BERLIN (Reuters) – It would be wrong for Germany to impose blanket bans on foreign vendors of telecoms network equipment, Deutsche Telekom CEO Tim Hoettges said on Friday, in an answer to a question about China’s Huawei Technologies.
“Excluding one provider would reduce our flexibility. We oppose blanket bans,” Hoettges told Deutsche Telekom’s annual general meeting.
Deutsche Telekom is relying mainly on Huawei to build the 5G mobile network in Germany, and this week extended coverage to 16 million people, or around 20% of the population. Its other supplier of radio access network gear is Ericsson.
(Reporting by Douglas Busvine; editing by Thomas Seythal)
