Telekom CEO is not a big surprise. Strand Consult’s data would imply it maintains about 47,200 Huawei antennas across 14,160 sites.

Separate research carried out by Barclays puts the cost of a “swap-out” at about €1.1 billion (US$1.2 billion), but earlier reports have suggested it could be much higher. It proves that a fast removal of Huawei from carriers could cause a mega disruption in the industry.

Höttges recognized “I believe that it is not a wise recommendation because we should manage the interdependencies of industries,” he said on the panel while discussing the latest EU moves. “I just believe that banning an antenna would have consequences for other industries sitting here maybe in the room which are trying to sell their products into China.”

Yes, the argument made by Deutsche Telekom is worth something but it may not be sufficient to understand for EU panel.

(source)